The Washington Post uses FOIA and pulls records that challenge (one) of the Swift Boat Veterans’ multiple claims about John Kerry’s Vietnam service.
I’ve stayed out of this and will continue to do so – because, as noted, while I do think that Kerry gamed his service (as did Bush), it is an issue of less importance to me than his potential competence and policies that will determine our future. And because lots of other people are spending time weighing in on the issue.
Having said that, I’ll go back to my earlier charge that the Kerry campaign’s reaction to this is stunningly inept.
Why is the Post using FOIA to dig these documents out? Why wasn’t a package with these, and all other relevant documents already researched by Kerry’s campaign and ready to be handed to the general media out two hours after the initial claims were made?
What kind of bozo, low-rent campaign is this, anyway? And, more tellingly, what does it say about the Administration that it would morph into if Kerry wins?
A.L.:
The Bush campaign has done something very similar, with regard to WMD and Iraq policy, though clearly the Kerry campaign has had far longer to head this off. Many of these charges have been around since the ’70s (though not all). But for some reason both campaigns have a tendancy to rely on their supporters to make the arguments for them. I have to confess, I don’t understand it.
My feeling about the medal flaps is that it’s probably impossible to tell what happened. I’m vastly more concerned about what happened after he left the war, except for the fact that Kerry leveraged his service both to make himself a more credible anti-war advocate, and a presidential candidate. It’s therefore fair to cast doubt on it, because he used it for the same purpose (to cast doubt on policies he opposed).
The Swiftvets are, I think, nullifying that use of his record to some degree.
Anyway, since we appear to be doing most of the heavy lifting, rather than the candidates, perhaps we should start charging a fee to the campaigns. I wonder if one could come up with a methodology to determine the impact of blogs on the vote? We’ve certainly influenced the campaigns themselves.
Maybe the explanation is as simple as the fact that neither candidate is a particularly good politician. I’d score Bush as a C+ at best, and Kerry as pretty close to a D- or F. The first year of the Clinton presidency was, at best, a C, but then someone told him to talk less and stay on message, and he became an A (until the sex scandals, anyway).
A Party that ignored the blatant chicanery of Bill Clinton, up through and including the Marc Rich pardon, has succumbed to the broadest definition of moral relativism. Embracing Michael Moore slides the Democratic ship further down the ways. Once in the water, one must worry about the moral compass to guide her.
Calling Howard Beale!
‘What kind of bozo, low-rent campaign is this, anyway? And, more tellingly, what does it say about the Administration that it would morph into if Kerry wins?”
Let’s just hope it doesn’t “morph” into anything at all like the Bush administration. You should really be asking yourself what it says about Bush’s leadership that he has compeletely “fictionalized”:http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/16/bush.crowds.ap/ his campaign appearances for TV consumption, or that he is willing to blatantly “lie”:http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=159 on the stump in order to tear down Kerry.
Come to think of it, it is precisely in keeping with the way he runs his administration. See, that’s what’s nice about an incumbent: You don’t need to “wonder” about what kind of a leader he/she will be, you already have plenty of data. In Bush’s case, I’d say we have all the evidence we need to show that he is an abject failure.
It is unfathomable that you actually believe this has something to do with Kerry’s ability to lead. He should be commended for resisting calls to cheapen the political discourse by responding to this crap. You will say it is “fair game” because he raised the issue; that is the excuse Republicans always use when they want to launch a lie or smear attack. Nothing about what Kerry says about his own record warrants lying and distortion, or distraction from more pressing issues.
That you think he should makes me wonder whether you think it is more important to lead, or just make it look like your leading. I guess the fact that you felt the need to twice express your qualms about Kerry’s campaign style already answers that one.
“Actually, that could pretty much be the slogan for the whole Democratic campaign”:http://musil.blogspot.com/2004_08_15_musil_archive.html#109259867534997337
VT –
Your core comment – ‘It is unfathomable that you actually believe this has something to do with Kerry’s ability to lead. He should be commended for resisting calls to cheapen the political discourse by responding to this crap.‘ – is completely foolish. The core of leadership in a democratic society such as ours is the abaility to shape and direct public opinion to create sufficient consensus to keep the abaility to act.
