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Clinton did a really great job answering attacks and he rightly deserves credit for it. However, going forward, it's important to really look at the difference in the level of attacks. Clinton was hit SEQUENTIALLY with a variety of attacks that targeted (supposed) problems in his character and past. He blew each one out of the water, sometimes more through the force of his personality than anything else.
This year, when that was the pattern (in the spring) Kerry also destroyed each slam on his record. In August, he was hit with a MASSIVE attack of hundreds of charges, propotedly from hundreds of people who served with him. There was a book, hours and hours of talk radio, cable TV etc. The volume itself to some people gave credence.
Kerry did prove that all the significant charges were lies and got the information to the MSM. A fair media would have supported Kerry and castized the slimers after several blatant lies were exposed. Instead the cable media almost took the opposite approach, that EACH claim was aired and given credence until it specificly was disproved even if the source was shown to have lied on several other points. (It was as if Kerry was guilty until proven innocent, and his good reputation wasn't given any weight nor was the bad reputation of some of his accusers taken into consideration.)
Kerry or Kerry surrogates also tried to fight the charges in a general way. They already had over 100 pages of records on his web site. They argued that the navy gave him the medals and they placed him as an aide to an Admiral when he returned to the US - a position that needed higher clearance which was ok with the officers in his chain of command (who later slimed him). The Nixon people were on tape saying they had investigated him and he was squeaky clean.
The Nixon people were also on tape as planning to destroy him. I read that as hyperbole, until I saw a show where Doug Brinkley was emphasizing what they said and what they then did - having the FBI (which reported back that he was neither violent nor doing anything wrong) follow him and tap his phone, then smearing him as (among other thing) a druggie and a subversive when he ran for office in 1972, causing a toxic climate where Kerry and his wife had their tires slashed and rocks thrown through their house windows - on landing near their daughter's cradle.
Given the length the Nixon administration went to destroy a 27 year old war hero because he successfuly spoke out against their policies, it is impossible to believe that they wouldn't have checked with at least a few of his reporting officers for anything - no matter how minor - they could use against him. From this background, the media should have reasonably assumed that Kerry's war record was what it appeared to be.
Even in hindsight, it is not clear how Kerry could have dealt with this - almost everything would have some downside. For example, let's say he would have gone on a newshow with Brinley and maybe a few of his crew members and answered questions. It would then have been argued that it would appear that he was defensive and it was as if he was on trial. Also, any small misstatement he made about what he did in 1968/1969 would be blown out of proportion and called a lie. (Consider the whole Cambodia nonsense - The SBVT took a Senate floor speech (from the late 80s), where Kerry, warning against covert actions in Central America, alluded to the comaparable situation in VN where soldiers were ordered to cross the border in to a neutral country. He said Nixon and talked about Dec 1968, clearly an error but not a lie. The error was also totally irrelevent to the point he was making and Kerry would likely have corrected it if anyone had pointed out the discrepancy.)
For another candidate, the question might be how to we play "Rove" and design a smear attack. With Kerry, they took things that should have been strengths and smeared them into liabilities. (his war record, his athletisism, and Teresa( a briliant woman with her own record of accomplishments)) Even then, because they MADE STUFF UP its's harder to have responses on the shelve. (On a stupider level, how do you deal with the he's orange, he looks French, he's a metrosexual stuff. As Kerry wasn't orange, a metrosexual, or of any French heritage (which incidently is not illegal, immoral, or bad) and these charges were just floated into a waiting media, a campaign looks almost stupid denying them.)
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