Character issue puts Dems on the defensive
By Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY
Imagine a Democratic presidential candidate and his allies assailing the character of the Republican nominee in ads and speeches every day for eight months.
Having trouble? That's because Democrats generally don't have the stomach or the discipline to do it. Often they don't even effectively fight back when under attack themselves.
But with George W. Bush's second inauguration next week, Democrats are pondering their choices in a Feb. 12 election for party chairman and rethinking what might be called their character problem.
Democrats "as a group are uneasy" about attacking and defending on character, says Harold Ickes, a former Clinton aide who heads the Media Fund, a political ad organization. "But they damn well better get the stomach," he adds, because "we've seen way too many of our candidates taken down on issues of character."
In the past five presidential races, the only Democrat to win was the one who avoided the draft and admitted on TV to "causing pain" in his marriage. The other three nominees were military veterans with solid marriages and public records. Yet their opponents - George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush - managed to brand them as unpatriotic (Michael Dukakis, the "card-carrying" member of the ACLU), untruthful (Al Gore (news - web sites), the "serial exaggerator") and unprincipled and weak (Kerry, the "flip-flopper" who couldn't be trusted to keep the nation safe). All are variations on a theme: These men have character flaws that disqualify them for the White House.
"We were caught off guard by this perennial Republican attack-dog mentality," says Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and a potential 2008 presidential candidate, reflecting on 2004. "We've got to find ways to develop our own."
Some analysts wonder how a party and its top strategists can be caught off-guard by a recurring tactic. "It is stunning, the extent to which Democrats keep repeating their errors over time," says Darrell West, a political scientist at Brown University in Providence.
Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster and strategist, says Democrats don't attack much on trust issues because "they're addicted to running the conservative wacko campaign" - as in, my opponent is "an extreme conservative wacko who's got dangerous ideas." He adds dryly, "I never worry about whether Democrats are tough enough."
Kerry was tough when it came to Bush's policy decisions on Iraq (news - web sites) and the economy. And many agree with McInturff that the flip-flop attacks worked in part because "the guy was all over the lot. There were some elements of truth to that." But Kerry never seriously tried to counter the flip-flop charge or mount a sustained attempt to raise questions about Bush's character.
Head vs. heart
What are Democrats missing? For a start, some academic analysts and party figures say Democrats underestimate the weight voters give character when choosing a presidential candidate.
A central tenet of political science is that the vote for president is highly personal, often based on instinct and intuition rather than policy positions. But Democrats love policy. "We never saw an issue that we didn't want to talk about ad nauseam," Ickes says.
Chad Clanton, part of Kerry's rapid-response team last year, says Kerry's biting policy critiques were not enough to "close the deal" because people vote with their hearts as well as their heads. Much more damaging, he says, are "attacks that go to what kind of leader the person would be, and who they are."
The limits of the policy-based pitch are clear. National polls show majorities prefer Democratic approaches on health, education and the deficit. Majorities in some polls do not agree with Bush's domestic priorities for his second term.
But he won that second term. Polls suggest that his success in defining Kerry was a major factor. At least two conducted by Democrats since the election found that "flip-flopper" was the top concern or most memorable information voters had about Kerry. A non-partisan Pew Research Center Poll just before the election found 63% said Bush was "willing to take a stand, even if it's unpopular," while only 27% said that about Kerry.
"Kerry could never persuade them he should have his hand on the tiller in a time of international terrorism," Ickes says. "And at bottom, that went to character. At bottom, it came to a judgment about who do I trust."
Another problem for Democrats: They can't shake the idea that people of integrity shouldn't have to, and don't need to, talk about their integrity. So when they come under attack, they often shrug it off and assume voters will, too.
Joanne Ciulla, a leadership professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, says Republicans are criticized for being publicly self-righteous. But she says Democrats are "inwardly self-righteous" because they believe they are on the side of the downtrodden so they don't have to defend themselves.
Soft defense
That philosophy prevailed last spring, when the Bush campaign spent tens of millions of dollars labeling Kerry a flip-flopper who said whatever people wanted to hear, and in August when an independent group ran ads suggesting Kerry lied to get his decorations in the Vietnam War. Kerry advisers initially believed both storms would pass. But both caused damage.
Ruy Teixeira, co-author of The Emerging Democratic Majority, says Kerry's silence on the Vietnam ads "gave voters the impression that where there's smoke, there's fire, and why didn't this guy defend himself?" When the campaign finally fought back, he says, the delay suggested it was done out of political necessity, not because the charges were baseless.
Steve Rosenthal, CEO of America Coming Together, a Democratic voter turnout organization, says the damage may have gone even deeper. "If he's not defending himself in the campaign," he says, "there's an undertow of 'this guy didn't even defend himself - how's he going to defend the country?' "
In An Amazing Adventure, a book about his vice presidential candidacy in 2000, Sen. Joe Lieberman (news - web sites) said he pushed for and made a TV ad to "remind people that Al is a man of character" and describe how traditional values infused his and Gore's lives and policies. "But the campaign strategists decided not to run the ad," the Connecticut senator wrote. Why? Spots on issues tested better in focus groups.
Similar internal debates went on this year, with similar outcomes. Ickes says he urged the Media Fund to go after Bush on character issues. But "our pollsters and voter research people and all the gurus" said the money would be better spent criticizing Bush policies.
He says he was convinced for a while, but by spring had "bludgeoned" his firm into running one ad questioning Bush's character. People always tell you they like issue ads, Ickes says, but " attack ads stick. They don't like them and they do remember them."
Some Democrats want killer instinct in their next nominee. They also pray for a candidate and campaign with the discipline to choose a line of attack and stick to it. "You don't want your central critique to be a secret," Clanton says. "You want it to be well-known so it can be repeated" by your allies in e-mails, on talk radio and cable TV.
Even independent groups barred from coordinating with Bush ran Kerry flip-flop ads, Clanton says, because his message was so clear. The repetition drowned out Democrats' belated, efforts to counter the GOP portrayal of Kerry. "I'd put John Kerry (news - web sites)'s character up against George Bush (news - web sites)'s character anytime, anywhere," Rosenthal says. "But nobody ever laid a glove on him."