KNOWS THE NOTES, BUT NOT THE SONG

Taegan notes that the Bush-Cheney campaign's new ad, "Wolves" (viewable at miserable failure central), is a shameless ripoff of Reagan's "Bear" ad from the 1984 race.

Of course we can expect Bush to try and emulate Saint Ray-gun as much as possible, but it's hard for it to come off as genuine as old Ronnie seemed to people. And alas, as usual the Bushies make a cardinal error, that being ignoring the old rule of "when you make an ad with animal metaphors, don't make disputable factual claims".

The ad attempts to take Kerry to task for supporting 6 billion dollars in cuts in the intelligence budget in 1994. This is framed as being "after the first terrorist attack on American soil" (The '93 WTC bombing, as the ad is willfully reluctant to point out).

There are two problems with this, of course:

1) Dick Cheney supported similar cuts in the intel budget.
2) CIA Director Porter Goss, then a Republican Congressman, supported even larger cuts than Kerry did!

Taegan also gives us word that Kerry will employ a Bush-as-ostrich metaphor in a soon-to-be-released ad. But with the "Wolves" ad in mind, might I propose a new ad for the Kerry camp to work on?

Thirty seconds, all on Porter Goss. After noting that Bush nominated Goss to be DCI, take the three big Goss problems and throw them together:
1) Goss supported huge cuts in the intelligence budget while in Congress.
2) Goss is hiding the CIA's 9/11 report from the American people without giving a reason.
3) Goss, in his own words, called himself unqualified for a job in the CIA.

Tie it all together with a sentence about how unserious Bush is about protecting America and combatting terrorism.

UPDATE: The "eagle vs ostrich" ad is actually from the DNC, it's posted on their site's front page right now.