PARC Analysis "Kerry v. Bush"

Illustrating the real time speed of presidential campaigning in the 2004 election, the Bush campaign debuted its attack ad, “Windsurfing” on September 22. That same day, the Kerry camp counterattacked with an ad of its own entitled, “Juvenile.” Both “Windsurfing” and “Juvenile” epitomize the primary messages of the Bush and Kerry campaigns and offer insight into the messages that the candidates will perpetuate in the presidential debates that will occur only eight days after the release of these ads.

A common theme throughout the Bush campaign and its surrogate 527 organizations is that John Kerry is a flip flopper on many issues. The underlying assumption is that changing one's opinion about political issues reflects a lack of political authenticity. A key marker of political character is one's convictions, which if legitimate, are unwavering. If someone alters their political views too often, they are viewed as political opportunists who change their mind to adapt to the shifting valances of the U.S. electorate. This campaign strategy is one commonly practiced in presidential campaigns, which is to make the message simple and to repeat it often.

Conversely, the Kerry campaign, in attempting to accentuate what it sees as President George Bush's lack of intellectual and military prowess, responds with a negative ad that is equally as revealing of its own campaign assumptions: demonstrate the complexity of the issues and their own candidate's intellectual acumen while highlighting the simplicity of the president's policies and his leadership qualities.

These two ads, thus, epitomize the competing images and leadership styles of the presidential candidates—the first attempts to show a consistent and unwavering commitment to his positions while portraying his opponent as indecisive—a dangerous trait during wartime; the second attempts to accentuate his more academic style and his ability to grapple with the complexities and contingencies of a wartime context. In both cases, each campaign is attempting to demasculinize their opponents, albeit in different ways.

John Kerry's Political Nature=Flip Flopping

The Bush campaign relies on windsurfing images of John Kerry to visualize the senator's allegedly inconsistent positions on the Iraq War. The spot is clearly designed to be humorous, using a grainy picture of Kerry windsurfing with a classical music accompaniment. A common practice in political advertising, using humor to deliver a negative attack blunts the negativity of the message and insulates the source of the ad from criticism.

While the images of Kerry windsurfing may help demonstrate his athletic skill and power, such images are musically framed by a Johann Strauss waltz, “Blue Danube,” suggesting that John Kerry is “dancing” with his wind surf board—an impression that is perpetuated by the narrator's question: “In which direction would John Kerry lead ?” To that end, Kerry's leadership style is conflated with a waltz, which in addition to accentuating his inability to make decisions, implicitly raises questions about his masculinity in the process. Moreover, windsurfing is an unconventional sport for a political candidate, and the use of these images may work to erode any identification Kerry may seek to cultivate with “average” voters. Finally, Kerry's supposed indecisiveness is accented as his position on the wind surf board shifts 180 degrees with each new frame, further challenging Kerry's leadership capability.

George Bush as Juvenile

In response to “Windsurfing,” the Kerry campaign issues a press release condemning the Bush campaign “for responding to the deteriorating situation in Iraq by running a juvenile and tasteless attack ad"

http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/releases/pr_2004_0922b.html

The “Juvenile” ad expresses the same themes, charging that: “One thousand U.S. casualties. Two Americans beheaded just this week. The Pentagon admits terrorists are pouring into Iraq . In the face of the Iraq quagmire, George Bush's answer is to run a juvenile and tasteless attack ad.” This strategy directly challenges the humorous nature of the Bush ad—an unusual strategy made salient by the seriousness of the Iraq situation.

The music in this ad communicates the solemnity of what the ad suggests is a “quagmire” in Iraq, accentuated through the serious tone of the male narrator and visible captions that details the “1000 US casualties,” the recent beheadings of Americans (“kidnappings and murders”), and “terrorists pouring into Iraq.” Senator Kerry's intellectual and military superiority is seemingly demonstrated through the plan that is referenced in the ad: “John Kerry has a plan for success: Get allies involved. Speed up the training of Iraqis. Take essential steps to get a free election next year. On Iraq , it's time for a new direction.”

In juxtaposing Kerry's plan against the “Windsurfer” ad, the campaign suggests that not only is the Bush ad “juvenile and tasteless,” so too his Iraqi war plan ill-equipped to address the “quagmire.” In the end, such a message furthers the Kerry campaign mantra that George Bush is ill-equipped to serve as commander-in-chief—the ad demonstrates his lack of maturity. Kerry, of course, offers a “new direction” as the ad begins with an American flag waving across the screen that serves as the backdrop throughout, and ends with a rapid close-up of Kerry speaking to a rally of cheering citizens.

"What began with a mocking image of John F. Kerry pursuing one of his favorite pastimes erupted yesterday into a bitter airwaves battle in which the Democratic presidential nominee tied President Bush to 1,000 U.S. deaths in Iraq and the beheading of two Americans this week. The president's campaign struck first with an ad in which Kerry is windsurfing and is made to look slightly ridiculous by editing that has him moving right, left and back again as words on the screen accuse him of taking conflicting positions.”