Bush has clearly been deficient on this front (as well as on others equally significant), but Kerry will and should be judged on how he does in this arena. That – more than some specific sets of policies – was Clinton’s strength as a leader.
But you’ve already made up your mind; and so any discussion about whether or why Kerry is the right choice doubtless marks me as a ‘hack’.
We’ll see in November.
A.L.
AL;
I would normally agree with you on this issue, but I do not have such a naive view of the kinds of political or media skills it requires to “shape public opinion” in this country any more.
And there’s a huge difference between “shape public opinion” in regards to launching a pre-emptive war, e.g., and responding to lies and smears from a group who seeks to disrupt the political process. One requires political and diplomatic skills while the other requires some kind of showmanship and is frankly a distraction from more important issues. The inability to appear as if you have “smacked down” such opponents is entirely disconnected from virtually every other important qualification for being a successful president.
This kind of crap dragged Clinton down, too, despite your claim that he had mastered the medium. He is still being smeared every time a “pundit” opens his mouth to say something about him.
You are mis-localizing your criticism of this issue to Kerry and not where it belongs, on the media. I do not think you are being a “hack”, only that you are vastly oversimplifying the problem and are way short of having thought this out.
For example, you seem to be implying that for a President to act, he must have some minimum level of public support or consensus for his actions. Couldn’t that be viewed as “indecisive” or “governing by public opinion polls” in our “Post-9/11” world?
Perhaps the foundation for this opinion of yours is that public support for the Iraq war has steadily dropped because Bush has failed to properly build consensus? And because of this the success of the whole venture is threatened?
Do we have any evidence that the Kerry campaign *didnt* feed this story to the Washington Post?
A.L.- Here’s my take on your question:
Kerry is running a poor campaign because he figured with the large majority of the media on his side, all he has to do is keep quiet and let them savage Bush for him. This way, he slips under the radar and is elected as “Anybody but Bush” without having to make any substantive comments or make promises that he has to break after election.
VT-although I agree with your “smeared every time a pundit opens his mouth” comment, little doubt remains that Clinton richly deserves said comments.
Is it possible that the slipping of public support for the Iraq invasion has been caused by media misrepresentation of facts on the ground? Based on my viewing of MSM reporting of Iraq, why is support as high as it is? Are the voters brainwashed or more peceptive than the Left thinks??
“He should be commended for resisting calls to cheapen the political discourse by responding to this crap.'”
This comment was probably also made by spokesmen for Nixon at the beginning of Watergate; knowing what we know now, would you believe Nixon and just forget about it, or keep digging to make sure nothing is there?? After all, the main criticisim of Bush by the Left is “HE LIED!!” Should Kerry be held to a lower standard, if it turns out he is lying as much (or more) than the Left claims Bush is??
Whorfin –
You know, you raise a point I’ve been meaning to blog about for a bit – that the MSM has hammered on the war since before it began, and in so doing had an impact in public opinion (easier, since Bush did such a miserable job of justifying his actions) – and now are using the decline in public support for the war as a cudgel.
Hmmm…
A.L.
By the way, I somewhat take issue with the idea that the “Washington Post is doing the job of Kerry’s Campaign.” In an ideal world, the press would point out liars without having to be egged on by partisan operatives. That’s not to say that the Kerry campaign shouldn’t function as a second line of defense – but I’d prefer a world in which reporters do their job.
Josh –
‘…I’d prefer a world in which reporters do their job.‘
A pony would be nice, too…
A.L.
How about a chicken in every pot, too??
While we’re at it, lets repeal the Law of Gravity.
A.L.
Your view of the press coverage of the Iraqi war is clearly colored by your support for the war and your desire to see your predictions borne out by reality.
For example, how would you interpret the near-total lack of coverage of the 10,000+ civilian Iraqi casualties from the war? I wonder how many Americans are even aware of this? And has anyone else noticed that American casualties are not being reported on a regular basis any more? And when did “casualty” only come to mean “dead” and not injured? Do you think the average American who gets their news from the MSM has even a rough idea of how many soldiers have been injured?
Not surprisingly, I think the opposite is true: First, the press gave Bush & Co. a bye on their claims leading up to the war by not challenging them hard enough. Then, they failed to fully illustrate the “collateral” toll.
