By the same token, when I thought Bush had done a poor job in that same debate, I wasn't sure of my instincts until former GOP congressman-turned-talk-show-host Joe Scarborough said so on MSNBC. If a fellow Republican said it, it must be true.
Criticisms pack more of a wallop when they come from the same side of the aisle. Therefore, assertions gain credibility when they come from the opposite. Candidates know that. That's why, during the second debate, when Bush wanted to add believability to an economic assertion, he didn't cite his own secretary of the Treasury, he cited President Clinton's - Robert Rubin. John Kerry, when he's criticizing the war, cites L. Paul Bremer and Donald Rumsfeld.
There's nothing new about this phenomenon. We all know that it's hard to leave the warm bosom of your own side, and therefore those who do it tend to be given the benefit of the doubt. But in this election it's reached a new peak; it's become an apostate's ball: You are much more likely to get noticed if you are Nixon going to China. Would the otherwise unremarkable Georgia Democrat Sen. Zell Miller have gotten a prime-time spot at the Republican convention to rant that Kerry wanted to defend the United States with spitballs if he weren't ostensibly a fellow Democrat? Would Ron Reagan have had a cameo at the Democratic convention if his name were Ron Mondale?
Anyone who wades into the debate is hyperlinked to his political past. Take the salt-of-the-earth 86-year-old onetime secretary at the Air National Guard unit in Texas in which Lt. George W. Bush served. She said she'd typed memos (not the CBS ones) from Lt. Col. Jerry Killian criticizing Bush's absence from flight duty. But when she was identified in a New York Times story as an Al Gore voter, I wondered how many readers would bother to believe her. On the other hand, if she'd been a lifelong Republican, no one would have doubted her for a second.
Nothing helps a Democrat in trouble like a Republican, and vice versa. The most damaging accusation of the campaign - that Kerry wasn't brave enough to earn his medals despite Navy records and the testimony of veterans who actually served on his boat - was first undercut by the revelation that author-accuser John O'Neill had been handpicked by Richard Nixon's Charles Colson to stalk Kerry in the 1970s; in other words, he was a GOP hack.
At that point, what Kerry needed was a Republican.
The person Kerry really wanted to defend him was Republican Sen. John McCain. But McCain, whose daily commute is across the aisle, punted. He gave only a half-hearted defense to Kerry, but that was it - and he earned a big, well-photographed hug from Bush in return.
It's too late for surrogates now. That's why each candidate needs to be on the lookout for that part of himself that sees some truth in the other side.
---
Margaret Carlson is a contributing editor of Time magazine and a panelist on CNN's "The Capital Gang."
