Bringing The Two Together

The Decembrist makes an extremely valuable insight into the way the intersection between issues and character help people to make decisions. His advice to the Kerry campaign is, I think, very valuable:

I don’t think the problem with Kerry is that he talks about issues when he should be talking about character. That was Al Gore’s problem. I think the problem is that the Kerry brain has split into an issues half, and a character half, and the two sides aren’t communicating. The character half controlled the convention, and focused on Vietnam. Fine, but what did that say about how he would deal with Iraq? And the issues half has plans — entirely good ones, even for Iraq. But those proposals don’t reinforce any sense of the kind of person Kerry is, and how he would cope in a crisis.

I don’t know enough about the internal politics of the Kerry world (in which I know almost no one) to speculate whether one side is represented by Bob Shrum or Michael Whouley or John Sasso or whoever. But whatever the factions are, they have to get it together. The issues and scheduling side of the campaign has to stop picking an issue of the day, based on the polls. It has to start trying to choose some issues that really emphasize whatever it is that they want to say about Kerry as a person that contrasts him to Bush (honest, brave, forward-seeing, smart, common-sense, independent, cares-about-ordinary-people — pick one and reinforce it) and then use those issues to tell that story over a period of a week or more. And where they want to attack Bush on either character or issues, pick a point that best emphasizes a single point that they want to emphasize to draw the contrast with Kerry. That means, among other things, saying no to all the issue-advocacy groups that are besieging the campaign, brandishing polls and begging Kerry to devote a day to their cause.

The issue advocates need to be bum rushed out the door. Kerry is hanging in there in the polls (contrary to the news which has suddenly decided that outlying polls are the best guage of the state of play) but he needs some focus as we go into the stretch to pull this out. Relying on the debates isn’t enough because you simply cannot depend upon the press corpse to properly report the event. What they can do is try to find that sweet spot and hammer it home so that when the debates arrive your storyline has been set.

“Brave” is the quality I’d choose and I’d hammer Bush for not being brave enough to fight off the special interests, the neocons, the tax cut zealots and the extremists in his own party. Kerry volunteered to fight a war, take on criminals as a prosecutor and big corporate interests as a Senator and says “bring It on” to smear artists and dirty tricksters who’ve tried and failed to take him down. (You don’t even have to mention the guard stuff. The implication is clear.) You could tie this in to terrorism, health care, Iraq, the economy and judicial nominations. Any of those issues can be framed as Bush being unable to stand up and be his own man. You could even use the fact that he hasn’t vetoed one bill as evidence of his cowardice in facing the congress.

But, regardless of what character trait they choose to highlight, the key is to stick with it and hammer it home relentlessly. Bush is vulnerable on almost everything but I think it it could be quite helpful for Kerry to focus on one character contrast that can illustrate the whole enchilada.