This exchange occurred last night among Paula Zahn, host of Paula Zahn Now on CNN, Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson.
ZAHN: Now Tucker, interesting thing in this poll, also suggests the majority of Republicans polled believe that John Kerry has been attacked unfairly. Fifty-two percent say yes; 41 percent say no.
CARLSON: Yes. That goes into the who cares column. I mean, I’ve done stories on this over past election cycles on voters’ perceptions of the unfairness of attacks.
And it turns out, A, most people, no matter what they tell pollsters, I believe deep down think if you’re attacked you deserve it. B, when you complain about it, they think you’re a whiner.
I have never seen a race, and you know, Paul’s run a lot of races, maybe he has — but I personally have never seen a race where whining about the attacks, the other guy is inflicting on you, has gotten the candidate anywhere. People just say, “Oh, you know, knock it off.”
ZAHN: I can only give you two 10 seconds apiece. Paul Begala, going into this race, John Kerry’s single biggest vulnerability?
BEGALA: The fact that he for a long time let attacks go unanswered. Tucker’s right. General Patton said the object of war is not to die for your country. It’s to make the other S.O.B. die for his country.
The object of the campaign is not to respond to attacks. It’s to attack. And I think the Kerry campaign is going to do that.
I can agree with both Carlson and Begala. If the attacks get any coverage in the mainstream media, they automatically have some credence with a good portion of the electorate. And a politician complaining about them just makes them a complainer.
Begala is also right in that, like it or not, attack mode is the only winning mode in modern politics. It’s not the politicians’ fault, either. It’s our fault for making decisions based on specious arguments and dubious advertisements.