Recent Presidential Elections

2004 Election

Freak Show

Presidential elections featuring incumbents seeking reelection are typically referendums on the country’s performance during that incumbent’s tenure in office. President Bush fully expected to run as a successful commander-in-chief in the war against terrorism and as a strong leader who, with bold tax cuts, turned around an economy weakened by 9/11 and corporate scandals. By the spring of 2004 it became clear that a retrospective judgment on the President’s performance was no guaranteed route to victory. The public was pessimistic about the direction the country had taken at home and abroad and was in the market for change. Conditions in Iraq continued to deteriorate. The anticipated election-year economic recovery proved less broad-based and sustained than previous recoveries.

Moreover, Democrats avoided nominating their potentially weakest candidate-Howard Dean-and quickly rallied behind John Kerry. Money flowed into Kerry campaign and Democratic party coffers, equalizing what observers had expected would be a huge Bush advantage. Democrats were unified and energized, concentrating all of their rhetorical fire on the incumbent president.

The Bush campaign responded with a three-prong strategy. First, reduce the political fallout from Iraq by moving forward with a transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis and a more rapid replacement of American troops in urban areas of insurgent strength with newly trained Iraqi forces. Second, elevate the salience of terrorism as the overriding threat to American security. And third, define Kerry as unfit to be president, based on his alleged inconsistent record on national security matters and his liberal positions and votes on economic and domestic policy.

That strategy bore fruit in August and the first part of September, with the help of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a well-staged Republican convention, and Kerry’s defensiveness and incoherence on Iraq. What had been a modest Kerry lead in the horse race turned into a Bush lead (though its size varied greatly across polling organizations). Kerry’s standing with the public declined during this period, but the underlying public dissatisfaction with the situation in Iraq and the economy did not diminish. The structural forces working against the reelection of the President remain very much in place. … (Mann 4-5)

U.S. Senator John Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who had seen combat as a swift boat captain, [had been]… a leader of the anti-war movement once he [had] left the Navy. Bush focused on Kerry’s liberal voting record in the Senate, including a vote against an $87-billion bill to fund the war on terror. Bush chose to highlight this choice in his ads, leading Kerry to respond, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” Bush saw the opportunity to attack Kerry as a flip-flopper. Kerry, on the other hand, attacked Bush as an unqualified commander in chief, who tricked the American people into an ill-conceived and unpopular war in Iraq. He pledged to the Democratic National Convention and a national televised audience that he would “be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war.” To drive the image home, he highlighted his wartime experience in Vietnam, saluting and declaring that he was “reporting for duty,” a line that garnered much popular criticism.

Bush experienced a Vietnam-era controversy of his own during the 2004 campaign when CBS reporter Dan Rather aired allegations that Bush did not fulfill his duties in the Texas Air National Guard, which later proved to be based on false reports and forged documents. Along with making a strong case against a John Kerry presidency, Bush focused his campaign on showing that he could continue to lead the nation on major issues. For his second term, he pledged “to modernize Social Security, reform the immigration system, and overhaul the tax code, while continuing No Child Left Behind and the faith-based initiative, implementing Medicare reform, and above all, fighting the war on terror.”

The two candidates debated three times during the fall campaign. Kerry was aggressive, particularly in the first debate, which caught Bush by surprise. Networks showed split screen images of Bush reacting to Kerry’s charges in that first debate, and the President appeared arrogant and disdainful. Bush corrected his expressions in the next two debates, while Kerry committed a major gaffe on a question about homosexuality when he cited the fact that Vice President Cheney’s daughter is a lesbian. Critics derided Kerry for gratuitously dragging the vice president’s family into the campaign (Gregg II 12-13).

...the extreme and eccentric voices who always populated the margins of politics now reside, with money and fame as the rewards, at the center. ... The collapse of filters and the collapse of civility together have changed the purpose of politics. The goal now is not simply to win, but to persuade voters (and donors and viewers and readers) that an opponent lacks the character and credibility even to deserve a place in the contest. That is Freak Show politics.

…

By conventional measures, the thick mane atop Kerry's lean, craggy face should have registered in the strengths column. His hair had grayed but not receded by a single follicle over his six decades. Kerry was a bit vain about his locks, and he gave them careful attention. As it happened, folks at the Republican National Committee had been paying attention, too. Sometime earlier, a tasty nugget of news raced around RNC headquarters. Would you believe that Kerry gets his hair cut at the Washington salon of Cristophe? Yes, exactly, that Cristophe -- the same guy who did Hillary Clinton's hair.

