2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

The joint appearance came a day after President Bush's re-election campaign and the Republican Party opened a series of attacks against Mr. Kerry, treating him as if he were already the Democratic nominee. Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, in a speech on Thursday night, attacked Senator Kerry's record on military and intelligence issues and predicted that Democrats would run "the dirtiest campaign in modern presidential politics."

At the same time, Mr. Bush's re-election campaign posted a video on its Web site accusing Mr. Kerry of being "unprincipled" and the tool of special interests.

The Republicans are definitely on the offensive

Bush blocks his own way while giving Kerry a free pass

February 12, 2004

BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

All week long in the capital, worried Republicans buzzed about George W. Bush's Sunday interview on NBC's ''Meet the Press.'' Supporters of the president were surprised that he would ask to be questioned by Tim Russert. What flabbergasted them was the absence of any plan to use this event to stop being the target as the 2004 campaign began.

This failure was Strike Two for President Bush. Strike One was his humdrum State of the Union address. Fortunately for the president, this is not baseball, where three strikes are out. During more than eight months before Election Day, Bush will have many opportunities for recuperation. For now, however, the president is in political retreat, with Democrats unimpeded in challenging his competency and credibility.

The ''Meet the Press'' performance raised disturbing questions for Republicans. How could Bush be put out to confront the most feared questioner in Washington without a careful scenario? How could he face Russert without precise answers on the decision to go to war in Iraq and on his National Guard service? The suspicion is that his 2004 campaign organization, a fund-raising juggernaut, is otherwise inadequate.

The Bush White House is cloistered, where even Bush aides seem restrained from debating strategy even behind closed doors. The belief in Republican circles is that Bush, tired of battering by Democrats and alarmed by his descent in the polls, asked for an hour on television. This questions how it could be possible for a president who claims to neither read newspapers nor watch television.

In any event, no aide dissuaded Bush from embarking on this course or devised a plan to make the most of it.

Democratic operatives, including Sen. John Kerry's advisers, groused that Russert permitted Bush to escape -- reflecting presidential blood lust by Democrats in the sight of Bush's wounds. Actually, no president ever before had been subjected to such tough questioning in the Oval Office.

The private Republican complaint is not with Russert but with Bush. It was thought the president would have sat down with carefully structured language to defend himself or even produce news. Yet, the newsiest tidbit contained in excerpts of the taped interview distributed last Saturday was the unsurprising declaration he would not fire CIA Director George Tenet.

While gay marriage embarrasses Democrats because of their homosexual constituency, Bush did not try to capitalize on this Sunday. He was informed in advance that Russert had no plans to bring it up but that the president, of course, could raise this important social issue. He did not.

Most disturbing to the president's supporters was his reaction to whether young Lt. Bush skipped Alabama National Guard duty in 1972. This chestnut from the 2000 campaign dropped when leftist agitator Michael Moore called Bush a military ''deserter'' and Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe labeled him AWOL. Kerry linked Bush's National Guard service with ''going to Canada, going to jail, being a conscientious objector'' as forms of draft avoidance he would not criticize.

''The political season's here,'' Bush told Russert, launching a tepid defense of his service record. The president did not lash back by exposing Kerry's unsavory record in the antiwar movement's extreme wing following his heroic service in Vietnam. That reluctance might have been prudent, but it maintained the protective shell around Bush's probable challenger.

The president would not deign to even touch the senator. Nearly a year ago in March, Vogue magazine reported Kerry as denigrating Bush's ''lack of knowledge,'' adding: ''He was two years behind me at Yale, and I knew him, and he's still the same guy.'' I reported the president telling aides he did not know Kerry at Yale. On Sunday, Russert cited the Vogue quotations and asked: ''Did you know him at Yale?'' ''No,'' Bush replied. ''How do you respond to that?'' Russert persisted. The president answered with one word: ''Politics.''

That's not nearly an adequate retort to John Kerry. Republican heavy thinkers regard him as second only to Howard Dean as a vulnerable nominee. But Kerry, merciless in slashing at the president, remains untouched. It seems difficult for an incumbent president to lose amid economic recovery, but George W. Bush is showing it might be possible.

Rumor: A Kerry Affair & Push Polling
Rumor has it that John Kerry (D) is going to be outed by Time Magazine next week for having an affair with a 20 year old woman who remains unknown. The affair supposedly took place intermittently right up to Kerry's Fall 2002 announcement of candidacy. At present, this is nothing more than a rumor; and after such sordid tactics as the "push polling" that took place in South Carolina in the 2000 elections, can such rumors be credible during campaign cycles? Could this create a Democratic backlash against Republicans for perceived scandalmongering?

Timber, this, as far as I can tell, is your smoking gun:

Quote:

Rumor: A Kerry Affair & Push Polling
Rumor has it that John Kerry (D) is going to be outed by Time Magazine next week for having an affair with a 20 year old woman who remains unknown. The affair supposedly took place intermittently right up to Kerry's Fall 2002 announcement of candidacy. At present, this is nothing more than a rumor; and after such sordid tactics as the "push polling" that took place in South Carolina in the 2000 elections, can such rumors be credible during campaign cycles? Could this create a Democratic backlash against Republicans for perceived scandalmongering?

