On the trail of Kerry's failed dream

The Boston Globe has a must read article on Kerry's campaign. There are many interesting points, but the article fails to be a definitive report on the campaign due to failing to fully explain Kerry's position at key points.

The article starts with the August question on Iraq which wound up reinforcing common misunderstandings about Kerry's position on Iraq:

The senator explained to aides that part of the question had been lost in the wind; he thought he was answering a variation on the same basic query he'd been asked countless times: Was it right to give Bush the authority to go to war against Iraq? Kerry had simply given his standard "yes," with the proviso that he would have "done this very differently from the way President Bush has" -- yet the misunderstanding now muddied Kerry's message.

Worried advisers briefly considered issuing a clarification, but feared it might further feed Republican efforts to portray Kerry as a "flip-flopper."

The story notes that Kerry felt he was consistent, but unfortunately never did a good job of explaining Kerry's position of authorizing force as a last resort, as distinct from agreeing with the decision to go to war:

The senator firmly believed he was being consistent -- voting yes on the resolution to give the president the clout to resume inspections, but warning Bush not to move hastily. At one point, when aides tried to coax him into a simpler message, he spread papers on the floor to show how the fine points of his arguments fit.

"John got caught with his legalistic and logical mind wanting to make consistency matter, and not let them say [he's] a flip-flopper," said Kerry's longtime friend David Thorne.

Even as aides fretted that Kerry had not found his voice on the issue, they continued to hope that his hybrid position -- maintaining vigilance in a post-9/11 world, but planning more carefully than Bush -- would capture the mood of the country. They were buoyed by the fact that voters in the primaries, when Kerry was also attacked for inconsistency, suddenly moved to his side, as if they had understood him all along.

They hoped it would happen again.

Similarly, the article discusses the $87 billion dollar vote, but never addressed the real issues in the dispute over how the measure would be funded:

Bush had learned in his only losing campaign -- a 1978 US House race in West Texas, where he was labeled a liberal Eastern elitist -- that it was political death to let your opponents define you first. So in the ensuing years he had turned that same strategy against his foes. In the case of Kerry, Bush readily agreed to a plan to define the senator as a flip-flopper weak on defense.

A Bush campaign negative ad, released March 16, criticized Kerry for voting against an $87 billion bill to fund US troops in Iraq. The ad depicted Kerry voting no on "body armor for troops in combat," on "higher pay," on "better healthcare for reservists and their families."

While concentrating on Kerry strategy, the article also looks at the strategy of the Swift Boat vets, including pointing out that " O'Neill had not served with Kerry, so his knowledge of the candidate's combat action was limited." Despite this lack of knowledge, decisions were made as to what might most hurt Kerry, without regard for the truth:

The group debated strategy: Should it focus on Kerry's assertions that US soldiers had committed atrocities? Or should it go after his combat record, raising questions about whether he deserved his medals and three Purple Hearts?

Spaeth and others believed the group should focus its attacks on Kerry's antiwar efforts. Michael Bernique, who had gone on missions with Kerry, argued that he had acted courageously in combat. But others were adamant about going after his combat record.

O'Neill and Hoffmann had heard reports questioning whether Kerry deserved his first Purple Heart, given for a wound that Kerry's commanding officer had compared to a rose-thorn prick. They also entertained suspicions from veterans about Kerry's medals -- one a Bronze Star, the other a Silver Star. "We got very disquieting e-mails about what he had done in Vietnam," O'Neill said.

The O'Neill faction also argued that poking holes in Kerry's combat record would attract fresh media attention.

When the group decided to focus on Kerry's combat record as well as his antiwar activities, Bernique and several others objected and dropped out.

By May the news was going against Bush, but Kerry failed to take full advantage of his opportunities:

This might have been an ideal time to hit Bush hard. Instead, the candidate proceeded on a deliberate course, crafted by media adviser Bob Shrum and campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill, to raise money, broadcast policy proposals. and advertise Kerry's life story. In early May, the campaign announced a $25 million, mostly biographical advertising buy -- the largest single buy to that date by either side.

Kerry's appearances focused on domestic issues, largely because campaign-organized focus groups rated healthcare and the economy as top concerns. At one campaign stop, Kerry even refused to answer whether the prison scandal should force Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to resign, saying "I've already commented."

When Kerry finally started giving foreign policy speeches by the end of May, his words had a term paper quality. He would lay out "four imperatives" and insist that in the war on terror "we need to be clear about our purposes and our principles." Bush, meanwhile, was casting the campaign as a "choice between an America that leads the world with strength and confidence or an America that is uncertain in the face of danger."

As summer came, the article reports how the campaign may have blown an opportunity to have Paul Begala on board to help clarify the message of the campaign. The more well known decisions of the next couple of months are discussed in detail, including the pick of John Edwards and the decision not to use the convention to make the case against Bush.

