I see it didn’t take Bush/Cheney 2004 long to tap into the Reagan lovefest. I’ve noticed that in the past week they’ve shifted their TV advertising away from negative Kerry spots to an ad touting the administration’s “accomplishments.” This comes in the wake of a week of reminiscing about Reagan’s optimism. Now we see Bush on TV touting his optimism in America and decrying Kerry’s pessimism, which has “never created one job.” [Anyone who points out shortcomings in the administration’s record is obviously part of the problem.]
Bush/Cheney 2004 has spend $10s of millions thus far on attack ads and it’s barely registered in the polls. I’m not sure how much more effective this approach may be. I’m not the target audience, here, as I’ve already made up my mind on this election. But even among the under-informed public, I think self-professed optimism can only go so far in papering over incompetence. And come this fall there might be a lot to cover over.
Never mind Dumbya hasn’t created one job in the 3.5 years he’s been President.
Hmmm… not sure I agree with all of your analysis. One thing the attack ads did was raise the negative rating of Kerry. More people moved from the “don’t know” to “negative”. Does that mean Bush won those voters over? Not necessarily. But the point of those ads was to define Kerry since Kerry wasn’t defining himself. We’ll see how much it worked come November.