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Mark Shields is a nationally known columnist and commentator. |
Deja vu Democrats
Back when Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of contemporary conservatives, was California's governor, convicted and imprisoned criminals, while on state-sanctioned 72-hour furloughs, murdered a Los Angeles police officer and murdered a woman in Orange County.
That reality in no way inhibited 1988 Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush, who was then Reagan's vice president, from condemning Democrat Michael Dukakis for having been Massachusetts' governor when convicted murderer Willie Horton, on a state-sanctioned weekend pass, raped a woman in Maryland and stabbed her companion.
Republicans, according to George H.W. Bush, "don't let murderers out on vacation to terrorize innocent people. ... Dukakis owes the people an explanation of why he supported this outrageous program."
Thanks to Paul F. Boller Jr. of Texas Christian University, we know that after that 1988 campaign, Bush's media advisor and now president of Fox News, Roger Ailes, told the superb television journalist Judy Woodruff that the press was interested in three things: gaffes, attacks and good visuals. "That's the one sure way of getting coverage. You try to give them as many pictures as you can. And if you need coverage, you attack and you will get coverage."
In 2004, many Democrats are concerned -- make that worried -- that their presidential nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, made a major gaffe, having nothing to do with swift boats, from which he has yet to recover.
On Aug. 6, in New Hampshire, President George W. Bush boldly baited the trap: "My opponent hasn't answered the question whether knowing what we know now he would have supported going into Iraq. That's an important question, and the American people deserve a clear yes or no answer."
Three days later, on Aug. 9, in an arresting, politically appropriate visual setting, Kerry replied: "Yes, I would have voted for that authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have. But I would have used that authority, as I have said throughout the campaign, effectively. I would have done this very differently. ..."
Bush immediately and relentlessly trumpeted Kerry's response as the Democratic nominee's endorsement of the president's own Iraq policy.
Now some nine months after declaring himself the antiwar Democratic candidate and when barely a third of U.S. voters agree with the statement "The results of the war with Iraq were worth the loss of American life and other costs," the Kerry campaign, apparently paralyzed by the fear of being labeled a flip-flopper or soft on terrorism, clings blindly to the senator's vote authorizing Bush's pre-emptive strike against the occupation of Iraq.
Party members working to elect the Massachusetts senator are as dismayed as they are perplexed by Kerry's continuing efforts to align himself so closely with Bush on national security.
Given the unassailable reality, that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and posed no threat to the United States or even to its neighbors, and that Iraq had nothing at all to do with the attacks on New York City or the Pentagon, party pros ask, "Why couldn't Kerry have answered: 'I not only would have voted against Bush then, I would have led the fight against the administration's policy, and I am confident that a large majority of the United States Senate and the nation's citizens would have been on the same side'?"
Where is the missing passion? That absence of Kerry outrage even in the swift boat TV smears that have attacked his documented bravery in battle summon up unwelcome memories of Michael Dukakis' passionless answer to the 1988 debate question about how, given his strong opposition to capital punishment, Dukakis would have responded to the rape and murder of his own wife.
Unable to admit how angry and ready to personally punish, even torture, the perpetrator and only then being inhibited from doing so because of his commitment to the values his wife cherished, Dukakis gave a bloodless programmatic response.
Politics ain't beanbags. It's not too late if John Kerry can avoid personalizing the opposition's criticism and smears, and demonstrate measured and believable anger. Until that happens, more than a few Democrats fear that they've seen this movie -- featuring the Bush attack machine and a passive Massachusetts opponent -- before.
