Control the message. In 2004, Bush enjoyed far more control over the Republican campaign message than Kerry did over the Democratic message. That’s because the Kerry campaign had less money to spend than the Bush campaign and because much of the advertising on Kerry’s side was done by independent liberal groups. Those groups helped fill the breach when Kerry was short on funds but had strategic differences with Kerry, were outside of his control and were ill-equipped to defend him from conservative attacks. In the end, Kerry was defined as much or more by his opponents as by himself.
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Message control. Consider these two points about the ’04 ad wars. There were more ads aired on the Democratic side than the Republican side when you combine the candidates, the parties and the outside groups. But the Republican message was much more consistent. The Bush campaign had creative control over almost 90% of the ads aired on his behalf, according to data compiled by the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project. Kerry controlled only about half the ads aired on his behalf. The rest were aired independently by the Democratic Party and liberal groups; by law, they couldn’t be coordinated with Kerry.
Why did this matter? Because candidates and their allies don’t always agree on message or strategy. And outside groups perform some missions better than others. For practical and legal reasons, they are more suited to attacking than defending. Only Kerry could effectively defend himself from the personal attacks that he sustained in the Swift Boat ads of August 2004, but he was off the air at the time, saving his limited ad budget for September and October. From start to finish, Kerry and his liberal allies ran very different ad campaigns, with Kerry’s ads devoted largely to promoting Kerry and the liberal groups devoted almost wholly to attacking Bush.
Kerry concluded afterward that he made a big mistake by accepting public financing (and the spending limits that go with it) because it limited his ability to define himself for voters and defend himself from attacks. Kerry advised Obama to reject public financing in this race, which Obama did earlier this month in a well-publicized reversal on the issue.