Taking the campaign up a notch
THE GENERAL election contest has been joined for about a month now, and so far, it's been only slightly more edifying than two tomcats brawling in the alley at midnight.
The good news for John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is that, though his standing has slipped some from its Super Tuesday highs, he remains very competitive with the Republican incumbent, despite the GOP's ad barrage.
The bad news is that Kerry has been hurt on two important fronts. Although George W. Bush fairly personifies profligate borrow-and-spend economics, the Bush camp has made some headway in branding Kerry a likely tax-hiker. It has done even better at driving home a notion of Kerry as an expedient politician willing to say whatever people want to hear.
There, the senator has leaned into a right jab. Certainly his comment on the appropriation for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- "I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it" -- has proved a gift to the Republican campaign.
On the personnel front, meanwhile, there's a new departure in a campaign that occasionally seems like something from an Agatha Christie murder mystery. Jim Margolis, the talented consultant who put together Kerry's compelling campaign video as well as some of his best primary ads, is the latest casualty, the apparent loser in a struggle with that master of political palace intrigue, Bob Shrum.
So what should the candidate do to take his campaign up a notch?
First, he needs to cast his complicated, qualified, caveated approach in the most favorable context. Even those who appreciate Kerry for his thoughtfulness would have to concede that, when it comes to the old metaphysical question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, Kerry sometimes seems able to set an entire heavenly Vienna to waltzing there.
But consider the opponent he faces: As the accounts of Paul O'Neill, the former treasury secretary, and Richard Clarke, the erstwhile counterterrorism czar, have helped illustrate, the president was so determined to oust Saddam Hussein that he went to war in Iraq without the patient exploration of alternatives or the careful consideration of the consequences that a decision of such gravity should include. The result has been a conflict that, though it has rid Iraq of a bloodthirsty tyrant, hasn't revealed either the advanced nuclear program or the stores of biochemical weapons cited as the primary justifications for action.
The bottom line for Kerry, then, should be basic: Better a president who considers all the angles than one who rushes impetuously into action, oblivious to caution's counsel.
Kerry also needs to let voters know in more concrete terms what his programs and policies would mean to their lives, something he hasn't conveyed effectively over the din of daily campaign charge and countercharge.
His health-care plan, as one example, would lower everyone's premiums by having the federal government pick up most of the cost of catastrophic cases. His Service for College plan, as another, calls for letting participants earn four years of public university tuition in exchange for two years of national service.
But it is not enough merely to have position papers posted on a website. For voters to define Kerry by his ideas, he must find a thematically appealing package for those nostrums, fit them in a prudent frame of fiscal discipline, and then hammer them home.
The more Kerry explains what opportunities his policies hold for Americans, the more voters will come to have a sense of a man with a vision of his own -- and not a politician who is simply the confusing sum of his past equivocations.
The loss of Margolis could prove a blow to that effort. But few are better at that sort of political communication than John Sasso, the Massachusetts strategic consultant who has just put his business on hold to be Kerry's point man at the Democratic National Committee. Sasso, who has spoken to friends about the respect he has for the job Mary Beth Cahill has done managing the Kerry campaign, has even, in the past, demonstrated an ability to work well with the sharp-elbowed Shrum. Which is all the more reason why Kerry should make sure that Sasso is there at the table when the campaign makes its key decisions.
Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.
