Theresa May once accused her own party of being the ‘nasty party’. But the Tory party is sweetness and light compared to Republican operatives. These are the people who start with unpromising raw ingredients. Their party represents the interests of a tiny minority of the electorate. And in the Bushes they have worked with two of the least qualified presidential candidates in recent history. Both were professional gladhanders. Bush senior’s career as ambassador to the UN and China, Republican chair and vice president was more or less a long chain of dinners. Meanwhile, his son was a kind of mascot for oil companies who wanted to tout their political influence, rising eventually to the largely ceremonial role of Texas governor. So Republicans are not just skilled operators. They are political alchemists who can transform third-rate candidates, standing on a special interest ticket, into presidents.
The Conservatives will have been watching what happened over the Atlantic hungrily. Whatever else he is, Michael Howard is a more qualified candidate for high office than George Bush, and he will be wondering what the same alchemy can do for him. So, what are the techniques used by Karl Rove, dubbed Bush’s brain?
Above all, this is the politics of attack and personal destruction. Fire off so many negatives that even those who agree with your opponent’s message feel that they cannot vote for him. They attacked Kerry for being a ‘flip-flopper’, meaning that he switched his position on issues. This was a well-chosen jibe. It allowed them to present Kerry as a man unsuited to leadership. It took advantage of his years in the Senate, where Kerry, like any parliamentarian, was obliged to straddle several issues and make pragmatic choices. In fact, Bush’s status as the empty candidate, the man with no public past, became an advantage to him. Because Bush has never really done anything, there was nothing to attack him on, except his previous alcohol and drug problems, which the born-again Bush could simply refer to his personal saviour, while making Kerry look like a heel.
So far, there is little new for Howard to learn except choose your line of attack well, anticipate and neutralise the counter-attack and get all your supporters to stick to it with robotic discipline. The results are clear. In Democracy Corps’ focus groups, the phrase ‘flip-flop’ comes through on people’s perception of Kerry with sickening regularity. It is a clever phrase, like ‘double whammy’ was for the Tories in 1992.
But this is just the visible tip of the iceberg. Below the surface a vast, scurrilous attack impugned Kerry’s service in the US Navy. One of Kerry’s great selling points in the Democrat primaries was that he had a distinguished frontline service record in Vietnam. This contrasted with the record of Bush and many of his cronies, who ducked overseas service altogether. As many as a third of US households contain a veteran and the public had a sense that their nation was at war. This was to be Kerry’s trump card. The Democrats should have known better.
The dark genius of Rove is to attack the opposition’s greatest strength as well as trying to increase their weaknesses. To call a senator a flip-flopper is obvious. To attack a war hero on his record is not. However, Rove has form here. Al Gore, when limbering up for the 2000 campaign, worried that his weakness was that he was seen as a little too earnest, too dull and a little too much of a boy scout. He would end it lampooned and pilloried as a brazen liar. Rove uses what we can call the ‘Bush Telegraph’ to spread the negative message. It involves disseminating salacious stories through rightwing radio shows, internet gossips like Matt Drudge and through proxies until the story takes on a life of its own, reported as a controversy in the mainstream media and the stuff of late-night chat show jokes. Gore never said he invented the internet, but it soon became quoted as a fact that he did. The Bush Telegraph is fast, efficient and deniable.
Shortly after the election, rightwing commentator Pat Buchanan lauded the role of the ‘Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’, a shady front group that attacked Kerry’s record: ‘[They] began not with millions of dollars, but a couple hundred thousand dollars and with I and a few others, running these ads on our shows, arguing it, debating it, with Kerry sitting over there refusing to answer, as this thing percolated up from the bottom, all the way up to where the big media had to cover it.’
Buchanan fails to mention that those dollars came from Bush supporters in Texas. By creating pseudo-scandals throughout the campaign, the right achieved maximum leverage. Kerry, like Gore, was too slow in answering charges he thought ridiculous.
Has Michael Howard got anything to learn here? Think of all the coverage attracted by a paper-thin organisation like Migrationwatch, or the coverage given to Adam Price’s impeachment motion, a piece of pure political theatre. For our journalists, news is what’s in the paper. The next election is ripe for Bush Telegraph methods. Labour strategists, worried about Rove techniques, need to expect attack from two sides. The above the water ‘flip-flop’ attack may come on trust or delivery or tax – perceived Labour weak points. The Bush Telegraph attack might be directed at Labour’s strengths: its compassion or its economic management – and we may not see it coming until it’s upon us.
By 2 November the majority of the US electorate remained convinced that George Bush was doing a bad job and that the country was on the wrong track. But it seems they also felt that there was really no choice at the election. Kerry was such a compromised figure, at once indecisive and wholly committed to destroying America’s way of life, that they had no choice. They were hoping for an election. Thanks to Karl Rove’s genius and Democrat hesitancy, they did not get one.