WHAT'S MISSING FROM JOHN KERRY'S ADVERTISING

I have some quiet time to reflect and have started mulling over John Kerry's advertising efforts -- well, not just John Kerry's but moveon.org's, etc. as well. Might as well apply my marketing expertise to politics since it's Labor Day and I'm not supposed to think of business. Some thoughts:

One of the most effective tactics in advertising is to demonstrate the pain of a bad decision. Some of the Dem's ads have attempted this, such as the DNCC ad depicting an empty factory and playing Bush quotes about how well the economy is doing. We need more of these, and we need them especially on the national security issue. Kerry's ads should be hitting at the mess in Iraq side-by-side with news quotes about Al Qaeda/Taliban reclaiming Afghanistan, terrorists recruiting like mad, bad news in North Korea and Iran, the costs of these expensive forays of the pRes -- then the announcer asks who'll keep us safer and more prosperous, Kerry or Bush with his wild imperialistic mission to bring the Gospel to the heathen; er, I mean liberty to the oppressed nations of the world.

I also think we need to sprinkle the heavy dire stuff with some "morning in America"-type lifestyle ads. Under a Kerry/Edwards administration, we'd say, Social Security will be safe, the middle class will get a tax cut, good jobs will increase, the justice department will stay out of your bedroom and your library, healthcare will be available to almost all, air and water will be fresher, and guess what else? the stock market will improve (it always performs better under democratic presidents).

My daughter has a box she's stored in our garage labeled "end of the world gear." Honestly! In it she has the chemical suits and gas masks she bought right after 9/11. I'd love to see her throw it away after John Kerry gets elected...that could happen if there are no more "orange alerts" but a real sense that the nation's business is being cared for.

My middle daughter, a Republican-leaning independent, and I had a lively discussion yesterday. She has a finely developed knack for spotting the weakness in an argument and zeroing in on it, so debates with her are a real challenge. Our talk yesterday helped me see that a fundamental weakness of the Bush plan for our future is the endless quality of the "war on terror" or "war to bring liberty to the world." If Bush really desires the latter, the American people better be reminded that we've got a lot of work to do here at home before we start trying to improve the lot of the whole world, and it begs the question, if "faith-based initiatives" are good enough to procure social improvement domestically, why shouldn't religious organizations be the ones to bring charity to those oppressed nations Bush is talking about? As far as the former, the "war on terror," is concerned, I'd love to see the ratio of the number of terrorists (not insurgents) convicted-or-killed to the amount of money we've spent on the war. "Imprisoned" isn't good enough -- we're letting prisoners go in swarms because we can't prove they've done anything wrong. After 3-1/2 years, I think we should have some convictions to show for it all, don't you?