Gloves come off early in race for president

By Mark Silva
The Orlando Sentinel

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U.S. voters face the most bruising and costly campaign for the White House ever, with an eight-month contest between President Bush and Democrat John Kerry already bristling with character assaults and hard-hitting television advertising.

With a battery of dueling TV ads hitting voters in key states such as Washington, Oregon and other critical battlegrounds — and with attacks certain to escalate — both sides risk alienating voters just as Bush and Kerry begin their campaigns.

It's possible that "the public is going to get burned out over this," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Center for Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Yet, she said, the issues that Bush and Kerry are battling about — terrorism, taxes, jobs and health care — are critical enough to keep voters engaged.

"We're seeing a new model of campaigning," Jamieson said. "The assumption has always been that you don't engage seriously at the general-election level until at least summer. You are now down to the specific case against each side at a very early time."

Less than two weeks ago, Bush called Kerry to congratulate his rival for cementing the Democratic nomination, possibly their last exchange of kind words before Nov. 2.

Last week, Bush accused Kerry of proposing "deeply irresponsible" cuts in intelligence spending. The Democrat said Bush broke his promises to senior citizens. Bush labeled Kerry an economic isolationist. Kerry called his Republican critics "the most crooked ... lying group I've ever seen."

The expectation of a hard-fought campaign and a close election is driving this early exchange, fueled by three developments to produce a perfect political storm:

• The unusually early naming of a presumed Democratic nominee who is challenging, even surpassing, the incumbent in polling.

• Candidates unlimited in what they can spend in record-setting spring and summer campaigns.

• A profusion of outside interest groups fueling ad wars that are unrestrained in spending and free to use venomous rhetoric that the candidates dare not utter.
 
Bush, ridiculing his rival as a waffler, on Friday rolled out an attack TV ad targeting Kerry as a tax-and-spender who is weak on terrorism.

Kerry, deriding the president as "reckless" on the world stage, has responded with his own ads and is drawing reinforcement from allies — such as the anti-Bush groups MoveOn.org and The Media Fund — that are spending millions of dollars on attack ads against the president.

And this is only the start.

"If we take President Bush's lead, it's going to ratchet up pretty quickly," said Harold Ickes, former aide to President Clinton and founder of The Media Fund. Bush "has ratcheted it up pretty fast, given that this is an eight-month election. ... We will conduct ourselves accordingly."

The president, gauging the severity of the contest, has come out of the Rose Garden. He is already campaigning hard, spending time each week in states he most hopes to win. And he is airing TV ads warning of Kerry's "plan to pay for new government spending" and "raise taxes by at least $900 billion."

Kerry proposes to rescind tax cuts that Bush won for people with incomes of more than $200,000. With the money, he proposes to provide insurance for most Americans lacking health care. His campaign calls Bush's ads "weapons of deception," although an Emory University analysis projected Kerry's health plan could cost $895 billion during 10 years.

On the stump, Bush accuses Kerry, a fourth-term senator from Massachusetts, of spending so much time in Washington, D.C., that "he's taken both sides on just about every issue. ... My opponent clearly has strong beliefs; they just don't last very long."

Kerry accuses Bush of waging a reckless foreign policy and heartless domestic agenda. "Mr. President," Kerry said in Florida last week, "bad, rushed decisions kill. ... Not giving American citizens health care kills, too."

This is high-octane talk for March.

"It's a danger for both of them to go so negative, because it really turns off voters," said Merle Black, professor of politics and government at Emory University. "There is something to the dignity of the office here, especially for Kerry; he needs to ratchet it down a little bit, because we are talking about the presidency."

Yet Bush and Kerry are raising the most important issue in a presidential election.

"It goes straight to character," Jamieson said. "If you can undermine trustworthiness, you can undermine a candidacy. In the exchange, Bush says, 'I'm steady, and he's indecisive.' Kerry comes back and says, 'There is a difference between indecision and stubbornness; your decisiveness is dangerous.' "

While negative campaigns often dampen voter turnout, analysts believe the election this time around will be different.

