1115.org

As someone who raised money for and donated money to John Kerry’s Presidential campaign, it was stunning to learn in November 2004 that Kerry left $15 million unspent in his campaign account despite battling in one of the closest elections in U.S. history. Beyond the extra messaging that Kerry could have done on his own behalf, the money could have also been transfered to House and Senate races in a year that saw further Democratic losses. Kerry eventually made the best of an embarrassing situation by donating much of that surplus to the DNC where it has been useful in Howard Dean’s effort to fortify state and local Democratic parties.

Inexplicably, Kerry went on Meet the Press on Sunday and identified his decision to accept public financing as his campaign’s biggest blunder:

“I think the biggest mistake was probably not going outside the federal financing so we could have controlled our own message.”

The Kerry campaign opted to accept federal money and federal spending limits and other rules after he won the Democratic nomination. The nominating convention in Boston occurred more than a month before the GOP renominated Bush, forcing Kerry to begin spending under federal rules much earlier than Bush.

“We had a 13-week general election, they had an eight-week general election. We had the same pot of money. We had to harbor our resources in a different way and we didn’t have the same freedom,” Kerry said.

That Kerry left eight figures in the bank is bad enough. It shows a level of either cluelessness or bad judgement that is worrisome, but moving forward it is much more important to learn from mistakes than wonder what might have been. But by pointing to campaign finance as his biggest mistake, Kerry has clearly not learned a damn thing from his election, and worse, is ignoring the most important new rule of politics: advertising is overrated.

John Kerry lost the election not by getting outspent, but by lacking message discipline, one unfortunate quote, and his sluggish response to the Swift Boat Liars. No amount of advertising could ever have changed the minds of people who had already written off Kerry as a flip-flopping wimp with no clear plan.

John Kerry has no business running in 2008 if he hasn’t learned the right lessons from 2004. He might want to take a page out of this guy’s book.