Political Advertisements Change Tone As the Presidential Campaign Winds Down

JIM LEHRER:

There is indeed an advertising war waging over the airwaves in the battleground states. And for that we go to media correspondent Terence Smith.

TERENCE SMITH:

With less than a week to go in the presidential race, the candidates are barnstorming in a handful of key battleground states and concentrating their television advertising in the same pivotal markets.

The blizzard of ads is sponsored variously by the campaigns, the national party committees, and ostensibly independent partisan groups on each side. This ad, from moveon.org, a progressive political action group, targets President Bush.

AD:

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. Bush: Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere. ( Laughter ) Nope, no weapons over there.

WOMAN:

My brother died in Baghdad on April 29th. I watched President Bush make a joke, looking around for weapons of mass destruction. My brother died looking for weapons of mass destruction.

AD VOICEOVER:

Over 1,000 troops like Ryan have died in Iraq. Yet there never were any weapons. George Bush: He just doesn't get it.

TERENCE SMITH:

Here's an excerpt from an ad run by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group formed explicitly to oppose Sen. Kerry.

SWIFT VETS AD:

SPOKESMAN: They served their country with courage and distinction. They're the men who served with John Kerry in Vietnam. They're his entire chain of command, most of the officers in Kerry's unit — even the gunner from his own boat.

And they're the men who spent years in North Vietnamese prison camps, tortured for refusing to confess what John Kerry accused them of: Of being war criminals.

TERENCE SMITH:

The Bush campaign is running this ad in heavy rotation now.

BUSH CAMPAIGN AD:

AD VOICEOVER: In an increasingly dangerous world, even after the first terrorist attack on America, John Kerry and the liberals in Congress voted to slash America's intelligence operations by $6 billion — cuts so deep, they would have weakened America's defenses. And weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm.

TERENCE SMITH:

And the Kerry campaign has this ad up in swing states.

KERRY CAMPAIGN AD:

SEN. JOHN KERRY: They're misleading Americans about what I said. I will never cede America's security to any institution or to any other country. No one gets a veto over our security — no one.

I will never take my eye off Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, and the terror in Afghanistan. We're going to hunt down the terrorists. We will kill them. We'll do whatever's necessary to protect America.

TERENCE SMITH:

All told, over $530 million has been spent on presidential election advertising.

And as the race draws to a close, the appeals are aimed less at voters' hopes than at their fears.

TERENCE SMITH:

Joining me now to discuss those ads and the ad campaigns are Evan Tracey, chief operating officer and founder of the TNSMI campaign media analysis group.

And Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Welcome to you both. Evan Tracey, $530 million and still counting?

EVAN TRACEY:

$532 million and still counting. We're seeing close to $45 million per week being spent now in this presidential campaign. Four years ago, $200 million was about the cap that we saw. So this has been a longer campaign and a more expensive campaign being waged, not just by Bush and Kerry, but by the parties and a lot of friends.

TERENCE SMITH:

Is one side, Kerry… the Kerry side or the Bush side, spending more than the other?

EVAN TRACEY:

Head to head, Bush to Kerry, Bush maintains a fairly sizable spending advantage over Kerry. However, there have been 44 groups that have weighed in with advertising in this race on behalf of Sen. Kerry's campaign.

That spending is going to put Sen. Kerry way ahead of what the Bush/Cheney and the RNC and his allies have been able to spend in this election, so advantage to Bush vis-à-vis Kerry; advantage to Kerry when you lump in all these groups and outside spending.

TERENCE SMITH:

And where are they spending this money, where are they focusing these ads, and where, if they are, are they pulling them back?

EVAN TRACEY:

Well, it started out as about a 20-state playing field, briefly expanded to 22, and now it is contracted to about 13 key states. And they are a lot of the states you hear about, the Iowas, the Ohios, the New Hampshires, Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania, of course.

You know, these states right now are really what it all comes down to. They are still spending in Colorado and New Hampshire and Maine, in Oregon, in places like that, but the major spending is in those earlier states I listed.

TERENCE SMITH:

And Kathleen Hall Jamieson, you're in Pennsylvania and so you're right in the center of it all.