This may be the first mention online, but it clearly indicates a belief that it is rumor, which is not given much credibility, and is phrased in terms of Republican scandalmongering. This is markedly different in tone from the Drudge gossip, which indicated a belief that it happened and it's a matter of uncovering the deceit.

Anyway, what I am saying, again, is not that it definitely originated from the Republicans, but that from the existing evidence there is no way to know.

Democratic aide was source of affair rumour that dogs Kerry
Sunday Times | February 15, 2004 | Tony Allen-Mills


ONLY a few days ago they were fighting hard for the Democratic presidential nomination, but on Friday Senator John Kerry and General Wesley Clark arrived in Wisconsin to shower each other with praise. The front-running Massachusetts senator was "the right character to bring America forward", Clark told cheering students in Madison. "He will stand up to the Republican attack dogs and send them home licking their wounds."

Kerry was equally generous. Clark had shown "great selflessness and great courage" by ending his campaign and offering his support to a former rival.

It was exactly the display of solidarity that many Democrats had been praying for as Kerry closed on his party's nomination to challenge President George W Bush. Yet behind the public back-slapping lurked a potential scandal that hinted at splits in the Democratic ranks.

Evidence was emerging that members of Clark's campaign staff were the source of last week's internet rumours that Kerry had engaged in an extramarital affair lasting at least two years.

Matt Drudge, the internet gossip, claimed a "world exclusive" when his Drudge Report website announced on Thursday: "Campaign drama rocks Democrats: Kerry fights off media probe of recent alleged infidelity, rivals predict ruin".

Heading for Wisconsin ahead of this Tuesday's primary, Kerry initially declared that there was "nothing to report, nothing to talk about". Later he denied the story "categorically". He added: "It's rumour. It's untrue. Period."

Many Democrats suspected a ploy by Bush's "attack dogs", but The Sunday Times has established that the story first appeared on February 6 on an obscure internet website run by a self-confessed "web junkie" who worked for the Clark campaign. There is no evidence that Clark was aware of it.

Six days before Drudge's story appeared, a political website named WatchBlog published an item purportedly discussing negative tactics in presidential campaigns.

"Rumour has it that John Kerry is going to be outed by Time magazine next week for having an affair with a 20-year-old woman who remains unknown," alleged the WatchBlog item, which went almost unnoticed at the time. "The affair took place intermittently right up to Kerry's autumn 2002 announcement (of his presidential candidacy)."

WatchBlog is the brainchild of Cameron Barrett, 30, a balding, bespectacled computer geek from Brooklyn who was hired by the Clark campaign last year to set up the general's "blog", or web-based diary.

Barrett, an amateur writer of short stories, attracted media attention in 1998 when he became one of the first people in America to lose a job over something published on the internet. Some of his colleagues at a Michigan marketing firm complained about sexually explicit fiction that he had posted on his personal website. One story concerned two snowmen having sex before they melted.

Barrett joined the Clark campaign soon after it was launched last September and was widely praised for his innovative use of the internet to rally the general's supporters.

He could not be reached for comment yesterday and it was not immediately clear how his website had obtained the Kerry item, which ended with a proprietary boast: "I wanted to add that if this shows up in Time next week as my source claims, WatchBlog will have scooped an incredibly big story."

The item never appeared in Time and instead it was Drudge who claimed the scoop. He added several details which heightened suspicion in the Kerry camp that Clark aides had attempted to derail the senator's triumphant progress to keep their man in the race.

First, Drudge alleged, Clark himself had told reporters in an off-the-record conversation that "Kerry will implode over an intern issue". Clark's aides have strenuously denied that he made any such remark.

Other media sources have claimed that Chris Lehane, Clark's press secretary, had "shopped around" the intern story, supposedly in the hope that Kerry would be embarrassed. Drudge quoted Craig Crawford, a respected correspondent for the Congressional Quarterly, as saying that Lehane first became aware of the story while working for Al Gore, the 2000 presidential candidate.

Gore was said to have rejected Kerry as a potential vice-presidential running mate largely because Bill Clinton, the then president, was already enmeshed in the Monica Lewinsky affair and nobody in the Democratic party could face even the hint of another intern scandal. Lehane has denied any knowledge of the Kerry allegations.

For a man whose ruin had been widely proclaimed only a few hours earlier, Kerry appeared remarkably chipper as he returned to the campaign trail in Madison on Friday after his latest victories in Tennessee and Virginia.

Not until he stopped for questions at a lunchtime forum in Madison did it become clear that he had taken precautions to shield himself from possible embarrassment. Questions were screened in advance and only supporters on an approved list were called upon to speak. Reporters grimaced as a succession of friendly Wisconsinites lobbed gentle queries about jobs, education and family dairy farmers.

