The Swift Boat Saga, Part VIII: My Opinion

Later today, I'll be posting the reactions of several friends to the Swift Boat Veterans controversy, and several of them conflict with me. There will be no editorializing on my part of the opinions expressed.

But here's my opinion -- and since it's my blog, it goes first.

One: John Kerry's war record matters. Why? First, he chose to make it an issue. Throughout his Presidential campaign, Kerry has employed his Vietnam service as his be-all, end-all answer to just about any question. He discusses Vietnam incessantly, to the point where people on all sides of the political spectrum openly mock him for his failure to discuss anything else from his life. The man's been in public life for 30 + years since he left Vietnam, yet all he ever references for why Americans should trust him on national security issues and the war on terror are his service in Vietnam, rather than his service in the Senate or other posts. Hell, he references it on other issues. One can make the argument that Kerry dishonors his own Service record by invoking it so frequently. Did Bush Sr. do this? Or JFK?

In this context, it's fair for people to raise questions about Kerry's service. In particular, it's fair to question him on his borderline criminal statements before Congress 30 years ago (alleging atrocities committed by his fellow veterans during Vietnam) and his membership in anti-war veteran's organizations which were run by fake veterans (i.e., people who never served). In my opinion, it's also fair to question whether the facts of Kerry's service mesh with the public record he espouses. His tale of Christmas in Cambodia has been proven demonstrably false, and Kerry has used this apocryphal story on the floor of Congress when arguing policy positions on national defense. Kerry changes sides on public policy issues about as often as he changes his underwear (witness his two-week shift on whether it's a good idea to pull troops out of Korea and Germany). His inconsistent accounts of what happened to him in Vietnam can and should lead people to doubt his already-dubious credibility.

Put it this way. If someone ran for President at the age of fifty, and talked up his grades from college and high school as reasons to elect him rather than his career in public service, we'd all laugh at him. But if that person continued to stress his collegiate academic record as the basis for election, would it be out of line for others to demonstrate that he was cheating on tests, for professors to state that he was lobbying to have his grades changed and out-right falsifying that he wrote a paper?

Two: The mainstream press coverage of this issue has been shameful. No, worse, it's downright pathetic.

O'Neill and Co. released excerpts of their book weeks ago. They also released their first ad over two weeks ago. The group held a press conference in May to talk about their charges. The book is #1 on Amazon's best-seller list, #3 at the New York Times. Yet neither the Post nor the Times considered this a big story until the last few days... right when the Kerry campaign began its initiative to respond to the ad.

Now maybe I spend too much time trafficking in left-wing conspiracy theories. But the so-called mainstream press has basically focused on three aspects of this story -- (1) whether the Swift Boat Veterans are GOP-financed, (2) trying to disprove certain elements of their claims, and (3) whether all of this is fair to Kerry. And they waited until the Kerry campaign began responding before devoting any resources to the story.

The press has never spent much, if any, time focusing on who finances the liberal 527 groups, which far outnumber the conservative groups. They've rarely if ever focused on links between these groups and the Kerry campaign, even though the proof is more damning than the meager proof offered on the Swift Boat Vets. Yet now they make this a main focus of the coverage of this story, attacking the messenger rather than the message.

When Michael Moore's hitpiece movie came out, press outlets provided blanket coverage. The vast majority of those stories had a theme that said, "Well, some stuff may not be true, but it's worth seeing, because it makes you think." Not that those same outlets spent time debunking many of Moore's idiotic pet theories. In order to be consistent, shouldn't the same press outlets encourage people to read Unfit for Command?

Also, recall the press coverage of the claims about Bush's Guard service. With little proof (certainly less than the Swift Boat Vets have offered in support of their contentions regarding Kerry), the press publicized and eagerly jumped into the well to try and challenge Bush's Guard service. Unlike the coverage of the Swift Boat Vets, the press focused on investigating Bush, not those making the accustations. Why the inconsistency?

Three: McCain-Feingold has failed, miserably. You can't take money out of politics. And you can't limit free speech, much as some would like to try.

McCain-Feingold became a joke the minute the 527 groups formed and began running their own shadow campaigns. Bush should not have signed the law, and if the press wants to pillory him for something in this campaign, they've got an opening there. Why not ask the President why he chose to sign a law that allowed these groups onto the map, if he believes they're a bad idea? Bush condemned the ad again today. What Kerry-Edwards really wants is for Bush to somehow remove the ad from public circulation... which he can't do. It would violate McCain-Feingold, since Bush can't coordinate with the group. It's also called freedom of speech and is part of the First Amendment. Someone wake up Senator Edwards to this fact, since he's supposed to be a trial lawyer. if Kerry has a problem with the ad, sue the Swift Boat Vets. Edwards isn't doing much else right now -- he can handle the case.