Cristophe was also the stylist who was trimming Bill Clinton that time in 1993 when Air Force One sat on the tarmac in Los Angeles for two hours while the whole world cooled its heels (never mind that reports about delayed air traffic turned out to be false). …

On Sunday, December 2, [2003] Kerry publicly announced his candidacy to Tim Russert on NBC's “Meet the Press.” …

"**Exclusive**" promised the “Drudge Report.” "Cash and Coif!" read his headline, using the alliteration [Matt] Drudge favors. "Democrat all-star John Kerry of Massachusetts is positioning himself as a populist politician while he takes the first step for a White House run. ... But the self-described 'Man of the People' pays $150 to get his hair styled and shampooed -- the cost of feeding a family of three for two weeks!"

Like many “Drudge Report” exclusives, this one implied rigorous reporting, including direct quotations from well-positioned sources to whom the author supposedly talked on a not-for-attribution basis. In this case, it was a "stylist source," who allegedly told him: "When it comes to his hair, Mr. Kerry is very, very particular. The coloring and the highlighting, the layering. But the results are fabulous." Drudge also claimed he had spoken to a "green room insider" at Fox News's Washington bureau: "It's always a fight to get mirror time. He obsessively primps and poses before he goes on the air."

… The assumption that Drudge is casually embroidering his stories -- what would be career-ending fraud for an Old Media journalist or author -- has not caused reporters to remove Drudge from their daily reading. … any superiority reporters and editors feel toward Drudge does not inhibit them from pouncing on his best items.

Within hours, the Cristophe story was everywhere. Rush Limbaugh chortled over it for an hour on his radio show. Later in the day, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan gave the website credit ("We learn from Drudge this morning . . .") on his MSNBC cable show. Kerry's team knew they had a genuine problem on their hands when they saw the next day's newspapers filled with accounts of "Senator Kerry's Bad Hair Day," as one newspaper put it. A Kerry spokeswoman noted indignantly that Drudge had erred: The senator did not pay $150 for his haircut, only $75 -- Cristophe charges less for men. … Inevitably, the whole fuss caught the attention of Jay Leno. By the end of the week he was joking on “The Tonight Show” that the "winds were so strong yesterday" in Massachusetts that "John Kerry's hair actually moved." …

…

In April 2003, a Times story by chief political writer Adam Nagourney and White House reporter Dick Stevenson quoted an unnamed Bush adviser commenting on Kerry's appearance. "He looks French," the adviser cracked. Whether a planned insult or a spur-of-the-moment inspiration, it was one of the most ingenious remarks of the entire campaign. It brilliantly combined two Freak Show themes that were central to the Bush case against Kerry. One was that he was an exotic, even feminine, character.

The other was that he was a virtual quisling, since the French were the most vocal foreign opponents of Bush's war in Iraq. Nagourney and Stevenson played the dig deep in their story, but it hardly went unnoticed. Teresa Heinz Kerry, the candidate's wife, perhaps did not help her husband's cause the next day when she responded with a shot of her own at White House advisers: "They probably do not even speak French." The Times story showed that one of the Trade Secrets of politics is truer than ever in the new environment: Little things can become big things.

The "looks French" line was picked up on Rush Limbaugh's show. Ann Coulter devoted a column to it. House Republican leader Tom DeLay delighted audiences with his new opening line: "Good afternoon. Or, as John Kerry might say, 'Bonjour!' " As 2003 stretched on, Kerry faded as a laugh line. …

… In mid-January, there had been passing references in the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Herald, and elsewhere to speculation that Kerry was freshening his look through injections of Botox. But this speculation did not ignite until it was highlighted on the” Drudge Report” on January 28: "New and Improved Kerry Takes New Hampshire." There were before-and-after photographs with analysis of the respective furrows. Kerry and his spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter, both denied that he had received Botox injections. Former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee once described a certain type of especially delicious story: "Too good to check!" Kerry's alleged Botox treatments fell in this category. Whether true or not, it fit so neatly into the existing image of Kerry as a popinjay that the story scurried through the news.

CNBC, MSNBC, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer -- all of them, and lots of others, did Botox stories. … By March, even Vice President Dick Cheney was joining in the fun. At the Gridiron Dinner, an annual gathering of the Washington Establishment, he joked that the administration had dispatched weapons inspectors to "search for the bio-warfare agents we believe are hidden in Senator Kerry's forehead."

