"Ruthless" Rudy Attacks Kerry -- September 1, 2004 -- TimesWatch.org

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Times Watch for September 1, 2004

"Ruthless" Rudy Attacks Kerry

After barely mentioning it in their initial coverage of Rudy Giuliani's convention speech, the Times unloads on Giuliani's "ruthless" attack on John Kerry in Wednesday's edition.

In the strongly headlined "Loves Dogs, Hates Kerry: A Two-Prong Campaign Tactic," Adam Nagourney writes: "With Rudolph W. Giuliani's pummeling of John Kerry on Monday and last night's softer tribute to President Bush by Laura Bush, the Bush campaign has laid out for the convention what White House aides said was the two-sided template of its election strategy. The first part is to batter Mr. Kerry, as Mr. Giuliani did with almost ruthless abandon to open the convention, mocking Mr. Kerry as devoid of convictions, weak on national defense and politically unprincipled. It was a hammer that will be picked up tonight when Vice President Dick Cheney gives his acceptance speech, Mr. Bush's aides said yesterday. The second part of the Janus strategy was on display yesterday, as Mrs. Bush--in a day of television interviews culminating in a prime-time speech to the convention at Madison Square Garden--offered tender testimony about her husband of 26 years."

The story's cut-out line is equally vehement in its portrayal of a harshly attacking Republican convention: "The Bush strategy is to vilify Kerry. Compassionately."

Nagourney passes along Democratic gripes while again working in the paper's new favorite word: "Mr. Bush is also maneuvering in an environment in which Democrats have been complaining about what they describe as Mr. Bush's unethical campaign practices. They argue that the Bush family has long resorted to brutal political tactics when cornered and is known for its parallel campaign tracks, one on the high road, and one on what Democrats would call the low road. Those accusations have grown particularly strong in the last month, in which Mr. Kerry has been the subject of unsubstantiated charges by veterans about his Vietnam combat medals. Mr. Bush and his top campaign aides insist they have had nothing to do with, and do not approve of, the attacks that started earlier this summer. But Democrats said Mr. Bush's wife and father, in interviews during the convention, fanned the story by suggesting that at least some of the charges had merit. And Karl Rove, his senior political adviser, denounced Mr. Kerry in a CNN interview yesterday for Senate testimony he gave after returning from Vietnam in which he recounted reports of atrocities by American soldiers."

Nagourney gives Democrats opportunity for rebuttal, something the Times largely failed to grant to Republicans during the Democratic convention in Boston: "'They're doing the same thing they always do,' said Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Kerry's communications director, referring in particular to the remarks by the former president. 'It's right out of their playbook.' When the Democrats held their convention in Boston, Mr. Kerry's advisers made a point of saying they were instructing speakers to refrain from going after Mr. Bush, a strategy that some Democrats questioned as the memory of Mr. Kerry's convention faded and polls showed Mr. Bush back on the rise. By contrast, Mr. Bush's aides said they were determined to use this week tearing down Mr. Kerry, in the calculation that Mr. Bush almost certainly cannot win unless voters are convinced that they cannot vote for Mr. Kerry."

Then Nagourney again makes up for lost time in attacking Giuliani's "harsh" day-old speech: "But Democrats yesterday--noting Mr. Giuliani's scorching speech on Monday, as well as delegates wearing Band-Aids intended to mock Mr. Kerry's war wounds--suggested that Mr. Mehlman's characterization of the attacks was sanitized. Campaigns engage in endless debates over the definition of 'negative,' at least when it comes to campaigns. But there was no doubt that the harshness of Monday, with its anti-Kerry attacks made on a night framed by the memory of Sept. 11, was to a large extent replaced yesterday by a much softer tack. Toughness took a back seat to compassion. Mrs. Bush's appearance and her personal speech--about what it was like to be married to man who had sent American troops to battle--appeared intended to take the edge off Mr. Giuliani's attacks."

