THE BEST THING to come out of John Kerry's decision to accept his party's nomination at the convention here in July is not that we'll get to see Mayor Menino doing the macarena on national TV or that the local citizenry will get a big payoff for enduring four days of gridlock. The best result is that it has put a (temporary?) stop to a rising Bush campaign attack theme: that Kerry doesn't play by the rules.
Ken Mehlman, President Bush's campaign manager, leapt on this point as soon as Kerry first floated his lead balloon. ``This is just the latest example,'' Mehlman intoned, ``of John Kerry's belief that the rules are for other people, not for him.''
Whoa. This from the campaign of a man whose entire career has operated on a special set of rules. Indeed, even before his political life began, George W. Bush always had someone else to fight his battles for him.
It was other people's money that financed his no-risk, all-reward ownership stake in the Texas Rangers. It was other people's sons who fought in Vietnam (my parents' son, for example). It will be other people (today's very young people) who will pay for the deficit hangover his tax-cut bender will produce.
Want more? When team Bush doesn't like the way the game is going, it simply changes the rules. Thus hamburger-flippers are counted as manufacturing jobs, farm-raised salmon are counted as wild salmon, success in Iraq counts if it is just not failure.
For the Bush campaign to say Kerry thinks ``the rules are for other people'' is beyond the pot calling the kettle black. It makes sense only when you realize that the true purpose of Mehlman's dig was not so much to attack Kerry as to inoculate Bush against this same claim, to whom it might stick.
The tactic of inoculation - that is, creating a protective shield around your candidate to immunize him from anticipated strikes - has a long history in politics. It is employed particularly in campaign ads, which often operate on two planes - the direct message and the subliminal one.
Here are a few I remember: the first television ad for presidential candidate Paul Tsongas in 1992, which showed him doing laps - a mean butterfly stroke, at that - while an announcer described him as ``swimming against the current.'' In 30 seconds the ad established Tsongas as a maverick and inoculated him against concerns that he was in frail health. Similarly, in the 1990 gubernatorial campaign the sexegenarian Frank Bellotti was shown jogging, among other youthful pursuits.
Or an ad for Bill Clinton in the 1992 general election against Bush senior, which touted his job creation plan and highlighted some good economic figures from Arkansas. The ad didn't stop the Bush campaign from portraying Arkansas under Clinton as a hick wasteland, but the Clinton campaign was hoping the attacks wouldn't be as effective.
John Kerry has used his decorated Vietnam service as inoculation against any possible claim that he is soft on defense.
And the Democratic National Committee, in an act of chutzpah Mehlman himself might appreciate, has posted on its website a list of ``Top Ten Bush Flip-Flops'' ranging from the 9/11 Commission to steel tariffs.
Will any of this work?
My own thinking is that the flip-flop inoculation may have come too late for Kerry - the electorate already has a firmly established image of him as a man who sees six angles in every square. The best Kerry can do here is make lemonade: remind voters that thoughtful nuance is better than ideological rigidity in perilous times.
This has the added virtue of being the truth. Bush's idee fixe, you should pardon the French, about Iraq, his belief that he is on a mission from God to bring democracy to the Middle East, the unilateralism, the swerve from a foreign policy of humility to one of hubris, all describe a man working off a private - and very dangerous - playbook. And if that germ of an idea takes hold among the voters, no amount of preventive medicine will keep Bush in the White House.
Boston Globe
Ken Mehlman, President Bush's campaign manager, leapt on this point as soon as Kerry first floated his lead balloon. ``This is just the latest example,'' Mehlman intoned, ``of John Kerry's belief that the rules are for other people, not for him.''
Whoa. This from the campaign of a man whose entire career has operated on a special set of rules. Indeed, even before his political life began, George W. Bush always had someone else to fight his battles for him.
It was other people's money that financed his no-risk, all-reward ownership stake in the Texas Rangers. It was other people's sons who fought in Vietnam (my parents' son, for example). It will be other people (today's very young people) who will pay for the deficit hangover his tax-cut bender will produce.
Want more? When team Bush doesn't like the way the game is going, it simply changes the rules. Thus hamburger-flippers are counted as manufacturing jobs, farm-raised salmon are counted as wild salmon, success in Iraq counts if it is just not failure.
For the Bush campaign to say Kerry thinks ``the rules are for other people'' is beyond the pot calling the kettle black. It makes sense only when you realize that the true purpose of Mehlman's dig was not so much to attack Kerry as to inoculate Bush against this same claim, to whom it might stick.
The tactic of inoculation - that is, creating a protective shield around your candidate to immunize him from anticipated strikes - has a long history in politics. It is employed particularly in campaign ads, which often operate on two planes - the direct message and the subliminal one.
Here are a few I remember: the first television ad for presidential candidate Paul Tsongas in 1992, which showed him doing laps - a mean butterfly stroke, at that - while an announcer described him as ``swimming against the current.'' In 30 seconds the ad established Tsongas as a maverick and inoculated him against concerns that he was in frail health. Similarly, in the 1990 gubernatorial campaign the sexegenarian Frank Bellotti was shown jogging, among other youthful pursuits.
Or an ad for Bill Clinton in the 1992 general election against Bush senior, which touted his job creation plan and highlighted some good economic figures from Arkansas. The ad didn't stop the Bush campaign from portraying Arkansas under Clinton as a hick wasteland, but the Clinton campaign was hoping the attacks wouldn't be as effective.
John Kerry has used his decorated Vietnam service as inoculation against any possible claim that he is soft on defense.
And the Democratic National Committee, in an act of chutzpah Mehlman himself might appreciate, has posted on its website a list of ``Top Ten Bush Flip-Flops'' ranging from the 9/11 Commission to steel tariffs.
Will any of this work?
My own thinking is that the flip-flop inoculation may have come too late for Kerry - the electorate already has a firmly established image of him as a man who sees six angles in every square. The best Kerry can do here is make lemonade: remind voters that thoughtful nuance is better than ideological rigidity in perilous times.
This has the added virtue of being the truth. Bush's idee fixe, you should pardon the French, about Iraq, his belief that he is on a mission from God to bring democracy to the Middle East, the unilateralism, the swerve from a foreign policy of humility to one of hubris, all describe a man working off a private - and very dangerous - playbook. And if that germ of an idea takes hold among the voters, no amount of preventive medicine will keep Bush in the White House.
Boston Globe
