WP, Kurtz: Ad-Slingers in the TV Corral (rapid-response)

[DeepModem Mom]

The Ad-Slingers in the TV Corral
Each Candidate Is Armed With a Quick-Draw Response Team Working Round the Clock

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A06

At 11 a.m. Wednesday, right after President Bush charged in a speech that John F. Kerry would "weaken America and make the world more dangerous," the speakerphone crackled in the Kerry war room on McPherson Square.

Senior adviser Joe Lockhart told rapid-response chief Joel Johnson and media man Bill Knapp from Chicago that the candidate would make no public comment but that they should crank out a commercial in response. Within three hours, Knapp and his team had cut an ad accusing Bush of "desperately attacking" Kerry, secured approval from the campaign brass, picked the markets for airing the spot and transmitted it by satellite to television stations. At 4:33, the script and a video link were e-mailed to hundreds of reporters....

***

The Bush campaign, of course, has its own war room in Arlington, where it makes ads just as quickly and bombards journalists with e-mail attacks on Kerry. The impact of all this instant warfare is unclear, especially since the response ads tend to fade quickly....

***

The Kerry camp's aggressiveness is a departure from the spring and summer, when the Democrat almost never parried Bush attacks on the airwaves, and it reflects the addition of Lockhart, Johnson, Michael McCurry and other Clinton White House veterans....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20979-2004Oct9.html

[Toots]

1. Rapid Response is Absolutely Vital

IMHO

[Boredtodeath]

2. Poor Howie.

He's just not used to the DEMS fighting back, playing by the repubs rules....