New York
IS THE KERRY CAMPAIGN IN DISARRAY? Over the last week, as Republicans gathered in New York City, another, perhaps more interesting, political story developed in Boston, Nantucket, and Washington, D.C. Upset about the way in which they think the Kerry communications team mishandled the controversy over the anti-Kerry veterans group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, many Democrats said it was past time Kerry shook up his communications team. And while “shake up” probably isn’t the best way to describe what’s going on in the Kerry camp–at least not yet, anyway–there have been changes.
On Tuesday, for example, the campaign announced several new hires, including former Clinton flack Joe Lockhart, who is now a senior adviser to Kerry, and Joel Johnson, another former Clinton hand, who will now handle the campaign’s rapid response. The Wall Street Journal‘s Al Hunt reports that “insiders say there might be more moves in the next few days.” Here is Hunt:
Late on Wednesday, the Kerry camp called representatives of the Christian Science Monitor, which has been holding informal breakfasts and coffees for print journalists and campaign officials during both the Democratic and Republican conventions. The Kerry campaign wanted to talk to journalists, and quickly, so a last minute breakfast was held Thursday morning in the Times Square Hilton. Usually these breakfasts involve about 30 reporters posing questions to 1 or 2 campaign types. Not this morning. Instead there were six Kerry campaign officials at Thursday’s breakfast, all high-level personnel: Mary Beth Cahill, the campaign manager, Tad Devine, senior strategist, new hire Joe Lockhart, pollster Mark Mellman, Doug Sosnick, and Stephanie Cutter, Kerry’s communications director.
For a communications director, Cutter was remarkably silent. She didn’t say a word. Maybe that’s because she, along with senior strategist Bob Shrum, has taken most of the blame for the Kerry campaign’s ham-fisted response to the anti-Kerry veterans. Shrum, by the way, wasn’t in New York this morning. Cutter’s silence and Shrum’s absence lend some credence to reports like this one, from Wednesday’s New York Daily News:
“But a second Democratic source noted, ‘The question is, Is it too late? Has too much blood spilled?”
Or this one, from Thursday’s Washington Post: “The Kerry campaign is getting tagged with a criticism that haunted Al Gore in 2000. It spends too much time reacting to polls and focus groups. The target of some of that criticism is Bob Shrum, who was a senior strategist for Gore.”
The Kerry campaign staff assembled at breakfast on Thursday were, of course, on message. This is a campaign that believes the American public has already made up its mind about George W. Bush: “I think the voters have decided they do not want to reelect the president,” Devine said. “And I think that’s manifest today.”
The Kerry camp said they’ve miscalculated, however, specifically in the campaign’s response to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. “We didn’t understand the degree to which [the Swifties] would become the focal point for August,” Cahill said. And Devine said the campaign had trouble coming up with a response: “Whenever you make a decision to engage an issue like this on the candidate level, that’s a very difficult process.”
Polls show Bush gaining ground in the last couple of weeks. Yesterday the Annenberg Election Survey released data showing the president had a 53 percent approval rating. Both campaigns expect Bush–barring any major blunders in his acceptance speech tonight–to come out of the convention several points ahead.
Kerry’s team isn’t worried–publicly, that is. “We always knew that August was going to be a difficult month,” Cahill said. The reason is campaign-finance regulations, which state that a candidate must use public funds starting from the end of his convention. Kerry’s convention was a month earlier than Bush’s, thus giving the president a whole extra month to spend money from his campaign stash, and leaving Kerry defenseless when the Swift boat veterans began their ad campaign. Bush ends August on offense; Kerry on defense.
But things can turn around. On Friday, Kerry unleashes a $45 million barrage of television advertising in key battleground states. A new communications strategy might prove successful. And the race is still close. “We are competitive dollar for dollar in the fall,” Cahill said. “This race starts tonight.”
Matthew Continetti is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.