But in other states, you'd hardly know there is a campaign going.

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON:

Yes, and you might be relieved as a result.

TERENCE SMITH:

(Laughs) Yeah, I suppose you might. Let's talk a little about the tone and tenor of the ads that we just ran, and the setup, and maybe some other ads that you've seen.

Those first two were from 527s, the so-called independent groups. And that first one on President Bush was pretty tough.

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON:

The history of this campaign is going to say that this was the most attack-driven campaign, period, in the history of the modern presidency.

And we're closing with a high level of attack, which is in some ways interesting and problematic because you'd like a reason to vote for people, not just against.

The attack on President Bush is taking a moment from a speech that was in its context set in humor. There is humor all around the speech, in which he's joking about not finding weapons of mass destruction, joking inappropriately, in my judgment, but nonetheless in a humorous context and juxtaposing it with the stark reality of death in Iraq.

The ad is doing what ads classically do in politics: It's trying to create a frame that is so strong with emotion that's so riveting that you just accept it uncritically.

So, for example, when the sister of the brother who has died says that he died looking for the weapons of mass destruction, you're inclined to accept that as your frame of reference around not only the ad, but around Iraq.

The alternative frame, one the ad does not invite, would say, "He died liberating the people of Iraq from Saddam Hussein."

TERENCE SMITH:

In this ad, Evan Tracey, has it being getting a big buy in certain states?

EVAN TRACEY:

It hasn't been getting a big buy. It's been primarily on national cable. Moveon is a group that has spent probably about $19 million in this race primarily running ads exactly like this — very negative, obviously aimed right at the president on some of the core issues in this race.

But Kathleen's absolutely right, I mean, this ad is indicative of most of the ads that they have run this year, they're really designed to keep the president's approval ratings low. And a lot of this money is pouring into some of these states like Ohio.

TERENCE SMITH:

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, what struck you about the Swift Boat Veterans ad?

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON:

This is a campaign that we're going to study for a long time because it effectively laid in place the whole series of claims against Sen. Kerry that are implicitly reprised in the ad.

If you've seen all of the previous ads, when you see these men with their medals, you fill in a lot of blanks that are unstated because they've been stated before. You fill in "he lied to get his medals," "he lied about us," "he lied when he came back to testify against the war."

Again, in the emotion of the moment, of seeing the men with their medals, we're less likely to ask the critical question: Did he actually say that these individuals were war criminals? He actually didn't. That was out of context. But more importantly, it does the same sort of thing that the other ad does.

It drives through emotion a very strong frame, and the cumulative frame of the Swift Vet ads goes like this: Sen. Kerry lied to get his medals, he lied about the war and about those participants when he got back; and as a result, he prolonged the war for the POW's. On the other side, however, there is a counter frame. It just hasn't been articulated in ads because the Kerry campaign didn't want to engage this issue in advertising.

The other side would say he served heroically in Vietnam, he came back and heroically protested an unjust war, and as a result, he shortened the war. When people see these ads, they have to ask the question on both sides: Which of the frames do you accept about Iraq and about Vietnam?

TERENCE SMITH:

Evan Tracey, did the two campaigns choose different places, networks, channels, et cetera, to place their ads?

EVAN TRACEY:

The number-one difference, there's a lot of bracketing that goes on, in other words, the campaigns all want to be in the news, they all want to be on the morning shows.

Where you see the biggest contrast between what the Bush campaign is doing and the Kerry campaign is doing is on cable.

The Kerry campaign and the DNC have stayed exclusively, up until a few days ago, on the all-news channels trying to get in the background noise, if you were, with the opinion leaders and journalists.

The Bush campaign has really aggressively pursued their base, and also men. They've been buying a lot of NASCAR programming, sports programming, outdoor programming, country music programming. So the largest difference we see when we analyze the two campaigns' buys really show up in their cable strategies.

TERENCE SMITH:

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, I must ask you about that wolves' ad that we ran. I mean, what's the symbolism there?

