Wednesday, August 25 2004
THE MEDIA & THE SWIFTEES: A question: imagine, just for one minute, what would happen if a few dozen of George W. Bush's former colleagues - from Harvard Business school, Harken Energy, the Texas Rangers, or from the statehouse in Austin - came together as a group to denounce his leadership skills and say he was unfit to be President.

Would big media ignore the group's story? Would The New York Times print a front page defense of Bush and try to cast doubt on the group's credibility by showing a "web of connections" to his opponent? If you answered yes to either of those questions you are, with all due respect, either hopelessly naive or living on Mars.

But that's exactly what we've seen with the Swift Boat Veterans. As Ralph Peters pointed out yesterday, the most salient fact of this entire episode is that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group exists at all. SBVT is an unprecedented rebuke of John Kerry's character, one that is over thirty years in the making and one that would have happened regardless of who was in the White House.

Personally - and I know many of you may disagree with me on this - I think the Swiftees made a mistake in questioning Kerry's medals. Most people aren't going to sit down and read Unfit for Command and thus aren't really going to absorb all the details of why he may not deserve a couple of them. (Public disclosure: I purposefully haven't read the book yet because in addition to already having done a good bit of personal research on Kerry's record, I wanted to experience the book's treatment in the media as most of the public would)

In the end, people generally tend to "trust the system" - whatever system that may be - and give the benefit of the doubt to the accused on the most basic of facts. One of the reasons the National Guard story never really hurt George Bush in a major way is because there was no getting around the simple fact he received an honorable discharge. To disregard this fact you'd have to start engaging in speculation and conspiracy theories, and people naturally tend to shy away from that sort of thing.

In the case of John Kerry, the basic facts are equally simple: he went to Vietnam and he won some medals while he was there. Irrespective of the circumstances surrounding each medal, unless the Swiftees can prove that Kerry won them in a way distinctly different from how everyone else won their medals (i.e. forged a report, etc), then Kerry is going to be more or less protected by the system and the public will probably give him a pass.

The problem is that by making so many detailed accusations, the Swiftees have allowed supporters of John Kerry and the press to conflate the truly important issues (like the "Christmas in Cambodia" lie and Kerry's antiwar statements) with the not so important ones.

For example, take the much-ballyhooed William Rood piece from the Chicago Tribune earlier this week. The Trib, which to my knowledge had not spent any time on the SBVT story prior to this, went with a double-front page defense of John Kerry. But both Rood's first person account and the news story that accompanied it focused exclusively on the February 28,1969 incident in which John Kerry won the Silver Star.

Even more specifically, Rood rebutted the SBVT charge that the person John Kerry killed that day was an unarmed teenager rather than a full grown VC soldier with a rocket launcher. This is so far down in the weeds as to be almost irrelevant - not to mention unprovable either way.

As I said, shifting the focus to such micro-details obscures the larger questions about John Kerry's character and motivation that should be occupying the public mind. What the Swift Boat Veterans do in a very compelling way is provide further evidence of the bigger picture that John Kerry has been, since his very earliest years, a shameless opportunist and a person of insatiable ambition.

The record is clear that Kerry had serious doubts about Vietnam before going, yet went anyway. Kerry and his supporters hold this up as a noble example of service to country. And indeed it would be - if that were the end of the story. But it's not.

Kerry conspicuously bought a video camera in Vietnam to record and reenact his exploits. He seemed excessively, even obsessively - interested in being awarded his first medal, a Purple Heart, for action on December 2, 1968. After winning three Purple Hearts he chose to leave at the first opportunity and then he immediately turned around and used his status as a decorated veteran to rise to fame by throwing these same medals (or someone else's medals and/or ribbons) away and by slandering his fellow soldiers.

And now, as with every run for public office John Kerry has ever made, he's draped those same medals around his neck, wrapped himself in the flag, and showered himself in the glory and sacrifice of service in a war that he and those in his party have hated and opposed for decades with every fiber of their being.

As Wretchard at the Belmont Club pointed out the other day, Kerry is a fitting symbol, if not the perfect one, for today's Democratic party:

If any proof were needed that the Sixties were dead, the subterfuge of the Democratic Party would be Exhibit A. Instead of running under their own colors, or barring that, changing them, they have decided to sail beneath a false flag, as if under a cloud of shame. That in itself is tacit admission that they can no longer walk in their own guise; and what is worse that they cannot look themselves in the face, nor go into battle daring to win nor willing to lose in their own name, as is the mark of men.

- T. Bevan 10:15 am Link | Email | Send to a Friend

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