Ignorance is Bliss

A few more thoughts on the Bush ad barrage. Bush's political advisors are trying to take a page out of Clinton's highly successful ad campaign in early 1996, when the DNC ran ads linking Dole and Gingrich, defininig Dole and effectively deciding the election. (These ads were done with soft money, and supposedly with some Clinton involvement, which eventually led to the passage of McCain-Feingold, which now forbids such use of soft money by the parties.)

Bush is running ads just like Clinton did, trying to define his opponent early, while he has a money advantage (Bush and Kerry will be at financial parity after their respective conventions, since both will get $75 million from the gov't to fund their general election campaign.) But one element of Clinton's ad campaign in 1996 that was so effective was how it happened completely unnoticed by the mainstream media, and by the Dole campaign. Everyone now says that Dole didn't have the money to compete with Clinton, which is true, but the RNC could have followed suit, if only it had caught on to what Clinton was doing. As a result of running ads in crucial states, but outside of big media markets, so they would be unnoticed by the mainstream media, Clinton was able to define his opponent and make his case for reelection without any real response from the Republicans until it was too late. They simply did not know what had happened because it was done under the radar.

In contrast, here Bush is trumpeting when and where he is running his ads. In part, he's doing that to also get some free media out of it in the states where he is not up and running. (And maybe some bad free media the way he is politicizing 9/11 in the ads, while still styming the 9/11 commission.) But I think in some ways it's a bit of a strategic mistake, because unlike in 1996, there are Democratic groups out there like Moveon.org, ACT, and Harold Ickes' media outlet, the Media Group, that are ready and waiting with millions of soft money dollars to swoop in and counter Bush's ads in those very same markets. So, even though Kerry is just as broke as Dole in 1996, Bush's ads won't go unanswered because of these outside groups. I think that's an important factor to consider when we later evaluate how effective they were.
- posted by Joshua @ 11:23 AM