|
|
 |
|
 |
 |
| CAMPAIGN TRAIL | |
 October 30, 2000  |
|
|
After a background report on campaign advertising, three veteran political reporters talk about the presidential campaign ads as the race for the White House heads into its final week.
|
|
So David Broder, put these ads in some context for us in terms of the campaign. Are they reflecting the same messages we're getting from the candidates, or are they on a different track?
|
||||||||||
| Harsh messages | |||||||||||
|
MARGARET WARNER: Do you see it that way, Tom? In other words, both of them, even the more gauzy ones, are actually negative in that they're trying to say something negative about Gore. TOM OLIPHANT: To step back even further and have a much broader context, I don't think that the content in ads this fall in terms of dirty or negative holds a candle to some of the things we saw in previous years, particularly 1988. What I think Bush does is in states where it's kind of close, maybe he has a slight advantage, Ohio would be a good example, that's where you get the gauzy stuff -- bipartisan, bring us together, a little music in the background. But where it's close, he hits very hard on a theme that has worked very well for him: Al Gore will bring back big government. Gore, on the other hand, has, I think, scored very effectively in the last week or two with these ads on Social Security -- the one that ran just after the third debate, and now this new one with Bob Ball. He is, I think -- David Broder is right -- somewhat more harsh than Bush, but he's trying to raise the stakes, trying to make the choice stark for voters, and so it's natural the tone would be a little bit harder. MARGARET WARNER: How do you see these ads, David Brooks?
MARGARET WARNER: David Broder, are you trying to get in here? DAVID BRODER: No. I was just laughing because I think the further down the ballot you go, as I've been traveling, the meaner the ads are. And I agree with Tom Oliphant that by comparison, these presidential candidates have been rather restrained this year. MARGARET WARNER: All right.... go ahead, Tom.
DAVID BROOKS: Another fascinating thing, at Brandon Center study at NYU -- released a report, fascinating thing, for the first time in history, the soft money, which is the party money, overshadows the presidential campaigns. So the idea that we have two organized campaigns of ads all being put out to fight each other is not true. We have decentralized it and privatized it. And we have hundreds of organizations all coming from different directions and totally messing up any sense of coherence that one might have seen.
|
 |
||||||||||
| Energizing the base | |||||||||||
|
MARGARET WARNER: All right. David Broder, let's go even broader now. Going into this final week, what's going to be the Gore/Lieberman focus? DAVID BRODER: Well, their focus is basically twofold: One, trying to energize the Democratic base, which up to this point has looked a little bit slack and a little bit laggard in really getting into this campaign. And as you know, they're even making the big leap for them of allowing President Clinton out this week to try to talk to Democratic voters. The second theme of their campaign is to try to scare the people about the consequences of electing Governor Bush to the presidency. Interestingly though, what they are not saying is that they are not making the argument that Bush in combination with a Republican Congress might lead to the kind of legislation that many independents would find unwelcome. They don't seem to be playing the congressional card, at least so far. MARGARET WARNER: Tom, the Gore/Lieberman focus this week, and Clinton is coming your way in California, correct? TOM OLIPHANT: So is Gore. MARGARET WARNER: Which is a change.
MARGARET WARNER: But is it damaging Gore's prospects in some of these states? TOM OLIPHANT: At this point, because Nader has not contested the argument that there is, indeed, a significant difference between Gore and Bush. I think the Gore people have the upper hand. They're driving it very hard, right down to the street level. And I think in the final days Gore really ought to be thankful that Nader is around to prod his, as David put it, somewhat unwilling coalition.
MARGARET WARNER: The normal Democratic coalition is what you're saying. DAVID BROOKS: But the only way he can do it... The only unifying thing is hitting Bush, which is what he's doing and which is why we're seeing the tenor of these ads. One of the interesting things, it's traditional to finish positive and to run the sort of ad we just saw of Bush, himself, no tie, dark shirt talking into the camera. Will Al Gore run an ad like that? That will be interesting. One suspects he will but he's sort of been out of it. And in the ads, the Gore ads last week, it's been like a car ad without the car. Gore has hasn't been in it. I see Tom gesturing, so maybe he is running those ads. DAVID BRODER: Actually, the first one of those -- exactly like Bush -- that's so standard of Gore alone with the camera, I saw that in Michigan and Washington state last week. And I believe that there are going to be two more.
|
 |
||||||||||
| A band wagon psychology | |||||||||||
|
MARGARET WARNER: All right. David Broder, we haven't heard you on the Bush/Cheney strategy for this final week or sort of emphasis.
