Message of ‘change’ sticks four years after Democrats junked it

“Change,” the centerpiece of Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, was considered and discarded by the 2004 nominee, Sen. John Kerry.

The Massachusetts Democrat tested the word “change” but found that focus groups didn’t like it, so he decided it was too risky to emphasize in his bid for the White House.

{mosads}Kerry didn’t use the word prominently on television until the week before Election Day. Obama (D-Ill.) has been using it for 18 months.

“The word ‘change’ was a word that was hard to use in political rhetoric,” said Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Kerry’s campaign four years ago. “The word ‘change’ was not a centerpiece word. When we tested people, they were reluctant to embrace change.”

Obama, by contrast, has made “Change we can believe in” his campaign slogan.

A placard with the famous phrase hung from the podium Obama used to claim the Democratic nomination during a June 3 speech in St. Paul, Minn. Scores of Obama supporters at the rally waved blue posters emblazoned with the word.

Obama began talking about change in his earliest campaign ads.

A television spot that aired in Iowa in July 2007 featured a clip of Obama seeking to turn his relative lack of Washington experience into an advantage.

“I know that I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change,” he said.

Kerry took a different approach. “We made about 650 ads in the campaign and I think the only time John Kerry overtly used the word ‘change,’ made a direct appeal to people for change, was in the closing ad,” said Devine, who oversaw Kerry’s TV advertising strategy.

During his acceptance speech at the 2004 Boston convention, Kerry used the word only once to describe what he might accomplish in the White House: “And together, we’re going to write the next great chapter of America’s story. We have it in our power to change the world, but only if we’re true to our ideals.”

In March of 2004 after he won the Democratic nomination for retiring Sen. Peter Fitzgerald’s (R-Ill.) seat, Obama attributed his triumph in part to projecting “very early a positive message of change.”

Still, Obama also used the word “change” only once during his 2004 keynote address in Boston.

Devine said voters were wary of change after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which dramatically altered how Americans viewed themselves in the world.

Devine and other analysts say that in retrospect, the last presidential election revolved around the terrorist attacks and the nation’s military response. Some voters did not want to change presidents as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were being waged.

The word “change” opened Kerry to a debate with President Bush’s campaign over whether change would bring new risks, Devine said.

“It led the discussion to areas that the Bush campaign wanted to have a debate, such as how risky change was and the security environment,” he said. “It raised the stakes too high to engage in a big change dialogue with voters.”

Kerry believes today’s political environment is much more receptive to change, making it easier for Obama to run as the candidate of change.

“There wasn’t the demand bubbling up from the grass roots for a kind of change like there is today,” said Kerry in an interview. “This was a dynamic that didn’t exist.

“There was leeriness about midstream shift and security concerns,” he said of voters’ unease about switching commanders in chief during wartime.

“The country clearly is in a very different place,” he said.

Kerry said Bush’s approval rating was nearly 50 percent and 47 percent of Americans thought the country was moving in the wrong direction.

Now, 85 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track and Bush has a rating hovering above 20 percent approval, Kerry added.

A Time magazine poll from September 2004 showed that 47 percent of likely voters said Bush deserved reelection and 51 percent said the country was headed on the wrong track.

Chris Lehane, senior adviser to former Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, said Kerry could have won the election if he made a blunt call for change earlier in the race.

“In 2004, when you looked at some of the underlying data, it could have been a ‘change’ election if there had been a ‘change’ message,” said Lehane, now a political strategist based in California. “People were not happy with the direction of the country and Bush had an approval rating that was not high by historical standards when you look at presidents who might be elected.”

Presidents with approval ratings below 50 percent in the spring of an election year often lose reelection, according to pollsters who have studied 30 years’ worth of data on the issue.

Lehane said the fact that Kerry finally decided to use the word “change” in his closing advertisement shows that in the final analysis it was determined to be a potent weapon. Lehane said this shows that “change” should have been used earlier.

Devine disagrees, saying voters were not ready to hear that message until the close of the campaign. Up until that point, Kerry’s team used other words to suggest change without making it explicit.

In an ad on Oct. 26, 2004, Kerry promised “to bring a fresh start to protect our troops and our nation.”

Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, said Kerry had to proceed cautiously because of many Americans’ resistance to change after Sept. 11.

“It’s remarkable, given the attitudes of the time, that Kerry did as well as he did,” said Baker.

“People often profess being open to change, but it’s more a rhetorical commitment than a deep psychological desire for change,” he said.