Campaign '04: BLUE TRUTH, RED TRUTH

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IN A SENSE, THE CANDIDATES AND THEIR parties have only themselves to blame for the challenges they face and the power they have lost as they try to navigate this new landscape. Certainly, technology made it possible to nationalize the sense of community, help people find political soul mates and search for their personal truths online; but the political class also helped peel people apart. Both parties redrew districts to be more politically homogeneous, marginalized their centrists, elevated their flamethrowers, viewed with suspicion anyone who sounded temperate or reached across the aisle. At the same time, the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, which ended mandatory balanced coverage of politics, gave birth to talk radio, and the television universe splintered between the old networks and the new culture of cable gladiators in which opinion was more entertaining than information and cheaper to produce as well. In the face of the passionate partisan fights over President Clinton's impeachment and the 2000 Florida recount, it was no wonder people sought refuge in a section of the infosphere where certainty was possible.

Meanwhile, the 2002 McCain-Feingold law dramatically changed the way money flowed into the system and whom it flowed to. With candidates restricted to maximum donations of $2,000 from individuals and with parties no longer allowed to accept unlimited tubs of soft money, the supposedly independent 527 committees like the left-wing MoveOn Voter Fund and the Kerry-bashing Swift Boat Veterans for Truth entered the message-management game playing by their own set of rules. Together, these 527 groups have raised more than $240 million. Their ads have been edgier, uglier and arguably more effective than anything the candidates or parties have unleashed in years. Some, like the attacks on the candidates' military records, show real people testifying to the candidates' flaws in a kind of mockumentary style that further blurs the truth.

When MoveOn debuted its latest ad last week, the two sides instantly fought over its message. In the TV spot, a soldier holds his rifle above his head as he sinks up to his chest in the desert quicksands; a narrator remarks, "George Bush got us into this quagmire. It will take a new President to get us out." Bob Dole, who chairs Bush's veterans coalition, charged that "depicting an American soldier in effect surrendering in the battle against the terrorists is beyond the pale." MoveOn officials insisted that the soldier was not surrendering and that the ad was designed to highlight a deteriorating situation that the Administration has denied.