Perhaps the simplest interpretation (I recall you claiming affinity to Occam in some previous post) of the situation there is that it is perhaps better, perhaps worse than is being reported.
But claiming that “bad coverage” is responsible for the falling public support for the war is self-serving, to say the least. People have been dying over there at the “same or greater rate”:http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_deaths_060104,00.html than since “Mission Accomplished”; do you think that should inspire people to begin to feel good about the whole thing? Do you think people in general will support war and killing only if it is carefully explained to them and in only exactly the right way that we have to kill someone else so that we can feel more secure here at home?
A.L.-
But seriously, folks–
By all means, take that point and run with it-it deserves examination.
Does the term “self-fulfilling prophesy” sound applicable?
Actually, it might be good if we had a press that did their jobs. Perhaps we could avoid misleading “Weapons of Mass Destructions” stories. The lack of a press that cares about issues, instead of spin and Michael Jackson stories, has consequences.
Former Iraq Arms Inspector Faults Prewar Intelligence
The intelligence view – from the Republican side, since we already know the democract view, and the Richard Clarke view:
Link is right here
Let’s go back to the primary question: what should Kerry’s campaign have done in anticipation of and reaction to these charges, and what did they do?
Kerry is reacting today, and I’ll reserve judgement on how he’s doing until I see all the press and get to watch the ad (has to be online).
I still think it’s just amateurish not to have convered one of the two or three great vulnerabilities he has as a candidate.
We’ll all talk about the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ later on…
A.L.
I’m with A.L. here—even if Kerry wasn’t going to announce that the Swift Boat Smear Campaign hates him so much they’ll imply their own medals are frauds, he should have had the official docs to leak to the press. I don’t think the WaPo is covering for Kerry here.
On the other hand, Kerry showed an excellent sense of timing in running against Dean and for that matter his win over Gov. Weld. I’m wondering if he hasn’t saved some ammo, either a counterattack on the medals or the Cambodia assignment, or fresh info on how GWB spent his National Guard time, for what he sees as the most propitious moment.
Kerry also needs to fine tune the positive vs. negative balance. Bush, being an incumbent trailing, is going to be relentlessly negative. The GOP Convention will be a long ridiculing of Kerry, and I hope he’s ready.
Per Wonkette and the Note, other folks seem to agree with my take on the state of the campaign:
Let’s be clear; Bush has a solid 40% of the country behind him, and a solid 45% against him, a war that’s declining in popularity, media solidly in support, a fragile economy, etc., etc. A competent Democratic candidate ought to be able to beat him down like a tribal tom-tom at Venice Beach.
It’s just not clear to me that we have a competent candidate, and since on the major skills a President must have mirrors the skills acandidate must have, that makes me worry about Kerry’s competence. And since I’m not completely cvomfy with his policies either, that makes my own decision a difficult one.
A.L.
First of all, has “Armed Liberal” ever expressed a “Liberal” viewpoint?
Hey, if you’re not alarmed by and against an administration that advocates the detention of American citizens indefinitely, without right to a hearing or a lawyer, plays with torture and tries to blame it all on PFC England, and takes away overtime pay rights from thousands of workers, etc., I think you have forfeited your “liberal” credentials.
What about the rule of law in this country?
In other words, is this a Repub talking point: “Kerry is running such an incompentent campaign, he should lose.”
Better than “Bush ran such an incompentent war, he should lose,” right?
Well, let’s see in November. Polls are holding up well.
Lazarus is right. The counterattack will be done through proxies like MoveOn and Harkin, slowly, subtly and obliquely.
Bush’s campaign continues to be relentlessly negative. Kerry will weather this storm past the point where it begins to drive up Bush’s negative ratings. He will then begin an organizing drive in September that will blow Bush away.
Sounds like the long knives came out for Cutter.
I always thought she was the weak link.
Good for Kerry to recognize when his people aren’t up to the job.
Would that our current President would be able to do the same.
A.L.,
If “competency” is the issue that does it for you, which would be more “important” for you?
Competency shown by the Bush administration over the last 4 years?
Or the “competency” shown in Kerry’s campaign, in not responding, over these 2 weeks, to these smears?
