With the launch of the Swift Boat Veterans for Hating John Kerry's smear campaign and MoveOn.org's rather aggressive
response -- which appears to be a subject of
much debate tonight -- it's worth harkening back to a time when the Democrats were masters at the brutal attack: 1964.
Like today, the Democratic candidate was running against another right-wing extremist: Barry Goldwater.
At the heart of Barry Goldwater's agenda was a destigmatization of tactical nuclear weapons, the slashing of taxes on the wealthiest Americans, the privatization of many of the vital functions of government, systematic dergulation, disdain for multilateral institutions, and a greater role for conservative Christianity in American public life.
Sound familiar?
But in 1964 the Democratic candidate pulled no punches in calling Barry Goldwater a right-wing extremist.
Johnson's strategy was a one-two punch: raise fears that a vote for Goldwater was a vote for nuclear war, and present Johnson as a moderate alternative.
Most of you are probably familiar with the notorious "Daisy" ad, which was the "left hook."
But Johnson "right cross" was the more subtle advertisement called "Confessions of a Republican." Kathleen Hall Jamieson describes it thusly in this month's New Yorker:
"It was done with an actor, and it was scripted, but you were not supposed to know that," Jamieson said. "He was in a studio, he was sitting on a chair, and he was smoking--which, of course, he wouldn't be doing anymore--and he was talking about how he's been a Republican all his life. It's a stream-of-consciousness narrative, almost Joycean. He's a Republican, but the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, doesn't stand for what he supports, and he thinks about the Convention, and how the people at the Convention weren't people like him, and he worries about Goldwater's statements about tactical nuclear weapons and, you know, what kind of person would say that, what kind of person would he be as President." At one point in the ad, the man remarks about Goldwater, "I read now where he says, `A craven fear of death is sweeping across America.' What is that supposed to mean? If that means people don't want to fight a nuclear war, he's right. I don't."
The ad is available for viewing over at the American Museum of the Moving Image's
archives. It's devastating in how it portrays Goldwater as bizarre, extreme, and unworthy of trust. It's effective because this cleancut man says he is a loyal Republican but finds his party's nominee to be beyond the pale, and because he does so in a questioning rather than asserting manner.
MoveOn.org has is launching its own series of similar ads, available here. They were directed by Errol Morris, who most recently filmed "The Fog of War" about Robert McNamara, which won an Oscar. The New Yorker article tells the story behind the ads and what they mean for the campaign.
Now, at first glance this group of ads is pretty good: like "Confessions of a Republican," it shows moderate Republican archetypes talking about why they're voting for John Kerry. Most of them do this very well, although I probably wouldn't have chosen the same ad for first place.
Johnson crushed Goldwater by using this kind of appeal to moderate Republicans.
But one thing that's missing from Kerry's arsenal, it seems to me, is that nasty left hook, that devastating 30 seconds that says: vote for Bush and you are DOOMED, DOOMED, DOOMED!!!
That's what Daisy was all about. I don't think talking about Bush's volleyball with ambitious secretaries does the trick, because it doesn't make the case that Bush is, to borrow a colorful phrase, an "extreme extremist."
So my question for you kosovars is: do we need a left hook?
Or is the right cross good enough?
Do the Morris ads have enough of that "George Bush is an extreme extremist" flava?