No reference was made to interns; nor did Kerry mention his wife Teresa, the heir to a $500m ketchup fortune. Teresa had once joked to her now late husband, John Heinz, that she would "maim" him if he had an affair.

In one sense, at least, Kerry had nothing to worry about. The latest Wisconsin opinion poll gave him a seemingly invincible 37-point lead over Senator John Edwards, the North Carolina lawyer who appears determined to stay in the race in case Kerry stumbles. Another poll showed him extending his lead over Bush to 52%-43%.

In contrast to the torrent of internet speculation about Kerry, neither newspapers nor national television networks showed much interest in his alleged links to Alex Polier, a former political intern.

The reluctance of American editors to delve into sexual allegations has obscured the story's potential impact on Kerry's political prospects. While conservative chat show hosts seized on it, the rest of the American media were collectively agonising over whether Drudge and his internet ilk should be allowed to drag another presidential race into the gutter.

"Is American politics suddenly returning to the bad old days when Washington journalism became frenzied with sheet-sniffing and keyhole peeping?" asked Joe Conason, a columnist for Salon, the online journal.

At The New York Times the story awoke uncomfortable memories. After an earlier sexual scandal involving Senator Gary Hart ?- a presidential candidate who was photographed with his mistress on a yacht called Monkey Business ?- senior editors concluded that journalistic investigation had taken a wrong turn.

"They felt here was a guy with good ideas who was qualified to be president but got derailed," one source at the paper said. "I remember editors saying, ?'Never again'."

The Lewinsky scandal, which had involved allegations of perjury and sexual harassment, was too serious to be ignored. But leading American newspapers appear reluctant to pursue any new sexual story without evidence of other foul play. Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio host, mischievously suggested that Hillary Clinton was behind the leak, supposedly because success for Kerry would threaten her chances of running for president in 2008. "It's not us conservatives," he said.

At Kerry's meetings there was little sign of concern among supporters at any revelations that might emerge. "I just don't care what these people do with their private lives," said Mariana Hewson, a medical consultant. "Who else cares apart from you?" Clark, for one, might care that excessive zeal by his staff appears to have handed the Republicans potentially lethal ammunition for the forthcoming presidential race.

Even before the intern allegations, both Democrats and Republicans were warning that the campaign is shaping up to be the dirtiest, angriest and most personal face-off since the last nominee from Massachusetts plunged to ignominious defeat at the hands of a Republican named Bush.

The 1988 battle between Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor, and George Bush Sr is remembered in Washington as a low point in the politics of personal destruction. Dukakis was savaged by Republicans as "soft on crime" after Willie Horton, a convicted murderer, was released from a Massachusetts jail and committed a violent rape.

"Every time you think politics has hit a new low, someone on the other side brings it down a notch," said Charlie Baxter, a former national field director for Dukakis. "Senator Kerry has a full understanding of what he faces."

Angered by Democratic questioning of Bush's military performance as a reservist in the 1970s, Republican researchers have been scrutinising every aspect of Kerry's past, from his Vietnam protest years to his long service in the Senate. A potentially embarrassing photograph of Kerry with Jane Fonda ?- who was reviled by many Vietnam veterans for visiting Hanoi during the war ?- popped up last week on a conservative website; 30-year-old quotes have also appeared in which Kerry called for US troops to be deployed abroad only under United Nations directives.

The Republican strategy is to portray Kerry as a liberal hypocrite who will say whatever wins the most votes. Kerry in turn portrays Bush as a president who deceived his country about the need for war in Iraq and cannot be trusted on any other issue.

Both sides are warning that the other is carrying negative attacks too far. "There's certainly an anger that I think is unprecedented," said Dominick Ianno, executive director of the Massachusetts Republican party.

Democratic claims that Bush went absent without leave from an Alabama military post in 1972 have infuriated the president's supporters.

In response to complaints that Bush had not told the truth about performing his reservist duties as a pilot in the National Guard, the White House released hundreds of pages of military records that nonetheless shed little new light on a dispute that has provoked charges that the president was a "deserter".

The documents reveal that in early evaluations Bush was described as "a top-notch fighter interceptor pilot" and an "exceptionally fine young officer". They describe a battle with haemorrhoids but offer no fresh evidence that Bush completed all his required duties at a reservist base in Alabama between May 1972 and April 1973.

The White House had previously published dental records purportedly proving that Bush had his teeth checked while on duty in Alabama, and two local witnesses have come forward to say they remember him working at a Montgomery air base. But enough gaps remained for the Democrats to keep the issue alive.

In this context, the planting of a highly charged Kerry intern story ?- however wide of the truth ?- was the political equivalent of tossing a grenade into a volcano.

Drudge fanned the flames with his claims of a "world exclusive" but credit ?- or blame ?- for any eventual explosion will have to be shared with WatchBlog.

Should record, surprisingly abberational caucus attendence not prove to be the case, called to question would be the overall signifigance of Democratic prospects nationally re the '04 General Election as a whole. If turnout in Iowa, regardless of outcome, is less than absolutely astounding, The Democrats nationally may have considerable cause for alarm.