The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > The Ad Campaigns: Guilt by Association
Blaster notes a Dick Morris effort to debunk some of Moore's Fahrenheit 911 mythology regarding Bush's financial dealings.
Moore gets some mileage about Saudi investment in Harken Energy, the company that a lot of poeple got exercised about regarding a stock sale that Bush made while a director, claiming there was some crime there. There wasn't
This is also relevant to a new Dem attack add playing in battleground states.
This 30-second commercial attacking President Bush, paid for by the Media Fund, is titled "All in the Family" and began appearing Thursday in St. Louis and on national cable channels, at a cost of nearly $500,000. It will rotate with another spot called "Missing Pages," which says a Congressional report has a classified chapter linking the Saudi government to terrorists. This is the first set in a series of spots on American-Saudi ties that the Media Fund said would run through Election Day.
This must be Bush's lucky day as even the NYT's is debunking this attack and calling it inflammatory and misleading. I guess the ad is right on par with 60 Minutes.
But the spot taints the Bushes with guilt by association. Saudis, not necessarily members of the royal family, have invested in businesses whose boards included the first President Bush. This is not quite investing in "Bush business ventures." It is true that Saudis invested in and helped bail out Harken Energy, which had bought a little West Texas oil company owned by George W. Bush - but so did George Soros, the wealthy Democratic industrialist who has pledged millions of dollars to defeat Mr. Bush this year. William Jeffress Jr., a partner in James Baker's law firm, Baker Botts, does represent Saudi officials in suits filed by survivors and family members of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. Juxtaposing Mr. Baker with the Saudi flag is inflammatory and misleading.
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