So far, this primary season has been like none other in a generation, with the fewest and tamest televised attack advertisements in at least three decades, political scholars and strategists said.....
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(Democrats are pleased with the "absence of a bruising process.")
....Far less thrilled are Republicans, who had hoped that the Democrats would have done more of the work for them in roughing up the nominee before the general election. It was the Republicans who lobbed the first full assault on Mr. Kerry, in an Internet advertisement last week.
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(Bush campaign press secretary Terry) Holt said the Republican line of attack would include a definition of Mr. Kerry as "a liberal Massachusetts senator with a very lightweight record of accomplishment" — an assessment Mr. Kerry's campaign says it plans to refute with questions about the economy and national security.
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Many Democratic strategists say a new election rule requiring candidates to appear in their own commercials has made the production of a harsh attack advertisement the equivalent of holding a live grenade. Others have pointed to a multicandidate field that could offer alternatives to voters driven away from both the man being attacked and the attacker. Then there is a party unity argument: Democrats are so eager to rid the White House of President Bush that they will not tolerate assaults from within the party with such powerful weapons as television commercials.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/17/politics/campaign/17MEMO.html
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