Did you wonder why speakers at the Democratic convention were so soft-hitting in their attacks on George W. Bush? It wasn't a sudden conversion to compassionate conservatism. It was the focus groups.
In the weeks leading up to the convention, Democratic officials tried out fierce attacks on Bush and Republicans, and the folks gathered around their pollsters' tables recoiled. They were turned off by negative attacks. (Bush aides have been saying for months now that attacks won't work.)
So speakers from Bill Clinton to Jesse Jackson muted their criticism. True, Jackson called Bush an ally of "Jefferson Davis," but nobody in TV Land knows who Jefferson Davis is. More tellingly, Jackson skipped over a chunk of the negative lines in his prepared text. And he was one of the few speakers to mention Bush by name. On the other hand, some of his remarks were not-so-subtly critical of the Clinton administration's record: 45 million uninsured, no moratorium on the death penalty, a fifth of all kids living in poverty. (Time for a change!)
Democratic speechwriters, scribbling away on speech after speech, were deeply frustrated by this turn to kinder gentlerism, and you can't blame them. They came up with dozens of clever zingers for speakers to deliver. But the speakers didn't deliver them.