Kerry on Slash-and-Burn Politics
The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee on negative campaigning
BY Sarah Laskow | January 11, 2008
John Kerry, who endorsed Barack Obama in a speech yesterday in Charleston, South Carolina, might have some advice along these lines, based on his experiences as the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee:
“You decide you are going to run a certain kind of campaign,” Kerry told Jules Witcover last year in an interview for The Buying of the President 2008. “Now unfortunately, most of the consultants in the business today will walk in and tell you that you have to slash and burn and take people down. And there is strong evidence to that effect that that’s what works, that unless you are attacking somebody and going after their character, you have to make people not vote for somebody rather than vote for somebody else, which is the theory of a lot of consultants. And, tragically, it works.”