Campaign Ads Highlight Contrasting Approaches

If voters in a swing state had locked themselves in an isolation booth March 3 and heard nothing about the presidential campaign from then on except from television advertising, they might have drawn two conclusions.

President Bush, a fleeting presence in many of his own commercials, wants them to fear terrorists, big government and the Democratic challenger.

Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, star and narrator of many of his own spots, wants to reassure them that he has a better plan than Bush for Iraq, healthcare, jobs and just about everything.

Their contrasting approaches are on view in several closing commercials.

On the air in Minneapolis, Kerry gazes straight into the camera and pledges to speak “the truth about taxes.” In an Albuquerque spot, he looks New Mexicans in the eye and asks for their vote -- speaking in Spanish for the entire 30 seconds.

In Jacksonville and West Palm Beach, Fla., two 30-second Bush ads imply that Kerry would destroy doctor-patient relationships and would shrink from fighting terrorists abroad. The president’s image flickers on screen for three seconds, and his voice is heard only in a required disclaimer: “I’m George W. Bush, and I approve this message.”

In all, the Bush and Kerry campaigns have produced more than 150 TV ads, which have run hundreds of thousands of times in battleground markets since the general election contest began in March. Though now a blur to voters, the ads form a composite portrait of each campaign.

Many Bush ads point to lurking peril. They often use menacing imagery, including shifty-eyed terrorists, urban street combat, tanks and fighter jets and the charred ruins of ground zero after the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes in New York. One of his final spots features wolves darting through a forest then stalking toward the camera.

“He understands that his strength is foreign policy, that we’re engaged in a war,” said Frank Ginsberg, an advertising executive in New York unaffiliated with either campaign. “He’s playing on the fears that we all have about our security and our terrorist issue and our Iraq issue.”

With his on-camera persona, Kerry depicts himself as a straight shooter in an effort to meet the challenger’s task of establishing himself as a plausible choice for president.

“He’s saying, ‘You have to believe that I’m telling you how it is, and I’m telling you the truth. I’m connecting with you eyeball to eyeball, and I have nothing to hide,’ ” Ginsberg said.

If Kerry had less help from anti-Bush groups, his campaign would have been forced to rethink its ad strategy. Likewise, Bush was able to mount sunny ads in August and early September at a time when Kerry was under sharp attack by the group now known as Swift Boat Vets and POWs for Truth.

Still, the Bush and Kerry ads, taken as a whole, are revealing. The candidates themselves vouched for them, a new requirement under federal law.

The Times analyzed 61 Bush ads and 97 Kerry ads aired since March 3 and tracked by TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group in Virginia. The ads showed:

Bush looked straight into the camera and spoke directly to TV viewers twice -- in a March ad and, briefly, in an August ad. Kerry did so in 26 ads, and plans to do so in three more scheduled for this week. Several Kerry ads featured the candidate speaking to the camera with little or no visual interruption -- an approach Bush never took.

Kerry featured elected officials and other public figures, such as actor and stem cell research advocate Michael J. Fox, in eight other ads. They expressed their support for the Democratic nominee in direct statements to the camera. Bush has eschewed this approach.

The president spoke at length in six other ads, one of them featuring footage apparently taken from a campaign speech and the rest assembled from interviews in which he spoke with his face angled away from the camera. Kerry employed these techniques in eight ads.

Kerry strategist Tad Devine said the Democrat’s direct appeals would win over undecided voters.

“The most powerful device in political communication is a candidate speaking directly to the camera,” Devine said. “Voters want to know about John Kerry. They want to size him up.”

Bush, Devine said, is not featured often in his commercials because his image repels swing voters.

Mark McKinnon, who has overseen TV ads for Bush, scoffed at that notion. “People like President Bush because he’s a natural -- a real guy,” McKinnon said.

With his ads, Bush has sought to make the election a referendum on the challenger rather than his own record. More than half of the Bush spots have been undiluted criticisms of Kerry. About a third have promoted the incumbent’s own agenda -- and that is usually done in broad statements about Bush’s goal of fostering entrepreneurs and owners at home and facing down terrorists abroad.

Just a handful have contrasted the president’s agenda directly with Kerry’s -- including one titled “The Choice” that the campaign planned to launch today. Depicting Kerry as an advocate of higher taxes, “government-run” healthcare and “reckless” defense cuts, the Bush ad asks voters: “Alone in the booth: Why take the risk?”

Kerry compared himself with Bush in roughly two of five ads and promoted his agenda exclusively at the same rate. Only a handful of his ads focused solely on attacking the president. The Democrat also has used ads to respond to Bush attacks; the president generally has not run overtly defensive ads.

Many voters dismiss political commercials as so much white noise, especially in battleground states barraged by half a billion dollars of TV spending in less than eight months.

But analysts say the ads, whether remembered or not, are likely to influence swing voters.

“Ads have a larger affect than most people believe,” said William Benoit, a presidential campaign communication expert at the University of Missouri. “There’s a reason why [candidates] spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these things. They do work.”

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TV ad blizzard

President Bush, Sen. John F. Kerry and the major parties and interest groups have spent more than $525 million on television advertisements since March 3 in key markets. The national battlefield, once 21 states, has been narrowed to 10. Ad spending for Oct. 17-24:

*--* Bush; Republican Kerry; Democratic National Committee National Committee Florida $4.3 million $6.1 million Iowa $460,000 $950,000 Michigan $840,000 $1.3 million Minnesota $410,000 $1.3 million New Hampshire $240,000 $540,000 New Mexico $690,000 $790,000 Nevada $662,000 $710,000 Ohio $3.2 million $3.8 million Pennsylvania $2.4 million $3.5 million Wisconsin $850,000 $1.2 million

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Sources: TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group.

Graphics reporting by Times staff writer Nick Anderson