Another Drudge-driven story was not such a laughing matter. On February 12, the Drudge Report posted a "World Exclusive" stating various news outlets were investigating suspicions that Kerry had had an affair with a young woman, and that she had "fled the country, reportedly at the prodding of Kerry." Drudge wrote, accurately, that rival candidate Wes Clark had earlier told reporters, in an off-the-record session, that he believed Kerry's campaign would "implode over an intern issue." …

Kerry's rumored dalliance, as with all such stories in the Internet Age, unfolded in real time. It soon was known to every American with a modem and a discernible interest in politics. On cue, Limbaugh devoted the first hour of his show to the story. Kerry, meanwhile, kept a previous appointment on the Don Imus radio program and, when pressed, said only, "There is nothing more to report." Later in the day he was more emphatic: "It's untrue, period." The denial was widely reported, earning a few lines from ABC's Peter Jennings on that evening's World News Tonight. From Africa, the woman in question, journalist Alexandra Polier, also issued a denial. Polier later traced the story to its apparent source: a former high school acquaintance who was aware that Kerry and Polier had once shared dinner after meeting at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and had wrongly assumed a romance. Polier theorized that the gossiping friend told her boss, who happened to be Republican lobbyist Bill Jarrell. He allegedly gabbed to others, and a rumor was born.

…

By March, with the nomination in hand but many scars to show for it, Kerry felt he had earned a vacation. The candidate and his wife decamped for a skiing holiday in Idaho. Drudge was still hovering: "Spring Break: Kerry Retreats to His Sun Valley Mansion for 5-Day Luxury Unwind." As Republicans delighted in emphasizing, the Kerrys between them owned five properties. Drudge highlighted the fruits of some excellent Republican research on Kerry's Idaho home, including reference to the size, value, and taxes on the "compound," and the detail that the "mansion's 'Great Room' is a 500 year old barn" imported from England and reconstructed on site. Several newspapers began reporting on the other lavish Kerry-Heinz homes as well.

… there were so many cartoon image themes available in the Republican toy chest that sometimes it was difficult for Kerry's opposition to choose which characteristic to mock. In the GOP conception, Kerry alternatively wore sandals (hippie), French loafers (mon dieu!), or flip-flops (enough said). And a negative Kerry theme, once floated, never really evaporated.

Republicans also were quick to take advantage of Kerry's more blatant errors, most significantly when he declared at a West Virginia town meeting that he "was for" funding of the Iraq war "before he was against it," and when he decided to go windsurfing within camera view while vacationing on Nantucket, the graceful Massachusetts island where he and his wife owned a sumptuous multimillion-dollar oceanfront cottage. These two episodes, one about a serious matter and the other trivial, were cited by Bush aides as turning points in the election.

…

The big controversies coupled with the petty images (John Kerry ordering a Philly cheesesteak with -- take a deep breath -- Swiss cheese; Teresa Heinz's barking at a conservative reporter to "shove it" on the eve of the Democratic convention; Kerry mispronouncing the name of the Green Bay Packers' fabled Lambeau Field) added up.

The stories about Kerry's vacation habits, his houses, his ties to Europe, his complexion, his hair, and all the rest had been deliberately promoted in order to exploit what Republicans long recognized as the candidate's greatest vulnerability: that he lived a life beyond the experience or even imagination of most of the people he hoped to lead. The piece de résistance of the Freak Show in the 2004 campaign was taking Kerry's greatest asset, his military record in Vietnam, and transforming it into a liability. In the winter of 2004, this thirty-five-year-old period in Kerry's life was resurrected, as Dean faded and Kerry improved his campaign trail performance. The final lift came when former Navy colleagues -- the "Band of Brothers," as they became known -- showed up in Iowa to vouch for the candidate. A failing campaign was revived. The political logic seemed unassailable to Democratic voters in Iowa and New Hampshire: There is no way a candidate with Purple Hearts on his chest and shrapnel in his leg can be portrayed as weak. The old Republican strategy of painting Democrats as unreliable on national security could not possibly work against this Democrat. Within days of the New Hampshire triumph, however, there were signs that such a strategy might indeed be effective.

Once more, the “Drudge Report” served as a leading indicator of the potential potency of an anti-Kerry scheme. On February 11, Drudge's opposition-research friendships were again in evidence. Someone alerted him to a 1970 Harvard Crimson article, which he rendered into the headline "Radical Kerry Revealed. Old Harvard Interview Unearthed." The story was interesting and relevant, too, as a historical document illuminating the thinking of the candidate as a young man. "I'm an internationalist,'' Kerry said then. "I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations.'' He also said he wanted to "almost eliminate CIA activity." A few days later in the New York Times, Newt Gingrich announced that Republicans were not going to allow Kerry to go through the campaign portraying himself as a war hero. The reality, Gingrich said, was that he was a "Jane Fonda anti-war liberal."