The opening line of Todd Purdum's front-page story Wednesday, "Upbeat Republicans Revive Bush Theme of Compassion," also looks back to Monday night's speeches: "Facing perhaps three times the television audience that saw its sharp-edged speakers on Monday, the Republican National Convention circled back last night to President Bush's winning 2000 campaign theme of 'compassionate conservatism…'"

Lastly, John Tierney and Sheryl Gay Stolberg open their convention tidbit column Political Points with this: "After Rudolph W. Giuliani's pit bull attack on Monday night, the official theme of the session last night was People of Compassion.' Then the Terminator arrived. And no girlie man was safe."

The Times wasn't nearly so frightened of "harsh" rhetoric during the Democratic convention. Former president Jimmy Carter accused Bush of "extremist" policies in his convention speech, but reporter Todd Purdum's reaction in his July 29 piece was relatively mild: "But if the party wants the public to think it has decided to 'accentuate the positive' in Johnny Mercer's famous phrase, it has not entirely eliminated the negative and there has been hour after hour of criticism both elliptical and direct. Some of the most plain-spoken came from the man from Plains, Ga., former President Jimmy Carter. Mr. Carter, a longtime Sunday school teacher, was hardly turning the other cheek when he warned Monday night that 'in the world at large, we cannot lead if our leaders mislead,' and insisted that the election would determine 'whether America will provide global leadership that springs from the unity and integrity of the American people or whether extremist doctrines and the manipulation of truth will define America's role in the world.'"

For the rest of Nagourney, click here.

For Purdum's story in full, click here.

Dick Cheney, Puppet Master

Rick Lyman Wednesday has an unfavorable profile of Vice President Dick Cheney: "Cheney Functions as Icon As Well as Lightning Rod."

Lyman's story opens by comparing Cheney to another Republican vice president unpopular with the press: "Four years ago, Dick Cheney was the consummate Washington insider, offering reassurance to voters and gravitas to a Republican ticket headed by an untested governor from Texas. But the vice president who takes the stage at Madison Square Garden tonight is now not only a conservative icon, but also a campaign flashpoint, perhaps the most controversial running mate since Dan Quayle."

Lyman lets the Democrats gloat: "Kerry campaign officials say that simply by mentioning the vice president or Halliburton, the military contractor he once headed, they can reinforce an image of a Republican administration that has favored the interests of the rich and the powerful….It may seem counterintuitive that a controversial vice president whose unfavorability ratings have nearly tripled to 37 percent from 13 percent in August 2000, could be a campaign asset. The key, Republican strategists say, is that Mr. Cheney remains highly popular among the party's voters, where his unfavorability rating was 7 percent last month….Democratic critics view Mr. Cheney as an important proponent of the very policies that most enrage them: Iraq and a tax-cut plan that they believe favors the wealthiest Americans. 'Today, he's nothing but a liability,' a spokeswoman for Mr. Kerry, Stephanie Cutter, said. 'Because he symbolizes everything that's gone wrong over the last four years. He's the father of many of the divisive policies, the hand behind the special interests and a key motivator behind the invasion of Iraq.'"

Lyman lets another anti-Bush description stand without attributing it to a partisan source, as if it were conventional wisdom: "Also, the image persists of Mr. Cheney as the backstage manipulator, the guy who is pulling the president's strings and effectively running the government."

After letting Cheney adviser Mary Matalin defend Cheney, Lyman lets Democrats dismiss such defenses: "Kerry strategists say all of that is Republican bluster, intended to distract from Mr. Cheney's drag on the ticket. 'Halliburton and the breaks it got from the government, all of those no-bid contracts, have become a big issue for us, and Cheney speaks to that,' Mr. Devine said. 'Together, they speak to an even larger issue which underlies the weakness of the president right now, namely that he has represented powerful interests at the expense of ordinary people. Cheney fits into this so perfectly that all we need to do is say his name.'"

For the rest of Lyman's negative profile of puppet-master Cheney, click here.

• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Dick Cheney | Republican Convention

Context for Kerry Quotes, but None for Bush's "Gaffe"

White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller again plays up Bush's "gaffe" (when Bush said on the war on terrorism, "I don't think you can win it."). His fuller comment: "I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."

Both her story and the headline ("In Retreat, Bush Says U.S. Will Win War on Terrorism") portray Bush on the defensive over the comment.

She opens: "President Bush moved to put out a political brush fire on Tuesday with a forceful declaration to the nation's largest veterans group that the United States will win the war on terrorism and that the country will never show 'weakness or uncertainty' on his watch. A day after NBC broadcast an interview with Mr. Bush in which he said he did not think the United States could win the war against terrorism, which has become the focus of his presidency and his re-election campaign, he raced back to his optimistic statements that America will prevail….In the interview with Matt Lauer of NBC, recorded Saturday and run on Monday, Mr. Bush was asked about the war on terrorism and replied, 'I don't think you can win it.' Democrats immediately seized on the remark as defeatist and used it to begin a full day of political attacks against Mr. Bush."

Bumiller doesn't provide the rest of the quote.

The article continues with Bush quoting Kerry: "The president in turn began his own new attack on Mr. Kerry for what he said was the senator's wavering position on a Pentagon plan to move up to 70,000 troops out of Europe and Asia over the next decade. Mr. Bush announced his support for the plan on Aug. 16, and Mr. Kerry's campaign promptly criticized the realignment as dangerous, particularly the shift of about 12,000 troops from South Korea to Iraq. 'Within hours after I announced this plan, my opponent came out against it, and that's his right to do so,' Mr. Bush told the veterans. 'He's allowed to say what he believes. The only problem is that he endorsed the idea just 17 days earlier.' As the crowd laughed, he cited a segment of comments Mr. Kerry made Aug. 1 on 'This Week' on ABC. Mr. Kerry, Mr. Bush recounted, said 'I think we can significantly change the deployment of troops, not just in Iraq, but elsewhere in the world--the Korean Peninsula, perhaps, Europe, perhaps. There are great possibilities open to us, but this administration has very little imagination.' Mr. Bush then said to more laughter, 'Well, it takes a lot of imagination to come out against a position you took just 17 days earlier.' The Kerry campaign countered that the president had distorted the senator's remarks and that Mr. Kerry had preceded his comments on Aug. 1 with the caveat, 'if the diplomacy that I believe can be put in place can work.' Kerry aides said he did support redeploying troops from South Korea, but only if North Korea made concessions in talks to dismantle its nuclear weapons program."

Notice that Bumiller allows Kerry's camp to put his gaffe in context, but let's Bush's quote stand outside of its context as an unmitigated goof-up.

For the rest of Bumiller, click here.

The Republican's "Evangelical" Staging

Conservative beat reporter David Kirkpatrick gets into a closed rally for Christians conservatives and files another label-heavy (15 mentions of "conservative") story about social conservative influence in the Republican party in "A Senator's Call to 'Win This Culture War.'"

He begins by comparing Sen. Sam Brownback's comments to those from longtime liberal bugbear Pat Buchanan's "alienating" 1992 convention speech: "At a closed, invitation-only Bush campaign rally for Christian conservatives yesterday, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas called for a broad social conservative agenda notably different from the televised presentations at the Republican convention, including adopting requirements that pregnant women considering abortions be offered anesthetics for their fetuses and loosening requirements on the separation of church and state. 'We must win this culture war,' Senator Brownback urged a crowd of several hundred in a packed ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, reprising a theme of a speech by Patrick J. Buchanan from the podium of the 1992 Republican convention that many political experts say alienated moderate voters in that election."

