MoveOn.org spent $142,803 on the ad. (This is the price they paid after imposition of the new "controversial liberal advertising" surtax now imposed by the New York Times on anything that criticizes the Bush administration.) The advertisement ran only once. It was a black and white, single page ad, like many issue ads that run in newspapers like the NYT and that are forgotton the same day. Like many people, I never saw the ad in the on-line edition. I know about it only because of the subsequent media coverage and controversy. I had to go to Moveon.org to see the ad itself.
So what upset the MSM, the Bush administration, and the United States Senate so profoundly, and what especially seems to have upset the Senate Democratic caucus? After all, there was certainly no sense-of-the-Senate resolution regarding any one of the dozens of mendacity-packed Republican media hit jobs over the years. When was the last time that the DLC's keepers of dry powder ever got this riled up about a Swift Boat ad, or an attack on anti-war veterans from the right?
There's a simple explanation for all this. The MoveOn ad worked. It worked very well, indeed. That's what has them so scared and angry.
More below the fold.
Let's look at the results that MoveOn.org accomplished with their ad. MoveOn says that their $142,000+ expenditure yielded them something on the order ofb $500,000 in contributions in just one day. Measured simply on the financials, the ad was a good move by MoveOn.org. The financials make sense even though the New York Times has retroactively imposed a "controversial liberal advertising" surtax on MoveOn.org. (Since Rudy Guiliani got the cheaper rate, too, I have to assume that it's only a surtax on liberals.)
But the shrill response that the ad drew from the right wing, the media, and from the Liebercrat wing of the Democratic party is truly the gift that keeps on giving. The value of the free media that the advertisement drew (and continues to draw almost two weeks later) is probably incalculable -- MoveOn's attempts to buy network television time are frequently thwarted by one-sided refusals to run ads that the Republican-dominated executives at these places regard as "inappropriate", but even if Moveon.org could buy airtime on the terms that everyone else gets, it would cost them millions of dollars to buy this sort of publicity. Apparently the folks down at CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and elsewhere forgot that all free media is good free media when they decided to use MoveOn.org as an excuse to bash the antiwar movement.
As a result of all this media noise, instead of being able to run puff pieces about how things are turning around in Iraq, the media's attention has been focused on the professional and personal credibility of its architect, to the detriment of Gen. Petraeus' professional and personal credibility. Remember, the talking heads can't attack MoveOn without repeating everything MoveOn said or implied about Petraeus and the failure of the surge. That's the reasoning behind controversial ads. Our friends in the right-blogosphere are helping us out, too, by endlessly screaming in fury about all of us traitorous left wing malcontents, a behavior that ensures that Petraeus' credibility and that of the "surge" will be debated in right wing forums as well. As the right wing bashes us, they nonetheless keep repeating the basic message over and over: the Bush administration is lying about Iraq and the surge (and the war in general) is a failure. It's a trap for them, they're caught in it, and I think they know it. They can't let the issue go (otherwise the ad itself goes unchallenged after all that free media) but the noise they need to make to challenge it gives MoveOn.org more free publicity. Conservatives ought to know: conservatives run attack ads about Democrats all the time, from Willie Horton to the Swift Boat Veterans, and they tend to care far less about truthfulness, good taste, or decency.
So the Republicans are upset that groups like MoveOn have taken a page out of their playbook, with nothing near the level of vitriol customary for conservatives. Unlike the Republicans, liberal issue advertising doesn't really need to use fear, hate, lies, and personal attacks to create controversy -- just telling the truth in a suitably framed presentation seems to work just fine, a luxury that the Republicans have not had lately. The Republicans' feigned outrage provides yet more high-quality free airtime for the antiwar movement and anyone else who is willing to call these people out for their lunacy.
But what's the problem with the Democratic Senate caucus?
At this point, I wish I could write one of those party-unity paragraphs where I get to point out how congressional Democrats are really very clever in the way they deliberately feigned outrage at MoveOn.org as part of the Senate leadership's strategy to end the war. Unfortunately, there's no evidence that the Democratic Senate caucus is that clever or focused. A large part of the Democratic Senate membership is simply risk and conflict averse to the point of total ineffectuality. So be it. The Democrats' handwringing just gives the message even more high-credibility free exposure.
Remember, the message isn't aimed at the left (rather few antiwar liberals favored the surge, I suspect) or at conservatives (dead brain tissue cannot be regrown) but at the low-interest segment of the electorate (the ones who catch these stories in snippets as they channel surf on the way to the next installment of American Idol, and who make up their minds anecdotally), who will tend to internalize the message even as they tsk tsk at the messenger.
And that's what has the Washington, DC Democratic establishment so upset. They don't control the message, and an aggressive bout of advertising like this creates a confrontational climate that makes life on the cocktail party circuit a lot more contentious for them. ("Controversial" means real competition in the marketplacde of ideas. Both party establishments in Washington fear competition.) Petraeus and his supporters go to those cocktail parties, too. It's always OK when the Republicans run advertisements that make ridiculous personal attacks (did the media impose a conservative advertising surcharge on the right-wing ads slandering John McCain, or Max Cleland, or John Kerry, in ways far more personal than the "Betray-us" headline used by MoveOn.org?)
The "establishment" media constantly insists that we all need to be more civil and to find "common ground" for a "bipartisan compromise" (unless we're Republicans attacking the patriotism of antiwar or liberal Democrats, of course, in which case the Republicans are just exercising their talking points). On the other hand, I'd content that the MoveOn ad worked very well. After all, if the debate is about the credibility of anyone attached to Bush's foreign policy, we're gonna win.