Let's Do Our Homework,
Scrutinize Political Ads

Posted 1:34 p.m., July 18, 2004

---

|

---

I'm inspired to write by my recent conversation with a coworker--an undecided female voter to whom I foolishly promised I'd use my blog to help her sort out fact from fiction as she mulls her voting choices in November. (I won't identify her since we haven't discussed my writing about this.)

Last week, she approached me to ask how she could find out what's true and what's not in all these asinine campaign ads airing these days in the "battleground state" of Minnesota. I recommended the Annenberg Public Policy Center's Web site, www.factcheck.org. And I'm recommending it to everyone else, too.

Let no one misunderstand--I don't support the president for reelection. Nor at this point can I wholeheartedly support Kerry--though the president seems bent on pushing me there. Nor Nader. Nor anyone else. I'm still trying to figure out what I will do, but I suppose I'm leaning toward Kerry--the Edwards choice was a plus for me.

(Edwards, incidentally, won a 53 percent majority in the Independence Party during Minnesota's March presidential caucuses, a testament to the senator's capacity to reach into the political center. President Bush peaked at 22 percent in the 11-round run-off balloting; Kerry topped out at 35 percent.)

I'm otherwise uninspired by Kerry, whose expensive plan to insure 24 million out of the nation's 43 million uninsured is almost precisely a half measure, and whose frustrating inability to ward off Bush campaign smears--like all this flip-flopper garbage--leaves potential supporters like me wishing someone had killed Howard Dean's mic in Iowa. (Despite the far-lefties who congregated in support of Dean, I never saw him as anything but the centrist he always was as Vermont governor.)

Bottom line, I'd say my vote is Kerry's to lose. If he loses it, probably no one gets it. Still, I am not coaching my coworker or anyone else how to vote. I only ask that we all do our homework.

Ralph Nader has a great line: We should all work at least as hard to understand the candidates and their positions this year as we will understanding the stats and standings of our favorite sports teams. I buy that.

My point to my coworker when we discussed this several months ago is that, if she plans to vote for a presidential candidate based on personality -- meaing, I guess either one's folksy demeanor or the other's ... what? ... patrician affectations? -- that she'd be doing us all a favor by just staying home on Election Day.

At that point, she could have justly told me to go do to myself what Dick Cheney invited Sen. Pat Leahy to do. Instead, she gamely pledged this year she would do her homework.

If, after all that, she votes for Bush, God love her. I have no dispute with anyone who votes to reelect the president if they think Bush's policies are taking the country in the right direction. Though I won't agree with that choice, I will honor it.

Exploiting 'The Laci Law'

My coworker last week said she was specifically upset by a Bush campaign ad -- now in heavy rotation on Minnesota TV stations.

The Bush ad contends that, despite having sat out most Senate votes while he toodles around running for president, John Kerry found time to "to vote against the Laci Peterson law that protects pregnant women from violence."

Wow, my coworker said to me, plainly distrubed. Is that really true?

The rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to say, is available at Factcheck.org. Like so much in politics, particularly in the stilted reality reflected in today's negative campaign advertising, the answer is ... mmm ... yes and no.

As Factcheck.org reports, the Republicans' contention is technically accurate, but is worded so as to avoid directing viewers' attention to the real issue at hand the day the vote was cast. Kerry's vote actually pivoted on the abortion debate.

What Kerry and 34 other Democrats actually voted against was the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act." The new law recognizes an "unborn child" as a second victim if injured or killed during certain federal crimes of violence against the mother. The bill was backed by anti-abortion groups while opponents called it an attempt to undermine abortion rights. Kerry voted for an alternative measure to accomplish the same end but without making specific reference to an "unborn child."

-- "Bush Ad Claims Kerry Voted Against 'Protections for Pregnant Women,'" Factcheck.org, July 12, 2004

So, Kerry didn't vote to put pregnant women at risk to violence. It's an absurd contention.

He voted instead for a measure that contained all the same provisions as the Laci law, but without the "unborn child" clause that abortion advocates objected to. He simply voted against what he saw as an attempt by the anti-abortion forces to pull a slick one under cover of the outrage sparked by the Laci Peterson murder.

Cheney and 'The End of America'

Misleading campaign ad impressions are an equal opportunity business. John Edwards is the star of a wildly misleading MoveOn PAC Internet ad.

The ad, titled "Compassion," accuses vice president Dick Cheney of fear-mongering -- to my mind a justifiable charge overall, but totally misleading in this context. The ad plays on disjointed Cheney quotes from two separate Cheney speeches.

In this period of extraordinary danger we came to recognize our vulnerability to the threats of the new era . . . the ultimate nightmare . . . the beginning of the end of America . . . (Repeated) . . . the beginning of the end of America.

-- Vice President Dick Cheney

The repeated phrase used in the ad was edited in, turning a powerfully gloomy statement into a mantra. But Cheney didn't say it like that, nor did he mean to say what is conveyed.

He only said the phrase once. And in fact, Cheney was derisively quoting an Al Qaeda operative -- not making a baleful prediction about America's future. (The ad does flash "quoting Al-Qaeda" on the screen, but the point of the disclaimer is pretty easy to miss.)

Here's what Cheney actually said in an Oct. 10, 2003 speech to the Heritage Foundation.

Since 9/11, we've learned much more about what these enemies intend for us. One member of al Qaeda said 9/11 was the "beginning of the end of America." And we know to a certainty that terrorists are doing everything they can to gain even deadlier means of striking us. From the training manuals we found in the caves of Afghanistan to the interrogations of terrorists that we've captured, we have learned of their ambitions to develop or acquire chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. And if terrorists ever do acquire that capability -- on their own or with help from a terror regime -- they will use it without the slightest constraint of reason or morality.

-- Vice President Dick Cheney, Oct. 10, 2003

If you're wondering why no other part of the quote used in the ad appears in the statement above, the explanation is that it's just a measure of how far out of context the material used in the MoveOn ad really is.

Of course, campaigns -- both the candidates themselves and their "issue-ad" allies -- can get away with stuff like this with total impunity. There are no truth-in-advertising laws in effect governing federal campaigns. The camps can blatantly lie; no problem. In the case of television, broadcasters aren't just allowed to run false or misleading ads, they are forced to. FCC laws require them to run ads uncensored, even if conscientious broadcasters feel they are helping to disseminate misinformation.

Yet, guess where voters get most of their information?

Advertising is now the major means by which candidates for the presidency communicate their messages to voters. As a conduit of this advertising, television attracts both more candidate dollars and more audience attention than radio or print.

-- Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director, the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

So, as worthy citizens, we need to do our own homework, independent of the marketing spin.

Unfortunately, most of us don't and won't look any further for our information than campaign ads. We can avoid news, and many of us do -- deciding that it's too distressing to pay attention. But political TV ads intrude on our baseball games, "Judge Judy," "Law & Order," "Everybody Loves Raymond," our local news shows. A TV-absorbed country can't get away from those messages -- at best, they can only tune them out.

However, if you're up to the very light challenge of thinking about this stuff for yourself, Factcheck.org is a very good place to begin your home schooling.

-- Kevin Featherly

|

---

Share with a friend:

---

Visit the Kevblog archive.

---

---