President Bush still refuses to specifically condemn the anti-Kerry ads from “Swift Boat Veterans for ‘Truth'”. Instead, he today said, “I think Senator Kerry served admirably and he ought to be proud of his record.”
It doesn’t take very much imagination — nor a conspiracy theorist — to see the obvious: the Bush campaign is using thinly disguised attack dogs to take down an opponent, while at the same time giving the president a blanket of plausible deniability (this White House is very good at that), letting him go out and say nice things — but not too nice — about his opponent. The end result is that the opponent is still damaged, but Bush hopes that people will think he’s a nice guy who’s above the dirty tricks.
Of course, the other side is creating nasty ads as well; there are two major differences at play here. First, Kerry has specifically condemned some of those ads; second, the majority of those ads are completely true, unlike the anti-Kerry ads.
Meanwhile, Mac points out that the Bush campaign has been sending letters to television stations:
[…] It is completely false and without any evidence that the Bush “campaign supports a front group attacking John Kerry’s military record,” as the Kerry ad states. The Bush-Cheney campaign flatly rejects this baseless allegation of illegal coordination between Bush-Cheney ’04 and a group called Swiftboat Veterans for Truth. The ad running on your station contains this false and libelous charge. Coordination with Swiftboat Veterans for Truth would be a violation of federal campaign finance laws. 11 C.F.R. 109.21.
Notably, although the letter goes on in a rambling way about how the Bush campaign has nothing to do with the ad, etc., there is not a single word in the letter saying that the campaign is against the ad, nor do they make any comments asking stations not to air it. They’re basically saying that stations can air it because it’s not from the campaign. Instead, they’re telling stations that the Kerry rebuttal ad is illegal and that
The Kerry campaign is hiding behind the law which does not permit your station to reject this false advertising by a candidate. But your station can insure that the record is clear in your total program. We ask that you to do that.
In other words, you scratch our back, we’ll scratch yours.
