Just six to nine months ago, at the height of the primary campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, not a single Democrat, nor member of the media, were at all interested in the hate-filled advertisements that spewed forth bile and hatred of President George W. Bush.  Despite the advertisements that called him idiotic, flat-out stupid, a “liar,” or used half-truths to point out his so-called “omissions of truth,” there were no loud outcries about how unfair or misleading the advertisements actually were.

Many 527 groups, including George Soros’ multimillion-dollar recipient MoveOn.org, broadcast the advertisements, which were completely unsubstantiated in many cases and wholly deceitful in the rest.  Some ads were so virulent and hate-filled that they dared compare Bush to Adolf Hitler; the leader of the free world to the most blatantly evil and despicable man in the modern history of the world.  But, nevertheless, no Democrat complained about the nature of the attacks.

In August, following Senator John Kerry’s crowning as Democrat presidential nominee, another 527 group –one with far less of an endowment than MoveOn.org – used the same campaign finance laws that MoveOn.org exploited and ran advertisements questioning Kerry’s service in Vietnam and his overall capacity to lead the United States.  Unlike the Bush-as-Hitler advertisements run by liberal groups, there was at least some capacity to substantiate the ads against Kerry.  And unlike MoveOn.org’s ads, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had a demonstrable impact on Kerry’s overall poll number.

Noticing the precipitous drop in his numbers, Kerry now feels that all of this advertising is a serious problem in the election process.

Earlier this week, Kerry took to his lectern and blasted Bush’s apparent failure to reign in groups that use their constitutional right to free speech.  He says, “Americans need a real conversation over our future.”  An ironic statement since his supporters compared Bush to one of history’s most infamous monsters in the first place.  Kerry doesn’t stop with this critique, either.  “What [the people] don’t need is all these trumped up advertisements, they just make people curl up and walk away,” he added, although this too is false.  In fact, people are not walking away from the election so much as they are walking away from Kerry, the more serious problem.  If the Bush-as-Hitler ads worked, Kerry certainly would not care so long as the end result benefited him.  Unfortunately, though, since the release of the first Swift Boat ads, and admittedly aided by the Republican National Convention, Kerry has seen his one-time three- or four-point lead in the polls drop to as much as a ten- or twelve-point deficit.  The more his record is questioned or reviewed, the more the voters walk away.  All of these things contribute to Kerry’s outrage over the ads, his campaign’s total inability to confront the Swift Boat Veterans, and his incapacity to stop the damage they are causing.  Kerry hopefully insists that these “misleadisments” will be ignored and says, “It’s all scare tactics” since Bush “has no record to run on.”  This from the candidate whose party spent the entire last twelve months blasting Bush’s policies while offering no real alternatives of their own – other than of course promising they would do things very differently.

The bottom line is Kerry and the Democrats have a serious problem, but it’s not caused by these advertisements.  Their real problem is their utter hypocrisy.  They want the rules changed from those they played by earlier because now the other team is better at the game, but they hope no one will notice their attempts to change the rules.  When the advertisements were critical of their opposition, they were silent, but when they become the target, far less despicable ads becomes hateful, angry, and full of half-truths.

Kerry needs to realize that the more he highlights these advertisements, the more people are going to watch them and question their veracity.  Ample airtime was given, free of charge, to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the Bush-is-Hitler advertisements.  Only one caused people to question the sensibilities of the party proffering the advertisements.  One side offered a criticism of the man and his behavior in war, while the other made baseless and hate-filled comparisons between the man and unabated evil.

If Kerry wants to flip-flop again and suddenly oppose these sorts of advertisements, then so be it, but he long ago missed the opportunity to stop these criticisms.  The opportunity wasn’t last week, but rather six months or even a year ago.  But, then, demanding an end to these sorts of advertisements was not as politically convenient for his campaign as it is now.

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