TRENCH WARFARE

Kerry clearly needed help with his speaking skills, so in early spring he quietly appeared at the 17th Street offices of Michael Sheehan, a well-known Washington speech coach who has helped numerous Democratic politicians--and worked with some, like Gore, who seemed beyond help. The question was whether Kerry belonged in the latter category. Sheehan told Kerry that he had to learn to shift to a more conversational style, to vary the pace, to sound more casual in his speech. Otherwise, his speeches all sounded the same and gave the impression that what he was saying was calculated--that he was thinking about what he was saying rather than saying what he felt.

Kerry was not defensive with Sheehan. Indeed, he invited criticism, as he often did. Kerry may have been reserved and aloof, but he was a self-improver, and he wanted to do whatever it took to win. With aides he would sometimes say, "Tell me everything you think I'm doing wrong." He always appeared to be listening. But was he really? Were his shortcomings as a speaker somehow hard-wired? It was hard to know.

Kerry's backers never stopped searching for signs, for some signal that he would hear the music. In August 2003, when the campaign had been floundering and unable to raise any money, a group of Kerry's top fund-raisers met at his Beacon Hill town house. The moneymen were almost desperate. They implored him to be more aggressive, to really take on Dean. Kerry was defensive and prickly. He pushed back: Why hadn't the fund-raisers called this or that contributor? Why hadn't they reminded the contributor of all that Kerry had done for him? The fund-raisers became argumentative: why aren't you out there more? "I have been out there," Kerry snapped. As the meeting was deteriorating into recriminations, Teresa Heinz Kerry slipped into the room, apologizing for her tardiness. She immediately took the side of the fund-raisers, telling her husband, "No, John, you haven't been aggressive enough." Kerry sparred with her, calling her "love," but insisting that he was trying harder. His mood softened; he seemed less defensive. As Teresa led a discussion of "the things we need to do better," Kerry seemed to be listening.

When they trooped out of Kerry's mansion on that steamy August night, the moneymen had felt a sense of relief, even optimism. At least Teresa was serious about turning the campaign around. And indeed Kerry's campaigning did improve. But it took him two months to get going. And then, after he had won the nomination, he seemed to fall back into dull Senate speak.

It was almost taken for granted around the Bush-Cheney campaign that "going negative" against Kerry was the way to go. "It's a no-brainer, it's just sort of campaigning 101," said adman Mark McKinnon. Despite his string of primary wins, Kerry was still not well known to the American people. The BC04 team wanted to use a good chunk of their $150 million-plus war chest to "define" Kerry--that is, to paint him as a tax-hiking, flip-flopping liberal. On March 11, just a week after the Bush campaign had begun to build up the president with "positive" ads, including the so-called 9/11 spots, the team began buying ads in key swing states imagining Kerry's first 100 days in office. By plumbing--and twisting and exaggerating--his old Senate voting record, they were able to make him look like a profligate supporter of big government. In one ad titled "Wacky," McKinnon's ad team suggested that Kerry would raise gasoline taxes by 50 cents.

Negative advertising is only one brushstroke in the dark arts of modern campaigning. All major campaigns maintain "rapid response" units. The 24/7 media and the technology of the Internet demand it. A campaign can no longer spend the day working for that one good 90-second "visual" on the evening news. On cable TV the message of the day can lock in early, getting repeated every half hour or so unless it is successfully rebutted or trumped. The first state-of-the-art rapid-response unit was set up by Bill Clinton's top political operatives, James Carville and George Stephanopoulos, back in 1992. Viewed today, the cult-film documentary from that campaign, "The War Room," with its clunky mobile phones and fax machines, might as well be a remnant from the silent-screen era. Technology has quickened the pace and provided new weapons for hitting back. Digital video-recording devices can "capture" an image of a candidate making a speech and immediately pass it around via e-mail and the Internet. Admen can cut a response ad overnight, if not sooner.