Gotta love the NYT...

[insein]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/p...600&en=3f33830bd4b75372&ei=5065&partner=MYWAY

Bush Planning August Attack Against Kerry
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and ROBIN TONER

Published: August 1, 2004


ASHINGTON, July 31 — 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.

The summer campaign plans described by aides to Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry, who is in the midst of a two-week cross-country bus tour, suggest that August is no longer the slow and sleepy month it once was in presidential campaigns. Campaign aides described the period this year as an opportunity to shift the dynamic for their campaigns, because the race is so tight and because voters appear to be paying attention to what is going on.

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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 gives us a chance to lay out an agenda, to tell people what he wants to do over the next four years," said Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior political adviser. "We need, as we go into the convention, to put more of an emphasis on our agenda. But we still need to explain the war on terror and we need to offer a contrast with Senator Kerry."

Mr. Kerry's campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, said: "It's going to be an unusually contested month. What we're going to do is try to continue the momentum we have coming out of the convention."

In a sign of the intensity leading up to the convention in New York, aides to Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry said they had no plans to suspend campaigning during the Olympics, a two-week stretch starting Aug. 13 that aides to both men had once assumed would force a respite on the campaign, as the nation's attention turned to Greece. "That's a two-week period in the middle of August; I don't think we can afford to do that," said Matthew Dowd, a senior Bush adviser, in a remark echoed by senior aides to Mr. Kerry.

Mr. Bush is planning to spend upward of $30 million on television advertising over the next four weeks. Democrats are looking to try to match Mr. Bush's effort with spending by independent Democratic committees not directly linked to the Kerry campaign.

The traditional reason for the August slowdown has been to save money and energy at a time when it is thought that voters are not paying particularly close attention to the campaign. One of the most famous examples of an August political recess, at least in political circles, was when another Massachusetts Democrat running for president, Michael S. Dukakis, spent much of August 1988 at home and returned to the campaign to find that much of the lead he had enjoyed over Mr. Bush's father coming out of the Democratic convention had evaporated.

Mr. Bush's aides said they were determined to use the weeks ahead to highlight Mr. Kerry's 20-year record in the Senate, using votes he has cast and what they described as his lack of accomplishments to portray him as ineffective, ideologically out of step, and a slacker for missing crucial votes while campaigning.

"He has 20 lost years," Mr. Dowd said. "It's amazing." Mr. Kerry's voting record - he has cast more than 6,000 votes in all - has long been considered vulnerable by Democrats and Republicans, not just because it can be characterized as liberal, but also because it is so vast and touches on so many complicated and politically fraught issues over so many years. The decision by Mr. Bush to turn on Mr. Kerry's voting record, while hardly a surprise, underlines why members of Congress are sometimes viewed as less than ideal candidates for president.

The decision by Mr. Bush's aides to continue the attacks on Mr. Kerry up to and including the convention is in keeping with the aggressive tone the White House has struck against Mr. Kerry from the moment he effectively won his nomination in March.

Some Democrats and even some Republicans have argued that such attacks have less power than they once did, and could backfire on Mr. Bush.

When has bush EVER attacked anyone personally? All he has done is bring to light Kerry's Record. If we can't make a decision about someone based on what they have done in office, then what the hell do we elect people for?