PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN Personality gap challenges Kerry with swing voters

KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
NANTUCKET, Mass. -- Forget the economy, it may just be the personality, stupid.
Swing voters don't like Sen. John Kerry much, one recent poll suggests, and that's just the latest survey pointing to a stubborn "personality gap" he suffers vs. President Bush.
Some political analysts think simple likability is the Democratic nominee's greatest challenge as the presidential campaign enters its two-month stretch run.
This phenomenon persists even though virtually every poll shows that a solid majority disapproves of Bush's handling of the Iraq war and the economy. Most voters also think the country is headed in the wrong direction.
But they don't much like John Kerry.
In a sense, then, the electorate of 2004 -- or at least the estimated 2.6 million swing voters who hold disproportionate power this year because the country is divided so evenly -- has turned on its head the maxim of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, "It's the economy, stupid."
Consider:
UA Zogby/Williams Identity Poll last month found that 57.3 percent of undecided or persuadable voters would rather have a beer with Bush than Kerry (even though the president doesn't drink alcohol). The same survey, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points, found that 67 percent of undecided voters liked Bush -- and 52 percent disliked Kerry, while nearly a third said they didn't know enough about him to say.
UA more whimsical poll taken in late August for the American Kennel Club found that people trust Bush more than Kerry to walk their dogs, by 51 percent to 37 percent.
Such indicators may seem irrelevant compared to war and peace, but they provide clues to voter behavior because, after all, people choose a person as much as an agenda when they vote for a president.
"People seem to feel more comfortable with Bush," said Sherry Bebich Jeffe, a professor of political communication at the University of Southern California. "It has become a critical mass, and it's dangerous for Kerry."
Problem areas
Part of the problem, she said, is that Kerry is still relatively new on the national scene. He's diffident with people and ponderous on the stump.
In addition, Republicans have been successful in seizing Kerry's missteps and lengthy Senate voting record to portray him as a weather vane who swivels with the political winds. That contributes to a sense that he must be a weak, untrustworthy person, Jeffe said.
"They have filled the information vacuum," she said. "With Bush, there's a reservoir of good will that he can draw on, and voters have a more detailed portrayal of the man."
Richard Koehler has seen enough to lean toward Bush despite his concerns about Iraq. "I'd get along much better with Bush," said Koehler, 67, a farmer in Centerville, Ohio. "He's more my style. I'm kind of laid-back, not a big-city guy. I love country music. He's the kind of guy I could have a Coke with."
By contrast, "Kerry seems to me to be like an Eastern snob," Koehler said. "I get the impression that he thinks he's better than I am, smarter, more hip. ... Superior. He just doesn't hit me right."
Alyson Dyar, 49, said she'd enjoy talking baseball with Bush, a former co-owner of the Texas Rangers. She couldn't think of a single thing she'd want to discuss with Kerry. "I'm sure I could talk with him, but I'm not sure I'd want to," said Dyar, an undecided computer installer from Portland, Ore. "I just can't connect with him."
Kerry comes across as fake to Elizabeth Feldman, 22, a college student in North Olmsted, Ohio. "He speaks in clich & eacute;s, a politician in the truest sense of the word," she said. "Like, 'I'm going to tell you what you want to hear."'
She considers Bush direct. "He does make mistakes, says things like 'strategery' -- and we've all mispronounced something," she said. "You can relate to that. It makes him seem more human. Kerry is a robot."
The Democrat's advisers say they don't believe there's a personality gap, citing polls of the broader electorate that show Kerry equal with Bush in personal favorability ratings.
Who is better known
"I think that's a problem that is an invention of elites," said Mark Mellman, Kerry's pollster. He said the president had an "innate advantage" on specific personality attributes because he was "the better-[known] and more deeply known person."
Plus, Kerry advisers think that issues are on their side, and their candidate is on the campaign trail in Ohio this weekend sounding harder-edged reminders about the choices in this election.
"We're not hiring a bartender; we're hiring the leader of the free world," said Tony Podesta, Kerry's Pennsylvania campaign manager. "Personality characteristics are more important when the issues are not as sharp. But our economic future is at stake, and our international future is very much at issue."
But for many undecided voters, the contrasts aren't that sharp, said Betty Glad, a professor of political psychology at the University of South Carolina.
On Iraq, the most divisive issue this year, Kerry recently said he would still have voted in favor of authorizing the invasion even if he'd known then what he knows now: that Saddam Hussein didn't possess weapons of mass destruction.
"What we know from voter studies is if there's a clear issue and people know where the candidates stand, then likability is less important," Glad said.
But voters who plan to decide late or in the voting booth -- estimated at 45 percent of undecideds in the Zogby/Williams poll -- often rely on personality in choosing, she said.
"Likability will be most important with these late deciders, and that could swing the election," Glad said.