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October 23, 2004

Wolves

I'm with the rest of the blogsophere in thinking that the wolves ad the Bush campaign has out is pretty pathetic as well as misleading. To most Americans the phrase "after the World Trade Center was attacked" means September 12th 2001 but to the BC04 advertising department apparently it means 1993. Technically true but then again so is the statement "I'm not sure whether George Bush was a coke addict in his 20's"...

Anyway, regarding the Wolves ad. If I were the Bush campaign and I were in charge of making a new "bear" ad, I would do things pretty much entirely different. The Wolves ad is the worst case of Zell Miller fearmongering -- basically if you elect John Kerry you will die of a terrorist attack. The problem with this line of attack is that the official Bush distinction between the two candidates is that one thinks state sponsored terror is the biggest threat to America, and even when it turns out a dangerous state wasn't really that dangerous it was right to attack, and the other candidate thinks states and non-state actors should be weighed on their own merits as to how threatening they are to the United States' security.

Now, knowing that, I would make the wolves ad different were I the Bush campaign. My script would more or less be that there are wolves in the neighborhood. We know some of them are rabid and we can't be certain about the others. Given the choice, wouldn't you rather be safe than sorry?

That is a better ad on so many levels. It taps into the uncertainty that Americans feel over terrorism (compared to the non-uncertainty that you will be attacked if you elect Kerry) and it also acknowledges that while Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction we're better off finding out that they didn't than doing nothing and being attacked by them.

Using wolves as a metaphor, it's also a more realistic metaphor. When your children (or whoever) are in danger from wolves, the choice isn't usually between putting them in the hands of someone who promises nothing will happen if he is in charge (but offers no specifics) compared to turning them over to someone who you are almost certain will let the wolves eat your children. No, the choice is whether you personally do something about those wolves or not. And most parents choose to be proactive, better safe than sorry. That happens to be the message of the Bush campaign. Too bad they're too stupid to realize that and make an ad that might actually help them.

Posted by Chris at October 23, 2004 06:03 PM

Comments

Chris -- Bush's wolf ad does not say "after the World Trade Center was attacked." It says "even after the FIRST terrorist attack on America" then it goes on to criticize Kerry's vote on the intel budget(the date of the CQ report, i.e. 1994, is on the screen.) Presumably your readers know when the first such attack took place.

The ad is very effective, certainly much more so than the lame "ostrich with its head the sand" ad run by Kerry's folks. Ostriches don't bury their head in the sand so -- as we speculated over at our blog -- the picture used must have been provided by Dan Rather.

All the best from fellow bloggers at The Diplomad.

Posted by: Diplomad [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 26, 2004 07:25 AM

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