Kirkpatrick notes: "The rally struck a very different tone from the speakers behind the lectern inside the Republican convention, where talk of national unity and cultural inclusiveness has been the rule….Before the television cameras inside the convention, the campaign has relied on a combination of moderate, pluralistic words and resonant religious atmospherics to appeal to both moderate voters and conservative Christian at once. On the first night of the convention, for example, Senator John McCain praised Islam as an honorable religion--a statement many evangelical Christians consider heretical--and two Muslim speakers invoked Allah from the stage. But at times the staging of the evening resembled an evangelical Protestant church service. Personal testimonials from the widows of Sept. 11 victims with heartfelt allusions to prayer were followed directly by a performance of the hymn 'Amazing Grace,' and other performances have included a Christian rock group, a church choir from Queens and the Boys Choir of Harlem."

Of course, the Democrats played "Amazing Grace" at their convention as part of their 9-11 tribute, something the Times didn't find worthy of noting at the time.

For the rest of David in the lion's den, click here.

• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Conservatives | David Kirkpatrick | Republican Convention

Stolberg Profiles "Zig Zag Zell"

Sheryl Gay Stolberg often profiles the members of Congress on her beat, but the tone to her Wednesday story departs from her usual favorable portrayals, perhaps because the congressman in question is Zell Miller, a Democrat giving the keynote speech tonight for Bush.

Stolberg opens "Disaffected Democrat Who Is Now a G.O.P. Dream" by rehashing name-calling directed at Miller from fellow Democrats: "Zig Zag Zell, his critics call him. Zellout. A traitor. An elephant in donkey's clothing. "They can call me anything they want," said Senator Zell Miller, the Georgia Democrat and leader of Democrats for Bush. 'It's not anything new to me.'….Democrats are trying to make sense of what many call a betrayal. In Georgia, the Democratic Party is featuring Mr. Miller's 1992 speech on a fund-raising Web site, and in television advertisements. 'Let's remember Zell for what he was, and forgive him for what he's become,' said Bobby Kahn, the state party chairman. Others have suggested that in the twilight of his political career, Mr. Miller might be off his rocker. 'It's almost schizophrenic,' said David Worley, a longtime Georgia Democratic Party activist."

Stolberg is rather more adoring of critics of President Bush, especially Republican ones. In those cases, Stolberg skips the name-calling and accusations and sticks to gushing about "candor" and straight talk.

Of moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins, she wrote: "Ms. Collins, a Maine Republican, may well have the toughest assignment in Washington: drafting legislation to overhaul the way the nation combats terrorism. Independent-minded but cautious--she will take issue with Mr. Bush in one breath but praise him in the next--she is dancing a delicate dance as chairwoman of hearings that are exposing conflicts among the White House." Regarding moderate Republican Sen. John Warner, Stolberg said: "In the Senate, Mr. Warner has demonstrated a willingness to speak his mind." Then there's the media's all-time favorite Republican (perhaps until he started campaigning heavily for George Bush) Sen. John McCain: "Mr. McCain is known for a rare quality in Washington: candor."

For the rest of Stolberg on Zell Miller, click here.

• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Sen. Zell Miller | Republican Convention | Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Kerry Slow to Respond to "Unsubstantiated" Assaults

David Halbfinger and Jodi Wilgoren on Wednesday pen "Kerry Needs to Sharpen His Attacks, Democrats Say," hinting at changes to come in the suddenly faltering Kerry campaign: "Democrats say they fear that Senator John Kerry squandered the capital from the Democratic National Convention as he spent August reeling from a frontal assault on his character and Vietnam War record, with many urging him to immediately sharpen his attack on Mr. Bush and make a more persuasive case for change."

Later, it’s the Times' favorite word to describe the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group questioning the validity of Kerry's Vietnam medals: "The arrival of the new staff members came after several weeks in which Mr. Kerry was slow to respond to an assault on his Vietnam combat record and character, with largely unsubstantiated accusations, by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."

For the rest from Halbfinger and Wilgoren, click here.

Republicans Disrespecting Veterans?