In April, several Republican members of Congress marched to the House floor to deliver speeches about Kerry. The occasion was the thirty-third anniversary of his 1971 antiwar testimony to a Senate committee, when Kerry had alleged, among other things, that war crimes by U.S. servicemen were commonplace in the Vietnam theater. The congressmen, themselves Vietnam veterans, assailed Kerry for the "slander." One of them, Sam Johnson of Texas, showily entered Kerry's 1971 testimony into that day's Congressional Record.

In any era, the complexities and puzzles about Kerry's life in Vietnam and his subsequent return as a prominent antiwar leader would have been a subject of widespread attention in the Old Media. It was only in the context of the Freak Show, however, that this convoluted tale was forged into a powerful weapon by Kerry's opponents.

On Sunday, April 28, Bush's close confidante Karen Hughes appeared on CNN and was asked by Wolf Blitzer if too much was being made of Kerry's past. Referring to what George Bush experienced during the 2000 presidential campaign, she responded:

“[D]uring our own campaign, there was all kinds of gossip and innuendoes and rumors, and many of them were reported, and they were put on the Internet, and then the mainstream media thinks they have to pick them up. And I think that's very troubling to people. It's almost as if . . . a candidate has to disprove a negative, rather than someone has to come forward and make a charge against the candidate. And I worry that does prevent good people from entering the democratic process.”

Hughes then volunteered to say that she was "very troubled" by Kerry's charges of atrocities committed by Americans, although she acknowledged that Kerry had retreated somewhat from his statements of the 1970s.

Getting to where she wanted to arrive, she said she was "very troubled by the fact that he participated in the ceremony where veterans threw their medals away, and he only pretended to throw his. Now, I can understand if out of conscience you take a principled stand and you would decide that you . . . were so opposed to this that you would actually throw your medals. But to pretend to do so, I think that's very revealing."

A few hours later Matt Drudge posted the following dispatch:

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN APRIL 25, 2004 16:52:38 ET XXXXX 1971 VIDEO: KERRY ADMITS THROWING OWN MEDALS; CONTRADICTS CURRENT CLAIMS

In an interview published Friday in the LOS ANGELES TIMES, Dem presidential hopeful John Kerry claimed he "never ever implied" that he threw his own medals during a Hill protest in 1971 to appear as an antiwar hero.

But a new shock video shows John Kerry -- in his own voice -- saying he did! ABC's GOOD MORNING AMERICA is set to rock the political world Monday morning with an airing of Kerry's specific 1971 boast, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

The video was made by a local news station in 1971.

It directly contradicts Kerry's own website headline: "RIGHTWING FICTION: John Kerry threw away his medals during a Vietnam war protest."

How did Drudge know what would be on “Good Morning America” the following morning? And how was it that the New York Times, also that Monday, would have a story based on the same 1971 video? … the Washington Post stated that "copies of the tape were provided to [the] two news organizations by the Republican National Committee, according to several media staff members familiar with the situation.")

In the fourth paragraph of its Monday story, the Times [noted] … "Republicans, nervous about questions regarding President Bush's Air National Guard service, have raised the issue to revive accusations by some veterans that the discarding of medals dishonored those who served and died in the war. At the same time, the Republicans have said that Mr. Kerry's explanation of what happened at the ceremony is an example of his proclivity to fall on both sides of every issue."

As for the “Good Morning America” airing of the tape, the stakes were raised by Hughes's remarks and the anticipation fostered among the Chattering Class by Drudge's hype. The stakes were raised even higher when Kerry agreed to appear live to proffer a response. The interview with ABC News's Charles Gibson was contentious, and after the segment ended, a heated Kerry, still wearing his microphone, bellowed, "God, they're doing the work of the Republican National Committee."

…

For days, talk radio, cable TV, and the blogs were consumed with the tape, Kerry's emotional response, and the question of his veracity. Politics has always been an unpredictable business -- more so, without question, in the Age of the Freak Show. And yet this strategy worked as if plotted play by play on a locker room chalkboard. By taking advantage of the new media environment, Kerry's foes painted him as an angry, unpatriotic liar. And the effective efforts to damage Kerry using his Vietnam-era past barely had begun (Halperin and Harris 7-18).

Works cited:

Gregg II, Gary L. “George W. Bush: Campaigns and Elections.” University of Virginia. Web. https://millercenter.org/president/gwbush/campaigns-and-elections

Halperin, Mark and Harris, John F., Excerpts from The Way to Win and the ABC internet article “Political Pundits on How to Win the White House.” ABC News, October 30, 2006. Web. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Books/story?id=2517449&page=1

Mann, Thomas E., “Campaigning and Governing: The 2004 Elections and Their Aftermath.” Brookings, September 13, 2004. Web. https://www.brookings.edu/on-the-record/campaigning-and-governing-the-2004-elections-and-their-aftermath/