I’m agreeing with you about the lack of competency over the last two weeks by the way. But I’m not sure you have your “competency priorities” in the right place.
The bigger question is why there is so much poor leadership on both sides of the aisle.
Oh, I’ve hammered Bush for competency before; look back at Trent’s “Grand Strategy and Disloyal Opposition” pirce for a summary. And I disagree with many if not most of Bush’s domestic policies.
I’ll note that Clinton’s administration wasn’t exactly due-process and individual-rights friendly, so forgive me if I don’t rush into the arms of the Democratic Party when those issues are raised.
I still support the war as the least-bad thing that could have been done to alter the path of Islamist power. I think Bush has done a crap jjob of justifying the war – which I believe could be done – and has done a mediocre job (read some history about past wars) in the postwar planning and execution.
I think that all of us (both sides) are looking at a decades-long process through attention spans that are fifty minutes long, and that’s frustrating.
Kerry’s domestic policies are more to my liking than Bush’s, but his foreign policy is charitably a bodge; that tips the scale slightly to Bush. Kerry’s not showing himself to be more competent than Bush, which doesn’t help. You have to beat the champ, and in my mind, you have to be clearly better than they guy in office.
Many of you would rather have anyone – my eight year old – instead of Bush. I’m not in that camp. (Give him thirty or so years, and we can revisit things)
Competent execution of the campaign, and a clear and sensible (to me) foreign policy, and Kerry could get me to vote for him (TG already will simply because the gay-marriage issue is such a red-hot button to her). But the clock is running down…
A.L.
Welcome back, klaatu –
And thank you for bringing up the old “you’re not really a liberal” trope; Micheal Totten, Rodger Simon and I keep being amused by it.
And yes, MoveOn – they nonpartisan guys I gave money to back in the day, who lied to me and the folks like me as they morphed into a partisan attack machine. Love them; love their sponsor, too.
A.L.
Many of you would rather have anyone – my eight year old – instead of Bush.
What is his/her position on farm subsidies?
Well, he likes farms…*grin*…he’s reading ‘Charlotte’s Web’ right now.
A.L.
I’m sold.
A.L.
So now we know how much importance you have placed on the manner in which Kerry as dealt with the Swift Boat Liars issue.
It seems that Bush & Co. have been using back door channels to support anti-Kerry ads, as “reported today”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/politics/campaign/20swift.html.
What does this say about his “competence” or “leadership” that they are afraid to stand up and take a position when it might be viewed, to put it generously, as a cheap attack? Are they afraid to take responsibility for their actions? Much more worrisome to me than failing to have documentation on hand to support the truth.
Kerry’s foreign policy is a “bodge”? Really. When’s the last time he alienated most of our major allies, inflamed hatred of the US worldwide, misled the American public to justify a war, withdrew from efforts to secure a peaceful solution to the Palestinian problem, withdrew from the Kyoto treaty, to name just a few. “Here’s”:http://www.lunabean.com/blog/archives/000332.html an even longer list of his foreign policy “accomplishments”, and “here’s”:http://in.news.yahoo.com/040613/137/2dm5r.html what many former military leaders have to say about it’s “success”.
You’re really riding with a winner here, chief.
Vesicle,
I notice that you fail to mention the freedom of 50 million people in your list of Bush’s accomplishments. Either you don’t value the liberty of your fellow human beings, or you are terribly absent-minded. Once you decide which it is, perhaps you’ll let us know.
I vote for the eight year old too. Unlikely to promote torture or ill-planned invasions.
On the subject of competence: I invite you to read “this”:http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040901faessay83505/larry-diamond/what-went-wrong-in-iraq.html/ article by Larry Diamond, who was over in Iraq as a democracy advisor.
Mr. Diamond, a professor at Stanford and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, is hardly a leftie, but certainly a straight shooter.
He worked in Baghdad as an advisor to CPA Governance but also traveled the country and spoke to large groups of Iraqis with the aid of interpreters.
Now from my own perspective, here are some observations:
1. One of the consequences of the lack of troops was that huge ammunition supply points (ASPs) all over the country were left unguarded and undisposed. The bad guys could enter any one of these hundreds of bunkers at leisure and take artillery shells, mortars, rockets and small arms ammo to attack us with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and ambushes and indirect fire.