Jim Rutenberg on Wednesday stirs a controversy among Republican delegates in "Delegates Mock Kerry's Wounds, Angering Veterans," a reference to the purple, heart-shaped bandages being handed out by some delegates to mock Kerry's account of his Vietnam War medals.

Rutenberg opens: "When speakers at the Republican convention discuss Senator John Kerry's service in Vietnam, they use words like 'respect,' as Rudolph W. Giuliani did on Monday, giving nary a hint of the unsubstantiated charges by a veteran's group that Mr. Kerry lied to get his war medals, which dominated the campaign for two weeks before the convention began."

Later he writes: "Even leading Republicans said yesterday that things went a little too far when they had to publicly repudiate the actions of a delegate who was handing out adhesive bandages marked with Purple Hearts to mock Mr. Kerry's war wounds. The bandages, distributed by Morton Blackwell of Arlington, Va., included a message that read, 'It was just a self-inflicted scratch, but you see I got a Purple Heart for it.' Mr. Blackwell said he was only trying to have fun, but the Military Order of The Purple Heart, an organization that says it represents wounded veterans, was not amused."

Later Rutenberg brings up the Times' favorite line of attack against the Swifties, questioning the group's funding while glossing over the substance of the group's charges: "The Bush campaign has sought to distance itself from the Swift boat group, which got initial funding from prominent Bush supporters and legal advice from a former top outside counsel to the Bush campaign. And Bush aides said they were sticking by their refusal to question Mr. Kerry's service….Democrats accuse the Bush campaign of trying to have its cake and eat it too, by saying it has nothing to do with the group, while at the same time trying to keep the attacks on the Democratic nominee's military record alive."

For the rest of Rutenberg on support among delegates for the Swift Boat Veterans, click here.

Showing the Violent Face of Anti-Bush Protest

The Times doesn't hide the violent, ugly side of the anti-Republican protesters. Diane Cardwell and Marc Santora make the front page Wednesday pen with some of the gory details in "At Least 900 Arrested in City As Protesters Clash With Police."

"A series of demonstrations rippled across Manhattan last night when protesters tried to converge on the Republican National Convention, as a day of planned civil disobedience erupted into clashes with police officers and led to the arrest of more than 900 people. The wave of confrontations--which included a brawl with the police at the New York Public Library, marauding crowds cursing at delegates in Midtown and the detention of hundreds of protesters near ground zero--created a day of disorder in a convention week already marked by sustained protests against the Bush administration and the war in Iraq."

For the full story from Cardwell and Santora, click here.

Beethoven, Anti-Bush Protester

Music critic Allan Kozinn takes in an anti-Republican "collaborative performance piece" put on at Washington Square Church in Manhattan and files "With Voices, Drums and Even Silence, Artists Take a Stand."

Kozinn thought one piece of classical music fit right in: "In purely artistic terms, the most affecting performance was the Roerich String Quartet's incandescent reading of the slow movement from Beethoven's Quartet No. 15 (Op. 132), a work written at a time and place far from the current troubles. But Beethoven was an idealist who opposed tyranny, and in the context of a discussion about curtailed civil liberties, elective war and a striving toward empire--the subjects of several of the speeches--it seemed entirely at home."

For the rest of Kozinn, click here.

Pining for Clinton-Era Heaven

The opening lines of the A1 story from Edmund Andrews and Robin Toner, "Bush Promises: Some Fulfilled, Some Thwarted," portray the Clinton years as positively paradisiacal: "Four years ago, when the nation still seemed in an era of boundless prosperity, George W. Bush accepted the Republican nomination with an expansive promise of 'compassionate conservatism': big tax cuts, new drug benefits for the elderly, a major overhaul of Social Security and a new commitment to public education."

Only deeper into the story do they note, indirectly, that things were already turning sour during the Clinton years: "[Bush's] defenders call it a record of remarkable achievement, given that the economy was already slowing by the time he took office. The stock market bubble burst in March 2000…." Bush wasn't inaugurated until January 2001.

For the rest of Andrews and Toner, click here.

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org