"The stakes are high and the country is incredibly polarized," said Darrell West, a political scientist at Brown University. "People don't like the negativity, and by November, they're going to hate both candidates, but they're still going to vote."

Indeed, pollster John Zogby said it's an "Armageddon campaign," because each side claims the election of the other would mean "the end of the world."

The candidates' crossfire is costly. Bush, who has raised more than $145 million for his campaign, has surpassed a record he set in 2000. Kerry, imploring Democrats to unite after an exceptionally swift primary campaign, hopes to raise $80 million.

Bush and Kerry are not alone in shoveling money into attack ads.

Thanks to reforms of campaign financing that strictly limit the "soft money" donors give to political parties or candidates, unregulated independent groups are flourishing and spending millions of dollars in ads this year.

Outside groups are freer to attack, such as one that slammed Democrat Howard Dean in Iowa's caucuses this winter: "Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-spending, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading ... Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs."

Citizens United, headed by a former Republican congressional aide, has aired a MasterCard-ad parody picturing Kerry alongside Sen. Edward Kennedy: "Another rich, liberal elitist from Massachusetts who claims he's a man of the people. Priceless."

But Democrats have resources, too. Jim Jordan, Kerry's first campaign manager before an overhaul last fall, has opened a consulting firm representing three of the Democratic committees: The Media Fund, America Coming Together (ACT) and America Votes. Their national spokeswoman, Sarah Leonard, came from Dean's campaign.

The Media Fund, drawing money from Hollywood producer Steve Bing and other big Democratic donors, began a $5 million campaign last week against Bush. It is spending the largest share, $350,000, in Florida, which is critical to Bush's re-election.

"George Bush's priorities are eroding the American dream," the ad declares.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) complained that these ads and others aired by MoveOn.org, with the backing of billionaire George Soros, violate federal law because they are attacking the president rather than advocating an issue. The RNC has written to television stations asking them to pull the ads.

"This is typical Republican harassment," said Ickes, the Media Fund founder.

Lindsay Taylor, a spokeswoman for the RNC, replied: "This is not a scare tactic at all. ... We just want to make sure that folks are aware of what's going on."

The parties have organized computerized "opposition-research" shops spouting fountains of fodder for media covering the campaigns every day. Forty people do such research for the RNC.

The day Kerry met with Dean last week to start assembling a coalition of their supporters, the RNC Research Department was ready with "Dean's Greatest Hits," a list of critical words Dean had for Kerry during their primary campaign.

The Democratic National Committee, outnumbered in researchers, vowed not to be outdone. Spokesman Tony Welch said: "There probably isn't a better research operation than ours."

Even many political junkies are ready for a break. They're hoping both candidates turn down the rhetoric, at least until the cherry blossoms are done flowering in Washington.

"Kerry and Bush are turning out to be the relatives that won't leave, no matter how many hints you drop," said Larry Sabato, a political analyst at the University of Virginia. "Campaigns have certainly been as negative, but this one could be negative for longer than it ever has been before."

All of the hostility could end up damaging the body politic as a whole, he worries, leaving the country even more polarized than it is now and Congress even less able to find a center of compromise from which to govern.

But political analysts point out that negative ads do provide information, even if it is spun to portray an opponent negatively. The ads also serve to keep each party's base energized.

That's key this year, because there are so few undecided voters. Usually at this time, about 20 percent of voters haven't made up their minds. But in Zogby's national polls, that's down 5 to 7 percent, so reinforcing the base is critical.

"The negativity is not so much as in other years to persuade undecided; it's to throw red meat to your supporters," Zogby said. "So John Kerry doesn't apologize for his 'lying and crooked' remark; he doesn't have to, because his supporters hate George Bush."

And the president can come out of the Rose Garden and attack Kerry by name because his supporters are just as passionately opposed to Kerry.

"This isn't a Sunday afternoon tea party. This is the rough, cutting edge of our democracy," Zogby said. "And it's never going to be friendly or pleasant. That's just not the way politics is."

Material from The Associated Press and Christian Science Monitor is included in this report.

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