Bush TV Ads Getting Smarter

USA Today details two new ads unveiled by the Bush campaign that are effective and smart. The less damning one ties in to the Olympics by saying "this Olympics...there will be two more free nations." That highlights the one unquestionable good of those twin invasions -- the possible self-rule of Afghanistan and Iraq after suffering years of horrible dictatorships. Afghanistan features its first female athletes and the Iraqi socceer team is enjoying an unexpected string of victories.

The one targeted directly at Kerry scores a direct hit; Kerry's team has done a poor job of responding.

"It charges that when he was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the mid-1990s, Kerry missed most of the panel's open hearings...."

The weak response from Kerry's team was that this was based only on the 65 open meetings and didn't include attendance for the more than 329 closed hearings. But the committee's Republican chairman Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas immediately called on Kerry to let him release those attendance records as well. Kerry's people didn't offer attendance figures for the hearings that aren't public record, so we can only assume they aren't good either.

They need to come up with a better response -- how does his attendance compare to other members at the time or some such reasoning -- or Bush will wisely bring this up again and again.