Bush's First TV Ads! (Sneak Preview)

[Sava]

bump

(snip)

(T)he "story" of the week in which Bush was supposed to be reintroducing himself to the voters focused on the anger of people like Kristen Breitweiser over the Bush ads. "After 3,000 people were murdered on his watch, it seems that that takes an awful lot of audacity," declared Breitweiser. "Honestly, it's in poor taste."

What a nightmare for the Bush campaign crew when New York City firefighter Tommy Fee was asked by a reporter about the ads and responded, "It's as sick as people who stole things out of the place. The image of firefighters at Ground Zero should not be used for this stuff, for politics." And Fee was not alone. Tom Ryan, a 20-year veteran with the city's Fire Department, reacted to the use of footage from a fireman's funeral in one of the ads bysaying, "As a firefighter who spent months at Ground Zero, it's deeply offensive to see the Bush campaign use these images to capitalize on the greatest American tragedy of our time."

Suddenly, family members, friends and colleagues of 9-11 victims were all over television, radio and the newspapers echoing the sentiments of Monica Gabrielle, whose husband died in the collapse of the Twin Towers. "It's a slap in the face of the murders of 3,000 people," Gabrielle said of the use of images of the removal of the 9-11 dead for political purposes. "It's unconscionable."

By Friday, just a day after the commercials began airing in battleground states, the September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows group was circulating the names of a long list of family members and firefighters who were objecting to the ads. Spouses, parents and siblings of 9-11 victims were holding press conferences in New York to call for the ads to be taken down. And the critics weren't just talking about the ads; they were making very public note of the president's failure to cooperate with the 9-11 commission that is charged with investigating how and why the attacks occurred.
(snip)

link: http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/ind...bid=1&pid=1300

It seems that 9-11 families are the big critics of Bush's ads that exploit 9-11. This is for the individuals who were asserting the "Democrats" were hypocritical in criticism of the ads.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by MrFun
How dumb does Bush think American voters are??

How dumb are they?

[Q Classic]

nice name change, sky.

and american voters have failed the collective iq test every time they have gone to vote.

[Kuciwalker]

Thanks

[Imran Siddiqui]

Btw, just saw the ad. What are these people on? Offensive? Come on! You really have to be thin skined for that! The ad was basically a 'look at all the stuff we had to go through and realize things could be worse' ad.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

One bad link deserves another:

World Net Daily

This from Boortz's notes of the day:

LEFTIST ANTI-WAR ACTIVISTS? WHO WOULDA THUNK IT? WELL, ME, FOR ONE.

Now here's something you need to know about these poor bereaved widows who were so mightily upset about Bush using images of 9/11 in his campaign ads. Among the poor, poor bereaved widows featured on TV news shows last week were Monica Gabrielle and Mindy Kleinberg. Though it was never revealed to you in the news coverage last week, these women are members of a leftist group called "September Eleventh Families for a Peaceful Tomorrow." You'll hear more about this group on the show today ... including the fact that this group is heavily funded by ... who? Well ... by none other than Teresa Heinz Kerry, that's who! No ... you won't find these details in The Washington Post or in the New York Times. You could, however, read this story from World Net Daily. Another Boortz I told you so!

Which again raises the issue: Who exactly is politicizing the 9/11 issue and extracting political capital from survivors pain?

A precalculated Heinz-Kerry connection it seems here.

[Ned]

Kerry pulled the same kind of crap on Dean -- which is one of the reason he will not endorse Kerry.

[Adam Smith]

Interseting column in today's Washington Post by David Broder, probably the dean of US political correspondents.

I'll post the whole column here, since you have to subscribe to get the link.

Would FDR Run Those 9/11 Ads?
By David S. Broder
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A27

It's no mystery why President Bush and his campaign aides have fought so hard to establish the legitimacy of their TV ads that include scenes from the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.

When the commercials came under criticism from survivors of some of those killed by the terrorists and also from some members of the firefighters union, Republicans rushed to insist that the visual references were well justified by the significance of that day for the country -- and for the Bush presidency.

The importance of their defending that proposition was amply demonstrated by the Washington Post-ABC News poll released earlier this week. Amid almost a dozen topics on which Bush had anemic and mostly negative ratings, one strong positive approval score stood out. By a margin of 63 percent to 34 percent, those surveyed applaud his handling of the campaign against terrorism.

Much of that approval goes back to the stalwart performance from the president in the first 10 days after the terrorists struck New York and Washington. When the country really needed a president, he was there, his words and his actions serving as the rallying point for a shaken nation. It is no wonder he wants to recall the emotions of the time; it was, in Churchill's phrase, his "finest hour."

But is it, as supporters of John Kerry and other critics suggest, wrong for Republicans to convert the emotions of that national tragedy into grist for a political campaign?

To answer that question, I went back, with help from Washington Post researcher Brian Faler, to 1944, when Franklin D. Roosevelt, almost three years after Pearl Harbor, was running for reelection. What you learn from such an exercise is that Bush is a piker compared with FDR when it comes to wrapping himself in the mantle of commander in chief.

Item: FDR did not go to the Democratic convention in Chicago where he was nominated for a fourth term. A few days before it opened, he sent a letter to the chairman of the Democratic Party explaining his availability for the nomination. And what an explanation!

"All that is within me cries out to go back to my home on the Hudson River, to avoid public responsibilities and to avoid also the publicity which in our democracy follows every step of the nation's chief executive."

But, he wrote, "every one of our sons serving in this war has officers from whom he takes his orders. Such officers have superior officers. The President is the Commander in Chief, and he, too, has his superior officer -- the people of the United States. . . . If the people command me to continue in this office and in this war, I have as little right to withdraw as the soldier has to leave his post in the line."

Item: Roosevelt delivered his acceptance speech to the convention by radio from where? From the San Diego Naval Station, because, he said, "The war waits for no elections. Decisions must be made, plans must be laid, strategy must be carried out."

Item: If FDR's politicizing of his wartime role seems blatant, what does one say of the main speakers at the convention? Keynoter Robert Kerr, then governor of Oklahoma, declared that "the Republican Party . . . had no program, in the dangerous years preceding Pearl Harbor, to prevent war or to meet it if it came. Most of the Republican members of the national Congress fought every constructive move designed to prepare our country in case of war."

So much for bipartisanship!

Item: Kerr was restraint personified compared with the convention's permanent chairman, Sen. Samuel Jackson of Indiana. As he contemplated the possibility of a Republican victory, he was moved to ask: "How many battleships would a Democratic defeat be worth to Tojo? How many Nazi legions would it be worth to Hitler? . . . We must not allow the American ballot box to be made Hitler's secret weapon."

If you accept President Bush's premise that this nation is at war with terrorism, then you have to applaud the restraint his campaign has shown so far in exploiting the attack that began that war.

Far better than criticizing his ads, ask why Bush is not calling on comfortable Americans to make any sacrifices for the war effort and why he refuses to raise the revenue to pay for what he calls a life-and-death struggle.

Those are the legitimate issues.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Interesting indeed. Does this show how apathetic we have become?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yeah, I read about FDR's Pearl Harbor campaigning as well (in Time Magazine, IIRC). Interesting that, isn't it?

[chequita guevara]

Roosevelt did a lot of things we would consider unacceptable today . . . like have an affair in the White House. He also allowed the Federal government to discrimnate against Blacks, etc. You can't justify unacceptable behavior by saying they used to do it before.

[MrFun]

I'm with Chegitz on this one. It's just common sense that you cannot justify wrongful/harmful decisions just because someone has done similar things in the past.