By August, the Swift Boat Vets were back, and the campaign made the mistake of not responding quick enough:

Ten days earlier, an inflammatory book by his Nixon-era foe, O'Neill, had topped a national best-seller list. "Unfit for Command" used mostly unsupported allegations to label Kerry a liar who didn't deserve some or all of his combat medals.

At the same time, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began airing ads, mostly in swing states, quoting men who said Kerry "has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam," "lied" to get his medals, "is no war hero," and "betrayed all his shipmates."

Kerry wanted to fight back right away, but Shrum and other media advisers cautioned against it, concerned about fanning the flames. "We watched as the story jumped from the Internet, to Fox News, to the other cable networks," said Cahill. "Our concern was we didn't want to help it along by our reaction."

The campaign hoped that the episode would blow over with minimal damage, as it had the previous spring. But this time, there was no prison scandal, or anything else, to swallow the swift boat veterans' crusade. "The August echo chamber was a difficult environment because nothing else was going on," said Thorne.

"The campaign collectively underestimated the effect of the swift boats. It was a collective mistake," recalled Michael Whouley, a longtime Kerry operative. "I think the candidate was probably the most concerned about it. It pissed him off, people attacking his Vietnam service."

The campaign started to rebound, including taking advice from Bill Clinton:

In the 90-minute conversation, aides say, Clinton counseled Kerry never to let another assault go personally unchallenged for so long. He also advised the candidate to make more sustained criticisms of Bush and to focus on core issues in battleground states -- job losses in Ohio, the toll of Iraq on military families throughout the Midwest.

It was the debates which really made the race competitive again, with the article showing both the preparation by Kerry and by Bush:

"Kerry wanted to do this differently than either Clinton or Gore; he wanted to do a lot of work early," said Klain. "Both Clinton and Gore liked to cram. Kerry really wanted to absorb and needed to get stuff done early. . . . He was much more methodical [than Clinton or Gore]. He's a much more avid reader than either. His reading wasn't the prelude to learning; his reading was the learning. He was extremely disciplined about it."

The sessions that began in earnest in Nantucket and continued as mock debates in Spring Green, Wis., had one goal: Kerry wouldn't hear a single word from Bush that he hadn't heard before.

In the White House, meanwhile, Bush resisted practice sessions. His debate preparations were marred by irritation and distraction, advisers said. Bush engaged in at least two miserable sessions with his sparring partner, Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. Aides did not even force Bush to watch the sessions that went badly, because "everybody knew" they had not gone well, one adviser said. Finally, frustrated by the intrusions at the White House, senior aide Karen Hughes moved the practice to Bush's ranch at Crawford, Texas.

Still, by the time the first presidential debate opened in Miami on Sept. 30, Bush advisers thought they had already one-upped the Democrat by insisting on a buzzer to enforce time limits.

If Bush aides thought this strategy would show the Democrat as a pompous windbag, they were wrong. Instead, the time limits forced a steely and determined Kerry to make a crisp prosecutor's case against his opponent.

Kerry brought skills honed over summer practice sessions, as well as renewed energy from two effective foreign policy speeches he had delivered the previous week. Kerry was finding his voice on Iraq. Whereas before he talked of a "wrong direction" in the war on terror, he now hammered Bush for "colossal failures in judgment."

There was a surprise statement at the end of the race:

Later that day, a new videotape of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden emerged. Kerry wanted to react in a statesmanlike way, but some aides -- seeing a rare opening to hit Bush on a core vulnerability -- toyed with releasing a statement with a different tone. "It would say something like: 'You see that guy up there on the screen looking fat and happy in his robes? Well, he would not be there if George Bush had captured him,' " said one senior adviser. Fearful of elevating the terrorist's influence, Kerry and his aides quashed the idea.

With the election just days away, no one wanted to rock the boat. Greenberg's daily tracking numbers indicated that Kerry was nudging ahead in mid-to-late October and ahead in a majority of battlegrounds, though aides worried that few other polls suggested the same.

By the next day, Kerry found he came up a little short in a close Ohio race:

Kerry sat in the kitchen, sipping a bowl of soup, and shook his head as he turned to a friend and said simply, "We worked so hard." There were tears and hugs.

As Kerry sat, he started to analyze the race. Many voters, he concluded, cast their ballots on single issues, such as abortion or gay rights. Kerry had tried to walk a fine line on both issues, saying life began at conception while supporting abortion rights, and opposing same-sex marriage but also rejecting a constitutional amendment to ban it. From the start, it had been difficult for a Bostonian to appeal to the conservative South and some Midwest states. Kerry felt he had done it.

But through it all, the rivers of war -- Iraq and Vietnam -- ran through the campaign.

As the friends and family gathered around him, Kerry's daughter Vanessa comforted her father.

"I'm so proud my name is Kerry," she said.