Rather's Journal: Clearing The Bar
CBS News Anchor Dan Rather offers personal insight and observations from the convention.
Boston - Democratic Convention, Day Four - July 29, 2004
All week we've been hearing that John Kerry needed to make the speech of his life. And about a quarter of the way in, when trying to make the case that his Democratic party is an optimistic party, John Kerry hit his stride ... and just may have cleared the high bar that has been set for him. The hall wanted to love the speech and, after a point, they clearly did. But they were the choir for Kerry's preaching. So how did Kerry's address play to America at large? We'll soon find out.
It may be worth remembering that, in the first three days of the 2000 Democratic Convention, Al Gore didn't get any real upward movement in the polls. But after the fourth night—after Gore's speech—he did get a bounce. We can almost certainly expect the same to happen here. For the moment, the Democratic leadership is trying to play down expectations while Republicans are building them up — a 12-point bounce has been predicted — in the hopes that the reality will fall well short.
Generally speaking, the record indicates that in modern American politics, he (or she) who begins negative campaigning first, hits the hardest with it, does the most of it and stays with it for the longest time usually wins.
It's not a hard and fast rule. There have been exceptions. And it is true that a majority of people consistently tell pollsters that they don't like negative campaign. That's what they say. But the record is there: attack campaigning has won more than it has lost over the past half-century. The advent of the television age has been important factor in this.
So now back to this convention and its planners' decision to accentuate the positive, and keep the negative either subtle or couched well within the positive—the relative lack, in historic terms, of so-called "red meat" in John Edwards's vice presidential speech being a prime example. Their bet is that times and public attitudes have changed, especially since 9/ll, and that what focus groups, marketing surveys and opinion polling now tell them about opposition to negative campaigning is—unlike in the past—now true. It's a gamble. As was Kerry's great focus on national security in at least the first half of his speech.
And it's also worth noting that at their convention the Democrats did not dwell upon, if indeed they even mentioned, questions about Vice President Cheney and the Halliburton connection. Enron was mentioned once, but only once, by our very unofficial count—during the entire convention. One high-ranking Democratic consultant explained these subjects were omitted because the party was wary of being seen as "anti-business." If the party's liberal base was upset by this, we didn't hear much about that, either…such are the benefits of Democrats' newfound unity of purpose.
My CBS News colleague Byron Pitts reports that Kerry is a rather unusually superstitious person. For example, Byron says, Kerry carried in his pockets for his acceptance speech: an old four-leaf clover medallion that he has carried for years, a small cross, and his old service identification "dog tags" from Vietnam. The dog tags are still partially covered with dark tape, used to keep them from clanging together noisily in combat (common among soldiers, Marines and all others in combat to this day). Kerry says he's carried them always since his fighting along Vietnam's river jungles.
Among the better speeches leading up to Kerry's tonight was that of Senator Joe Biden of Delaware. Biden is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and even many Republicans say he has worked hard to make himself one of the most knowledgeable people in government about foreign policy.
You could regard Biden's speech tonight as his application to Secretary of State in a possible Kerry administration. Lots of hot competition for that. Longtime, onetime State Department power Richard Holbrooke certainly would like the theoretical job, too and clearly would have a shot. Ditto New Mexico Governor and former U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson, who was chosen by Kerry to chair the Convention. New York's Bob Rubin, former Treasury Secretary, sometimes is mentioned in the same way. The list is long. Biden's name now appears to be on it.
Finally, there was a man on stage tonight who proved he is ready to be president—and his name was Willie Nelson. For my money, any man who can sing "Living In The Promised Land" like that merits serious consideration.
I hope you've enjoyed these jottings, and thanks for reading…look for the "Rather Journal" to return in just a few weeks when we join the Republicans in New York.