The Other John Kerry
By Jane Novak
Special to The Daily Star
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
This is the first US Presidential election since the enactment of the Campaign Finance Reform Act. And the mud and money are flying more furiously than ever in the US.
The Campaign Finance Reform Act was intended to diminish the influence of rich citizens and lobby groups by limiting individual campaign contributions to $2000. To encourage free expression of political opinions, individuals and groups may run political advertising that does not endorse a specific candidate. These groups may not coordinate with a candidate’s campaign. These “independent” groups are usually called “527’s” in reference to the law they operate under.
Unable to endorse a candidate, the 527’s instead attack the opposition furiously. A record level of political advertising is expected this electoral season. Sixty-three million dollars of these 527 television ads have already run opposing President Bush, and a mere two and a half million against Senator Kerry, all under the guise of independent expression.
The ads have a tendency to stretch the truth. Move-On, one of these 527 groups, ran an ad attacking the Bush administration for cutting education funding and veterans’ benefits. Based on President Bush’s latest budget, both education spending and the Veterans Affairs budget would increase by more than 35 percent.
The latest 527 dust-up has come from a small group of about 250 veterans, “The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” and a minor three state ad buy. The group purports itself as formed “to counter the false ‘war crimes’ charges John Kerry repeatedly made against Vietnam veterans who served in our units and elsewhere, and to accurately portray Kerry’s brief tour in Vietnam….” Their ad focuses on Kerry’s actions during the Vietnam War and, having served along side him, they say “John Kerry is no war hero.”
Kerry has defined himself for the American electorate by his four months in Vietnam. He rarely mentions that he returned from war to throw his metals, or ribbons (no one is sure), over the fence of the White House in protest. Kerry does not highlight his Senate career either. Candidate Kerry accepted his party’s nomination with a salute and the words “My name is John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty.”
The charges by Kerry’s former comrades undercut the premise of his candidacy. Polling shows the ad by the Swift Boat Veterans has affected American public opinion. The Democrats are in a tizzy and crying “foul.” They surrogates have repeatedly denigrated and challenged President Bush’s service in the Texas National Guard during the Vietnam War. Yet, any public scrutiny of Kerry’s war record is taboo according to the Kerry camp.
Allowing Michael Moore and his mistruths free reign, the Democrats have tried to censor the Swift Boat Veterans. Democrats have attempted to interfere with the publication of the Swift Vet’s book “Unfit for Command” and intimidate bookstores that carry it. The Kerry campaign has sent letters to television stations urging them not to run the ad. Kerry’s campaign has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing the Bush campaign of “collaboration” with the Swift Vets. Kerry is demanding that President Bush, who has long opposed all the 527 political intervention, condemn this one ad in particular.
The Democrats point to Bob Perry, a Republican supporter (from Texas!) and his $200,000 contribution to the Swift Vets. The 26 million donated to various anti-Bush 527’s by near-socialist George Soros and his business partner Peter Lewis has not engendered a similar response from the Democrats, supposedly the party of the little guy.
Missing in the Democrats fury and the anti-Bush media frenzy in the US is the fact that Kerry has not released all his military records, as Bush has, or directly addressed the allegations of the Swift Vets.
Kerry’s credibility is also challenged by his own statements. In a 1986 speech on the Senate floor, Kerry said, "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. . . . I have that memory which is seared-seared-in me." He restated this story again in several interviews in 1992. Now after decades, Kerry’s favored biographer Douglas Brinkley places Kerry fifty miles from Cambodia that night and says that Kerry was mistaken in his earlier statements.
More troubling for Kerry, a second Swift Boat TV advertisement details Kerry’s activities after the war. A leading anti-war activist upon his return to the US, Kerry appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22, 1971 and accused US military members of widespread war crimes.
Kerry’s charges were based on hearsay from an anti-war conference he attended that was funded primarily by Jane Fonda. None of the witnesses there provided verifiable details or would sign affidavits. The Naval Investigative Service later found that several of the veterans were impostors using the name of real veterans. Kerry stands by his statements today.
The Swift Vets ad states “He betrayed us in the past, how could we be loyal to him now?” Several vets highlighted in the ad were POWs who were tortured for confessions and taunted by their North Korean captors with Kerry’s Senate testimony. Kerry as a member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War met with the North Vietnamese and Vietcong leadership, and advocated a speedy US withdrawal. Bob Dole has called for Kerry to apologize for his post war behavior.
The Swift Boat Veterans For Truth have presented another version of John Kerry than the one hyped by the Kerry campaign. From these conflicting portraits, can the US electorate extrapolate Kerry’s character or predict his future behavior? Kerry’s history generates the question: who will decide US policy in Iraq, Kerry the war hero or Kerry the radical anti-war protester? Until Kerry releases his complete war records, and answers questions about his post war activities, the American electorate is unlikely to place their faith in such an enigma.
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