MARGARET WARNER: David Brooks, yesterday both Lieberman and Tipper Gore went after Bush on is he up to the job, is he prepared. Now, how did you read that? DAVID BROOKS: Well, that was an escalation. Like I'm saying, he's got this two-front war with these people. How does he persuade them to get out to the polls and vote for him. They've heard the Gore proposal. If they were for the policies, they'd already be there. For those people, it has got to be a long, dark night is coming. This guy really can't handle the job. And that was an escalation of what we've seen. Joe Lieberman went further. He's sort of the more interesting case. He's come a long way in this campaign. He is now attacking Bush personally. He was shown the NAACP ad. He said, "To me, that's just a statement of fact." To my mind, all the things that were attractive about Joe Lieberman, the independence, the integrity, have been lost in the campaign. MARGARET WARNER: All right. David, David, and Tom, we'll leave it there. Thank you. |
 |
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||
 |
        |
|
| Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station. | ||
| ||
| PBS Online Privacy Policy Copyright ©1996- MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. All Rights Reserved. | ||
| ||
MARGARET
WARNER: And with the campaign heading into its final week, we get an
update now from three veteran political reporters: David Brooks of the
Weekly Standard, David Broder of The Washington Post, and in Los Angeles,
Tom Oliphant of the Boston Globe, who's in California this evening.
DAVID
BRODER: They're a little bit harsher in tone, particularly on the Gore
side than the candidate himself. But he's been hitting pretty hard.
And on the Republican side, Dick Cheney has been doing very much the
same thing against Gore. But the context, I think, for this, Margaret,
is that the country is torn two ways: People really would like to see
some change and improvement in the tone of politics in Washington, D.C.
They're not nearly as eager to change policy direction. So Gore is trying
to scare people into thinking that Bush would change the policy direction
of the country, and Bush is trying to say to the people that Gore is
not somebody who as a product of Washington is going to really reform
Washington. 
DAVID
BROOKS: I think they're much harsher on the Gore side. We have a whole
new genre of ads this year, which is my opponent is a murderer. I mean,
the daisy ad isn't -- is saying that but the Bard ad, the NAACP ad is
saying that. There is a radio or telephone conversation taped calls
from the Gore campaign saying, ...With a woman saying, "My husband
died because Governor Bush was not a good governor, didn't support the
right legislation," which was... that's a real stretch. There's
one in Michigan, Debbie Stabenow, the Democratic candidate there saying,
a woman saying, "My daughter died because Senator Spencer Abraham
didn't support the right legislation." This is a stretch. I'm for
distortion and lying in ads, but calling your opponent a murderer really
is a real stretch. I'm in favor of shaming. Let's bring back the Quakers.
When Kwasi Mfume says, "I'm for civil discourse in our politics,
this ad ought to be held up against him saying, "no, you didn't
practice that." 
TOM
OLIPHANT: I am going to throw in one more fact. In a couple of occasions,
I have found traveling the country that the presidential campaign has
almost seemed to be like a race for governor or even a further down
the ballot race. Michigan is a great example. The Republicans have imported
the image of Lee Iacocca, long since gone from Michigan to, read a few
quotes from "Earth in the Balance" -- and suggest that Gore
would ruin the auto industry. To reply, the Gore campaign in Michigan
has put up on radio and possibly on television soon an autoworker from
Flint to come back at Iacocca. So we are seeing some examples of extreme
localization in these commercials. 
TOM
OLIPHANT: It's so strange to have them all... I continue to not believe
that California is in play. In fact, I think Governor Bush's trip here
today is more an example of his national strategy in the final week
of pretending that the momentum is all his, that he's super confident,
he's got the election, you know we're going to win -- perhaps to dispirit
the opposition somewhat. But I talked to a leading Republican here who
thinks that the trip to California for California would be "nuts"
-- but that it does make sense in terms of projecting a national image
of campaigning in the opponent's backyard. I think David Broder is absolutely
right about Gore. It's raised the stakes, raised the stakes. And I think
an additional little arrow in Gore's quiver this week has been Nader.
I think Nader has been excellent for the Democrats' effort to mobilize
their troops.
DAVID
BROOKS: I think that's kind of... I don't agree with that.... you know,
Gore has this double front problem. He's got to win over the whiners
in West Virginia who want to protect their hunting rights. He has to
win over the hippies in Oregon who want U.S. energy needs to be met
by burning hemp oil And he's got these hippies and hunters -- he's got
to hit them both.
DAVID
BRODER: Well, Tom Oliphant made one point earlier, which is that they
are trying to create a band wagon psychology by being very upbeat in
their stump speeches and in the presentation that they now have or would
like people to believe that they have the momentum in the closing stage
of this race. But the ultimate Bush argument for change in a time of
prosperity and peace has to be to go back to that question of character.
And that's why he is trying to make the case in his speech today and
in the themes of many of the closing ads that he is a healing person.
He is somebody that who might somehow apply balm to the wounded and
really sort of frayed nerve ends of politics in the nation's capital.