2. We did a poor job of communicating with the Iraqis. Broadcasting and regular printing of informational material took months to get started. With the exception of Radio Sawa, the broadcasting efforts did not achieve much penetration, since any Iraqis with means quickly got satellite. Maybe now they are watching Al-Hura now, I don’t know.
3. Did not deal with Sadr when they could have done so much more easily.
I’ll quote Diamond, who is spot-on with the facts: “In August 2003, the Iraqi Central Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Sadr and 11 of his top henchmen (for the April 2003 murder of a moderate Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Majid al-Khoei). But the CPA kept the arrest warrants sealed, and over the subsequent months, as Sadr kept pushing, U.S. officials waited, warned, wavered, hesitated, and debated. Although coalition figures knew that Sadr’s organization had to be put out of business before any kind of decent political order could arise in Iraq, the various plans drawn up to take him down were never executed, apparently because Washington decided that the risks were too great. The same administration that was bold enough to launch an unpopular war against Saddam blanched at the prospect of confronting a bully such as Sadr-even though he was reviled by the majority of the Shiite population and the religious establishment.”
Mark;
Too bad he’s “denying the freedom”:http://www.record-eagle.com/2004/aug/17mead.htm of 300 million in the process.
Vesicle,
I’m not sure how you reason from the alleged denial of admission of 1 person into a campaign event to the denial of freedom to 300 million people. You’ll have to articulate that argument a bit further.
And you clumsily avoided addressing my point. Will you amend your list to include the freedom of 50 million people, or are you arbitrarily excluding that small matter from your list? If so, why?
Will you amend your list to include the freedom of 50 million people
Ok, that was great and all, but when you actually look at the opinions of the Iraqi people, the responses are all over the map. We haven’t delivered on our promises yet.
Thought I’d pass this along to everyone since it is so relevant to this thread:
“Earlier this month, the website for the Bush-Cheney campaign featured a “create your own banner” tool, where you could enter your own slogan and print out your own poster, with the Bush-Cheney logo, and a note at the bottom “paid for by Bush-Cheney ’04, Inc.” Democrats, of course, couldn’t get enough of this. The original sloganator accepted everything, then it started censoring profanity and words like “dictator,” and “evil.” Nevertheless, many clever folks exploited the sloganator to their own ends before its sad demise only a couple of weeks after its birth, and its mourners assembled some of the best for the “slide show”:http://homepages.nyu.edu/~meo232/sloganator/.
And the good news for Democrats is that W.’s stupidity doesn’t end with the candidate himself, but it’s actually embedded into the culture of his campaign! “
“Ok, that was great and all, but when you actually look at the opinions of the Iraqi people, the responses are all over the map.”
praktike,
This is a bit ambiguous. Is it your contention that the Iraqi people would prefer a return of Saddam? If so, I’d like some evidence for that, since most polls I’ve seen show Iraqis pleased with his removal.
If by “haven’t delivered on our promises” you mean that the Coalition hasn’t fully established the conditions necessary for liberal democracy, then I’d agree. If, however, you mean that the Coalition hasn’t delivered on its promise to rid Iraq of a genocidal fascist (in opposition to anti-war leftists who were morally compromised and, in some cases, complicit with said fascist regime), brought hope to a brutalized people, and given a historic opportunity to Iraqis, then I’d disagree.
I’m not sure if you meant to denigrate the accomplishment by your phrasing (“Ok, that was great and all”), but, given the ultimate sacrifice paid by Western men and women over the years for our right to live decently and freely, I’d be rather less inclined to so lightly dismiss it.
A.L.
It’s only been a few days since you posted this and its beginning to look a lot like your analysis was a bit premature and, well, 180 degrees wrong.
There is a backlash growing regaring Bush’s sliming of Kerry’s war record. It is built purely on lies.
When will you come out to acknowledge how troubling Bush’s campaign tactics are, rather than pretending that Kerry’s “response” is what is more worrisome?
The way you view this situation is a litmus test for which candidate you prefer, and not just on “national security” but on many other non-tangible qualities. Continuing to claim “Kerry brought this on” or that his failure to produce documentation is evidence of his “lack of leadership potential” are symptoms that the Rove Kool-Aid is starting to work on you…