“SENATOR John Kerry tried reintroducing himself last week with a new speech against the Iraq war, but he promptly ran into an old problem. To Democrats, it was a fresh, tough speech that put him in good position to challenge President Bush in this week's debate. To Republicans, it was a familiar opportunity. They gleefully labeled it Mr. Kerry's ninth different position on Iraq and put up a commercial showing him windsurfing to the strains of the ''Blue Danube'' waltz while a narrator dismissed his Iraq policies as going ''whichever way the wind blows.

"By sticking to their theme of Mr. Kerry as flip-flopper, Republicans have put him in a bind: he could use a new message to move up in the polls, but any new message leaves him vulnerable to accusations of inconsistency. How do you reposition a candidate whose commonly perceived weakness, fairly or not, is his penchant for repositioning? And how do you do it so late in the campaign?

"Democrats say that a turnaround is still possible in five weeks, and so do some experts who may have a more realistic view of the job -- advertising executives experienced in reviving troubled brands. But Madison Avenue 's masters of image makeover say it will take a simple, emotionally appealing message, the kind that has eluded the Kerry campaign so far.

“The most devastating feature of the Bush campaign's latest attack ad against John Kerry is not its catalogue of the Massachusetts senator's supposedly shifting positions on Iraq . It is the image of a grinning, gangly 60-year-old in a wetsuit windsurfing across the Nantucket Sound.

"The advertisement has posed one of the central questions of this election: Are Americans ready for a president who windsurfs - a solitary recreational activity perceived as elitist?

"The ad was the latest case in which athletics have coloured the campaign narrative. Both Mr Kerry and President George W. Bush have used sports both to sell themselves to voters, and to reach audiences who might otherwise not be tuned in to the campaign.”

"If John Kerry loses the presidential election, he may well rue the day that he took up windsurfing.

"The Bush camp has turned his watersporting ability against him in a campaign advert that demonstrates a point they want branded on every voter's mind.…

"The undeniable message was that Mr. Kerry is a wimpy intellectual with fancy, European tastes, and the President is a tough guy who rides out across the Texan landscape, sticking to his guns.

"Mr. Kerry is to many people a Vietnam war hero, an avid hunter and a sophisticated thinker. But Democrats have failed to match a Republican ability to turn even his strengths into weaknesses.

"Republicans repeat their simple "flip-flop" attack daily. They are counting on television viewers not to interrupt dinner long enough to get the context, for example, that Mr. Kerry backed Mr. Bush's decision to go to war but opposed a massive spending Bill for the troops because he did not like the way the money was being raised."

"McKinnon said the idea for the advertisement came to him virtually the moment he saw the footage on the news, toward the start of the Republican convention in New York . Now, nearly a month later, a central question for both sides is: Will Republicans succeed in continuing to portray Kerry as a flip-flopper, and is that enough to block any potential turnabout in the polls? Or could the Democratic challenger, by focusing on serious problems in Iraq , succeed in making Bush and Iraq the focus for the remaining 40 days of the campaign?

"The Kerry campaign, in an unusually swift response to the Bush advertisement, attacked the president as being frivolous and cavalier with the windsurfing advertisement at a time of tragedy.

"And Kerry officials launched a new advertisement of their own, titled "Juvenile," in which a narrator says: "One thousand US casualties. Two Americans beheaded just this week. The Pentagon admits terrorists are pouring into Iraq ."

"It continues: "In the face of the Iraq quagmire, George Bush's answer is to run a juvenile and tasteless attack ad."

"Mike McCurry, a senior spokesman for Kerry, demanded that Bush pull the "shameful" ad off the airwaves, accusing the president of taking a "lighthearted approach to the war in Iraq ."

"No argument is more central to the Republican attack on Sen. John Kerry than the assertion that the Democrat has flip-flopped on Iraq .

"President Bush, seated beside Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, said Tuesday: "My opponent has taken so many different positions on Iraq that his statements are hardly credible at all.

"The allegation is the basis of a new Bush campaign TV ad that shows the Democratic senator from Massachusetts windsurfing to the strains of a Strauss waltz as a narrator intones: "Kerry voted for the Iraq war, opposed it, supported it and now opposes it again.

"Yet an examination of Kerry's words in more than 200 speeches and statements, comments during candidate forums and answers to reporters' questions does not support the accusation.

"As foreign policy emerged as a dominant issue in the Democratic primaries and later in the general election, Kerry clung to a nuanced, middle-of-the road -- yet largely consistent -- approach to Iraq . Over and over, Kerry enthusiastically supported a confrontation with Saddam Hussein even as he aggressively criticized Bush for the manner in which he did so."

“I think what the ad does -- it's a very serious ad that points out that his campaign and his policies are rudderless, that, in fact, there's no sense of direction that you can predict or understand. The fact of the matter is, he has had multiple different positions, as many as seven, eight, nine, 10, on Iraq . And then he comes out this week and says he has an entirely new position, but that he's only had one position. And the position that he takes, of course, is one of defeat and retreat and also in essence says that we would have been safer, the world would have been safer if Saddam Hussein had remained contained within Iraq."

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