The Ad That Worked

The people who keep track of these things expect 2004 to be the first billion-dollar election in American history. Yet the single most effective ad campaign of the election cycle has thus far cost only about $500,000: the campaign launched at the beginning of this month by the new anti-Kerry group, Swiftboat Veterans for Truth.

Within less than a week, polls found that half of all registered voters had heard about the Swiftboat vets' advertisements. Close to half, 44%, of all independent voters surveyed say they find the ads "credible." In the two weeks since the ads first aired, Kerry's support among veterans has collapsed by some 19 points: President Bush has now gained a 55-37 lead in this group.

You can see for yourself how effective the Swiftboat ads are. Both are posted at www.swiftvets.com. But be prepared for a bit of a wait: According to some reports, the Swiftboat vets' site is now drawing more traffic than the official Kerry-Edwards Web site, and the little group's servers have been overwhelmed.

Why has this one group drawn so much notice -- especially as compared to groups like MoveOn.org, which have outspent them by 20 or more to one?

Part of the answer is to be found in the Swiftboat vets themselves. They offer a simple and compelling message: John Kerry staked his claim to the presidency on his war record -- and the men who know that record best do not think him fit for command. John Kerry has presented himself as a hero, a man wounded while valiantly battling the Communist enemy. The Swiftboat vets counter that he is no hero. In their devastating second ad, Sellout, they first air tape of a young John Kerry alleging that U.S. forces in Vietnam committed atrocities "reminiscent of Ghengis Khan." They intersperse his voice with clips of men like Paul Galanti, an officer who spent seven years in a POW camp. Galanti says: "John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and many of my comrades in the prison camps of North Vietnam took torture to avoid saying."

Ultimately, though, it was candidate Kerry who made himself vulnerable to the Swiftboat vets, and in four different ways.

First, he has in the past exaggerated his war stories -- claiming, for example, to have been sent on a secret mission into Cambodia during Christmas 1968. The Cambodia story has been discredited by independent reporters, raising questions in even many pro-Kerry journalists' minds whether his other heroic stories might not also have been fabricated.

Second, Kerry chose to give the American public a distorted image of his personal history. In the filmed biography of his life shown at the Boston convention, and then in his own acceptance speech afterward, he told Americans he was born in Colorado, that his father was a test pilot and then a diplomat, that his mother was a lifelong supporter of the Girl Guides, that he volunteered for the Navy in 1966 and was decorated for valor, that he went on to serve as a "tough" prosecutor, and that he focused on national-security issues throughout his service as a senator. His involvement in the anti-war movement, of which he was a hugely important leader, got the barest mention.

The vast majority of Americans had never heard of John Kerry until this year. So when he explained to them that he was born in a conservative western state to a military family; that he served in the forces himself and went on to a career punishing criminals -- all these things created a certain image in their mind. When later evidence emerged to challenge that image, it didn't just affect the public perception of Kerry's past: The discovery that John Kerry hasn't been candid about his personal history has inevitably caused voters to wonder whether Kerry can be trusted in the future.

Third, Kerry left himself vulnerable by badly mishandling his response to the ads. He responded first by pursuing legal action to force the ads off the air. But Kerry's litigation strategy must have looked like an admission that he could not answer the charges -- that the ads were true. Then Kerry's running-mate John Edwards took to the airwaves to challenge George Bush to disavow the Swift vets' ads. That gesture looked weak. And it looked even weaker after President Bush yesterday graciously acceded: The independently funded ads will continue nonetheless, with Mr. Bush above the fray.

Now the Kerry campaign is challenging the integrity and reliability of the decorated swiftboat officers themselves. But that last response makes mincemeat of Kerry's argument that it is improper to question war records: He is now doing just that himself, and doing it to a man with more medals and more distinguished service.

Fourth and most important, Kerry made himself vulnerable by refusing to acknowledge his anti-war past. Throughout this campaign, Kerry has refused to reconcile the contradiction between praising Vietnam veterans as his "band of brothers" -- and his own accusations against his "brothers" back in 1971. At the convention in Boston, Kerry could have and should have done so, in much the same way that George W. Bush acknowledged and dispatched his youthful errors in his speech at Philadelphia in 2000. ("I believe in grace because I've seen it, and peace because I've felt it, and forgiveness because I've needed it.")

Kerry, however, could not bring himself to reckon with the dark passages in his own life. And the brothers he once scorned are now stepping forward to repudiate him in their turn.