magazine report

Target: Kerry’s Shrum, CBS’ Rather

September 14, 2004

There’s some good stuff in the newsmagazines this week, including Time‘s interview with John Kerry. (Most of the best quotes have gotten plenty of play elsewhere, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t call attention to Kerry’s pandering to the 15-year-old-boy vote with his use of the word “stoked.”) In another story in the same issue, Michael Duffy and Karen Tumulty characterize Kerry as trying “to present a picture of unworried resolve,” before criticizing the Kerry campaign as an undisciplined “floating five-ring circus” that has not articulated a clear vision and failed to immediately hit back against the largely discredited allegations of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

The New Yorker‘s Ken Auletta is also probing at the weaknesses of Camp Kerry, offering up a profile of Bob Shrum that suggests the senior advisor may be in over his head. Shrum is quoted to the effect that “personal stuff like the Swift Boat stuff doesn’t work, but a negative campaign based on issues that people think are relevant does work.” As the candidate himself might say: “Would that it were, Bob, would that it were.” (Apologies to Jon Stewart.) Auletta paints Shrum as a master speechwriter who has been unable to keep pace with the Bush campaign in areas like rapid-response or clear-cut campaign theme. (He notes that until August the Bush team had four people watching multiple televisions at campaign HQ, whereas Kerry had one volunteer watching three TV’s and scribbling notes. And whereas the Kerry campaign had collected two million web addresses and 500,000 web volunteers, their counterparts at Bush headquarters had compiled six million web addresses and a million volunteers.)

And then there’s this, from Howard Dean advisor and former Jimmy Carter media manager Jerry Rafshoon: “Shrum is an example of what’s wrong with the political-consultant culture. It’s a profitable business for so many people. He has one campaign, a populist us-versus-them campaign. It’s the same campaign over and over. He’s a mercenary. He’d like you to think he’s an idealist.”

Back to the newsmags: Newsweek‘s cover, “The Slime Campaign,” alleges that this has become “the most vituperative presidential campaign since the divisive days of Richard Nixon.” (Although, it should be noted, if you go back farther — say, to the nineteenth century — this thing looks like a walk in the park.) The rest of the piece includes a primer on Bush’s National Guard service (or lack thereof), an issue that the magazine suggests will stick, whether or not the documents proffered by CBS News turn out to be forged. US News skips the documents issue but goes hard after the president, relying on its own investigation to suggest he “fell short” of fulfilling his duty and “did not comply with Air Force regulations.”

Finally, over at the Weekly Standard, Stephen F. Hayes holds forth that the forged documents kerfuffle provides “new evidence…of media incompetence.” Hayes gives a rundown of the controversy so far, and suggests steps CBS might take to rectify the situation: obtain the original memos in order to date the paper and ink, produce other documents written by Killian for comparison, and find a typewriter that could have produced the Killian memos. Meanwhile, his ostensible ideological compatriot at the National Review, Stanley Kurtz, doesn’t need any such clarification; apparently convinced that the docs are forged, he argues that Rather is sticking by his story because CBS News is more interested in preserving “its reputation for liberalism” than its reputation for fairness. “The mainstream media are now working for the Democratic party with all the enthusiasm of Wendy’s ‘unofficial spokesman,'” he concludes. Kurtz makes a case that CBS’ purported liberal stance is just shrewd marketing by executives targeting their known audience. Since anyone who believes in a liberal media bias has already departed the premises, he opines, the network is left with the remains — a bunch of baleful lefties, squinting forth from rocking chairs, with the occasional moderate or two thrown in.

As for us here at Campaign Desk, we’re not willing to give any news outlet, CBS included, credit for being that clever.

Sign up for CJR's daily email

–Brian Montopoli

Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.