And this is only the beginning of the fun. McCain-Feingold has an exemption in it for the press to be able to endorse candidates in the run-up to elections, one that groups like the NRA are already exploiting by starting their own news radio programs. Imagine what that will end up like.

Four: The Kerry campaign is running scared.

The Kerry camp has tried to tell TV stations not to run the ad. They've asked the publisher to pull the book. They've called for an FEC investigation.

The claims that Bush's campaign is coordinating the Swift Boat attack borders on the idiotic, and seems far too desperate. They can't prove it, and Bush can't do anything to stop the ads in any case. Citing flyers from a campaign outpost that may well have been made by Kerry volunteers at Kinko's is pretty lame. It's terribly weak, except in comparison to John Edwards' challenge to Bush to stop the ads, which was even weaker.

The solution's pretty simple. Send Kerry on TV with someone reasonably objective, like Russert, and have him answer these claims. Release his military records -- ALL the records. And try and put forth a coherent position on Iraq, which they haven't done to date, to demonstrate that their campaign is based on being something other than the guy who served in Vietnam. The Kerry camp basically tried to ignore the story, and the media followed suit. When enough pressure built up from the ads, the coverage on the blogs, Fox News, etc., the campaign was in trouble. They didn't counter the charges initially, which meant they had to play catch-up.

Here's what's truly funny, if you look at this from the GOP standpoint. The Media Fund, Moveon.org, Americans Coming Together, and other big 527 groups have been running hit pieces on Bush for over a year. To say there's a link between these groups and the Kerry campaign would basically be stating the obvious. Yet the press opted not to report it, then feigned shock and reported it as a big story that the Swift Boat Vets have contributors with links to the GOP.

What's ridiculous is that a veterans' group with approximately $500,000 in the bank has managed to impact the race in a way that the other groups can't. To be fair, much of this results from the incompetance of the Kerry campaign's response. I read at least one opinion which noted that a potential Kerry White House looks pretty pathetic if it can't handle the response to a small veteran's group with less than 1% of their resources.

Five: Why can't someone question Kerry's service? And if they were there, don't they have that right? The left dug up stories questioning both Bob Dole and George Bush Sr.'s military service (more on that later). Plenty questioned W's service in the Guard, and have questioned Cheney's deferment.

It's almost hysterical to claim that because Kerry served in Vietnam, his opinion will be beyond reproach. But it's well past hypocrisy to claim that Kerry's opinion is valid and that of others who served with him is not. These guys are veterans as well, and they want their voice to be heard. If you can prove their allegations are false, focus on that, rather than demeaning their connections to the GOP.

Face it, in the end, most of the disputes about Kerry's medals and claims will be written off to the "fog of war." But failing to respond on the facts for several weeks, and cloaking one's self behind the old "don't question my patriotism" bit has accomplished little.

Finally... this is where I blame the whole thing on the Baby Boomers.

In the end, these may be scurrilous charges, or they may be accurate, or they may be a mix. Are they relevant to whether someone votes for Kerry? That's up to each person. But in the end, the charges will be aired. The information will be on the public record, from both sides, if the Kerry camp ever figures out that attacking the facts of the stories from the Swift Boat Vets is the answer.

The election should be about more, but it's not, because of choices made on both sides and the press' failure to hit either campaign with questions on real issues. Maybe it's a symbol of the rift regarding Vietnam that we're still debating it 30+ years later in this manner -- my generation can't really recall a thing about the war, but we're stuck in a timewarp where this is the key issue in the campaign.

And in the end, maybe it's appropriate. This is the second campaign where both candidates are from the boomer generation (2000 being the first). To them, Vietnam is a defining moment in American history, because it accords additional importance to their self-promoting generation. Why is every war or military engagement we enter today automatically compared to Vietnam? Every once in a while, I'd love to see a comparison to the Spanish-American War, just for kicks.

In all seriousness, perhaps that's the ultimate lesson to Gen X. The Swing Generation, a.k.a. the Greatest Generation, didn't spend the next forty years putting every foreign policy conflict into the context of WWII. They adapted to the new reality and fought the Cold War. And they succeeded in the end. When we fight the War on Terror, it's not the Cold War, it's not Vietnam, it's not WWII, it's not the Civil War. We can draw from lessons learned from that history -- but the analogies are not ones which will ever be perfect, and our decisions cannot be made simply by looking to our past.

The 2004 Presidential election shouldn't be about Vietnam, but it is, because the generation that fought that war and battled each other over it still hasn't settled the issues from that war. Hopefully, in 30 years, our generation's not the same way.