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON:

Well, the important thing to remember about this kind of ad is that the symbolism is effective to the extent that you bring a whole set of previous charges forward from earlier ads.

This ad isn't simply about proposed cuts in intelligence that Sen. Kerry supported a while ago. It also is supposed to reprise all of the anxieties that have been created around any votes he might have made in the past, or positions he might have taken in order to cut weapons systems; any suggestions in the past that he wasn't going to be strong enough on defense.

And it's supposed to remind you, as well, of the charges that… for example, he might offer a global test, he may have said terrorism is a nuisance. Now, many of those charges in the context of the earlier ads were problematic. But if you saw those ads across time, and they were aired at high levels across time, you now see the wolves and suddenly you bring all of those back in.

And all of those things suggest that if there are terrorists out there, if there is a world that's about to menace us, you might not want Sen. Kerry to be the one who is there to defend you. Then you cut to President Bush at the end in color, and you're supposed to be saying, "And I'm comfortable with him."

There is, of course, the danger in this kind of ad: That you'll see the wolves and then you'll see the president. And the last line of the ad before the president suggests that weakness invites assault by wolves and possibly by terrorists.

And then the weakness may be amalgamated to the president. If I were creating that ad, I think I would have put the disclaiming of the president at the beginning, not at the end.

TERENCE SMITH:

Has this ad been a big buy?

EVAN TRACEY:

This is an ad that they have clearly singled out as one that is very effective for them mostly through their focus grouping because this ad has replaced most of the other ads that the president has up on the air right now.

It's probably about 65 or 70 percent of his ad rotation. Almost $1 million a day is being spent on this ad alone.

TERENCE SMITH:

So, Kathleen, that would suggest that this is the central message they want to get across through advertising?

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON:

If you feel anxious about Sen. Kerry, regardless of the content of the anxiety, whether it's intelligence votes, defense votes, whether it's tax increases, you're going to support the president.

And in this kind of an environment, what you have is an ad that potentially has very real power if you're ready to fill in the rest of the blanks in the messages. If instead, however, you say, "Well, Porter Goss supported intelligence cuts and now he's in charge of the CIA. Was he inviting those wolves to attack us, and if so, why is he in charge?" then the ad is going to fail.

But you're not likely to say that. In fact, you're not even likely to remember the ad was mentioning intelligence cuts because one of the things we know is when you have really evocative images and high emotional content, it tends to wipe out what came right before it.

TERENCE SMITH:

The fourth ad that we showed was the Kerry campaign ad in which he was vigorously stating that he would defend the country and do what was necessary. What was the message there, Kathleen?

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON:

If Sen. Kerry is as decisive as he sounds in this ad, then the wolves are going to retreat and go back into that forest.

In some ways, this is a rebuttal ad to the wolves' ad — to some extent also, because it doesn't tell you what it is that Sen. Kerry thinks President Bush advertisement is misleading you about, it becomes a generic rebuttal — fill in whatever the attack was, and this is the response. And here's why it actually in some ways is.

The fundamental attack on Sen. Kerry by the Bush/Cheney campaign is that he's indecisive. That's what flip-flopping is. And as a result, you can't trust him in the context of a war on terror.

And as a result, what he's doing in the ad is not telling you what the charges are. Instead, he's sounding decisive and saying decisive things.

If Sen. Kerry had sounded this decisive and said things that were that clear in straightforward, declarative sentences in the debate, in the sentence in which he talked about global threat, he wouldn't have been vulnerable to the Republican attacks.

TERENCE SMITH:

Okay. And, Evan, I suppose the spending will go right up until the last minute?

EVAN TRACEY:

Absolutely. As we said earlier, we're seeing about $45 million a week spent. Anecdotally, we're hearing about candidates buying a lot of radio time now. They're buying a lot of local cable time. You know, like I said, a lot of the cables buys have expanded.

There is probably more money that these campaigns have to spend right now, than there is really time to buy. So I think you're going to see a lot more creative uses of media to get messages out down the stretch.

TERENCE SMITH:

Evan Tracey, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, thank you both very much.

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON:

You're welcome.

EVAN TRACEY:

Thank you.