An Overdose of Invective

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I have no data to support this, no focus groups or instant polls, just a gut sense: George W. Bush hurt himself when he slagged John Kerry as a Massachusetts liberal in the third presidential debate last week. "You know, there's a mainstream in American politics, and you sit right on the far left bank," he scolded. "As a matter of fact, your record is such that Ted Kennedy, your colleague, is the conservative Senator from Massachusetts." The President chuckled--heh, heh--indicating that he thought this was clever,

but he was greeted by total silence from the audience (which later laughed at a more spontaneous and self-deprecating Bush joke about his family) and from a stone-faced moderator, Bob Schieffer, who said, "Mr. President, let's get back to economic issues."

Bush's epithet slinging was a flop in all three debates. Not because the nation has taken a lurch to the left--Kennedy remains the anachronistic embodiment of a welfare-state liberalism long discarded by the American public. No, it was more likely that the President had overdosed on invective during the long, long course of this election year and the public has become inured to it. Kerry helped that process along by his demeanor throughout (with the exception of his gratuitous mention of the Vice President's gay daughter). The Senator's dignity and consistency made Bush's attacks appear mingy, inaccurate and unpresidential.

There has been a fair amount of high-minded hand wringing about the negativity of the Bush campaign this year. There are ground rules that govern the slinging of mud in politics, and the President has tested their limits. But the Bush campaign's transgressions have more often been misdemeanors rather than felonies, involving style and volume more than substance. The President has spent more than $100 million in negative advertising against Kerry, and almost all of it has been within the bounds of standard political practice. Some has been quite brilliant: the "flip-flop" assault inflated Kerry's most annoying trait--his nuance-addled hedging of political bets--into a defining character flaw. That was fair, as was the dreadful broadside of ads taking isolated Kerry votes--98 times, allegedly, for higher taxes--and telescoping them into an ideological pattern. Negative advertising is like humor. Selective exaggeration is standard, but the exaggeration must have a basis in reality. Kerry is more likely than Bush to raise taxes and increase the role of government. The Bush ads tiptoed the line that separates hyperbole from fabrication. Even Dick Cheney's rancid assertion that the U.S. would be more vulnerable to terrorist attacks if Kerry were elected had its roots in a real policy difference--the Vice President's belief that Kerry's multilateralism would lead to appeasement and thus strengthen the terrorists.