Word: explainers
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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Which may help explain why George W. Bush looked a bit mystified last week as he struggled to interest voters in one of the biggest tax-cut proposals in recent history. Taunted by Al Gore's accusations that his plan favors the rich and endangers America's prosperity, Bush and his aides abandoned their Theme of the Week--education--and spent their time rebutting Gore and explaining (and then explaining again) Bush's plan. This marked the campaign's first serious message derailment since last February, when Bush visited Bob Jones University while slugging it out with John McCain...
...cool. Poll after poll has shown that a large tax cut is not high on Americans' lists of priorities. Bush's response to the public's reluctance has not been to back away from his idea; instead he just keeps reiterating its benefits and feasibility. "Maybe I didn't explain what I was trying to explain very well," he said in New Orleans on Thursday, before trotting out a middle-class family that would profit from his plan. "Let me start over." It is an axiom of politics that the side in trouble always uses as its first excuse that...
Then Bush fell into that trap. His campaign script called for him to spend last week wooing women and independents with education photo-ops and speeches in key states. But what was planned as a week of centrist appeals ended up being consumed by Bush's halting efforts to explain his tax-cut plan. In the first week of head-to-head campaigning after the conventions, Bush committed a cardinal sin: he let his opponent pull him off message...
...advisers urged him to run it. When it was shown to a focus group, Bush's advisers were jubilant. "We were laughing, it tested so well," says one. But at the last minute, Bush killed the spot--an honorable decision that caused bitterness inside his campaign. And having to explain the episode threw him off message again...
...lowbrow end of our journalism. "One of the ways in which we have matured is that we don't give a stuff about what other people think," blustered one such "cultural" columnist, Susan Mitchell, in the Australian, a national daily, last month. "We no longer feel we have to explain ourselves to anyone but ourselves...