From Jonathon Alter of Newsweek:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5853704/site/newsweek/The Democrats' 'Toughness Gap': The GOP throws 'red meat.' The PC Dems are loath to offendBy Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
Sept. 6 issue - Shortly before the 1992 election, a World War II veteran approached NEWSWEEK and other major media outlets with an unsubstantiated story about how he said he saw President George H.W. Bush strafing unarmed Japanese fishermen in the Pacific when both men were young Navy fliers. None of us published or broadcast the explosive allegations until after the election, and if we had, Bill Clinton's campaign indicated it would have denounced them.
The same thing happened in 2000, when a book called "Fortunate Son" alleged youthful illegal activities by George W. Bush. No one from Al Gore's campaign would touch the story until later, and the book was withdrawn by the publisher.
Contrast those with the case of the Swift Boat veterans, whose thoroughly discredited accounts of John Kerry's Vietnam service have been treated with re-spect and whose book is now a best seller. While Kerry has repudiated an ad made by MoveOn.org that ridicules Bush and Dick ("I had other priorities") Cheney for skipping a war they hypocritically favored, Bush has repeatedly refused to do the same on his side, which gives the news media license to take the whole thing seriously. Bush told The New York Times last week that he thought Kerry was telling the truth, but he still wouldn't denounce the ads attacking Kerry as a liar. (His call for a ban on all "527" independent ads is a transparent dodge.) So much for any sense of decency. The man who was once an inept right-wing president but a nice guy is now just an inept right-wing president.
<snip>
For all the hand-wringing, going negative works, as Bush's uptick in the polls indicates. So if playing rough is just part of politics, why are the Democrats so much worse at it? Even when they win, Democrats never quite close the toughness gap.
One example: Ten years ago, Kerry briefly considered supporting a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax, then withdrew the idea. Bush now has an ad up savaging him for it.
Three weeks ago, Bush floated his own trial balloon favoring a national sales tax. When he withdrew it, the Kerry campaign said, "Oh, OK," and declined a chance to air ads blasting the president for planning to tax every shopping trip to the mall.<snip>
Usually the toughness gap is the Democrats' own fault. Because liberals are temperamentally self-critical, they tend to see more grays than black-and-whites. Republicans are better at closing ranks. If Kerry were the GOP candidate this year, hardly anyone in his party would be trashing him privately or predicting defeat, as some Democrats are doing.
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