It’s A Small World

Long-time Bush/Cheney campaign attorney Benjamin Ginsberg resigns due to his link with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Undoubtedly Mr. Ginsberg provided counsel on what each group could and could not legally do–a service not to be confused with “coordination.”
Despite the egg-on-the-face nature of this disclosure, I suspect the folks at Bush/Cheney central are happy with the media coverage this issue continues to generate. Why? Because it continues to focus attention on the campaign system, not the truth.
Since day one the Rove-orchestrated strategy in responding to the swift boat ads is to divert attention away from the ads and place it on the groups sponsoring the ads. Why? Two reasons. First it allows the Swift Boat Veterans to continue to do their “dirty work” circulating unsubstantiated charges against Kerry, while Bush appears to be above it all. “We don’t think anyone should be running such adds” . . . wink, wink. But just as important, it also generate negative media attention to 527s, where the “Democratic” side of the campaign has a huge advantage over Republicans.
So now, instead of discussing whether the swifties are truthful or liars (or worse yet, actual issues affecting Americans), a huge amount of media time has been consumed in a confusing he said/she said discussion of 527s, which is likely to leave the average viewer thinking that:

(1) All 527s must be bad, and
(2) Kerry is benefiting from this dirty political tactic much more than Bush.

Unfortunately, the Kerry campaign has done poor job handling this entire episode. First, it was slow in initally responding to the Swift Boat charges. Presumably, it assumed the news media would serve as a reasonable filter and the ads would go no where. But by now everyone should know that the right wing can turn up the political noise whenever it wants to.
Once it was clear this story did have legs, the Kerry campaign should have focused with laser-like precision on discrediting the charges and those raising them. Instead, it took an indirect approach, apparently thinking it could have the media pressure Bush into quashing the ads. Another miscalculation of the media. The primary reporting 24 hour news provides today is one-side-says-versus-the-other-side-says coverage; the truth is a secondary concern. So within the first couple days it should have been clear that this vague “denounce the smear” tactic wasn’t going to work. Yet team Kerry is still attempting it, and we’ve consequently seen this issue being framed by the Bush campaign for the past week.
This swift boat story has lasted so long that it may now be impossible to kill it with a factual response. I’d rather not see the campaign go this way, but perhaps the only way to put these Vietnam attacks to bed is to fight fire with fire and revive the questions about Bush’s own military record. I’d like to see a campaign based on legitimate issues. But it’s becoming clear that Bush will run an attack-based campaign. And one can sustain only so many punches without swinging back.