Works for Me

Bush Planning August Attack Against Kerry

President Bush's campaign plans to use the normally quiet month of August for a vigorous drive to undercut John Kerry by turning attention away from his record in Vietnam to what the campaign described as an undistinguished and left-leaning record in the Senate.

Mr. Bush's advisers plan to cap the month at the Republican convention in New York, which they said would feature Mr. Kerry as an object of humor and calculated derision.Entering a four week run-up to the unusually late Republican convention, Mr. Bush's aides said they had laid out a week-by-week in plan in which Mr. Bush would talk about his accomplishments and his second-term agenda. But they said they would also try to blunt what Democrats and Republicans said was a successful four-day Democratic convention focused on Mr. Kerry's veteran credentials by turning attention from what they described as his brief four-month tour in Vietnam to his 20 years in Washington.

This seems reasonable. Yes, Kerry served in Viet Nam and he deserves credit for it. However, the convention skipped the part of his life that is most important in terms of determining what kind of president he will be: his career in politics.

And this strikes me as silly:

"The research we've done shows that the Bush campaign has come right up to the edge and probably now crossed the line in being too negative," said Geoff Garin, a pollster for the Democratic Party. He asserted that Mr. Bush was in something of a strategic box, under pressure to try to turn back any Kerry rise by attacking him, but in danger of alienating undecided voters who he said already perceived the Republicans as too negative.

Making factual statements about an opponent's record isn't being negative. Kerry has the right to question Bush's time in office, and Bush has the right to question Kerry's record. And we go through this "oh, the campaigns are so negative" every four years--time to get a new script, fellahs.