Bush Going (Gone) Negative

NY Times article about the Bush campaign's negative attacks (I have long postulated that Bush would have to go very negative, which in turn would lose him the "undecided" vote):

The latest line of attacks by Mr. Bush comes during what has been a tumultuous week for him, amid signs that a once swaggering White House was getting worried.

Mr. Bush's aides said that he would raise many of the same criticisms of Mr. Kerry to his face in Friday night's debate. Still, the format might make that complicated. Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush will be answering questions from an audience of voters and several analysts said that Mr. Bush would have to find a way to pivot into the kind of harsh attacks his aides have clearly concluded are necessary to defeat Mr. Kerry.

This muscular new speech was in many ways in keeping with what has been the tone of a campaign that has been unusually negative for an incumbent from the start and, some analysts said, reminiscent of the one Mr. Bush's father ran in 1988 against Michael S. Dukakis. The chief strategist in that campaign, the late Lee Atwater, worked over the years with key figures in this campaign, including Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief strategist, and Ralph Reed, a campaign adviser.

"Rove and Reed were schooled by Lee and he told them that what you do is you rip the bark off liberals.'' said Marshall Wittman, a former senior aide to Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, and is registered as an independent. "Even if they're not liberals you rip the bark off them. That's what they are doing."