John Kerry: Not So Swift
Michael Graham's column.
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"Injustice is relatively easy to bear. What stings is justice."<font color=black> — H.L. Mencken
Listening to John Kerry complain about the scrutiny his Vietnam record is getting is like Pamela Anderson complaining about the fact that guys keep staring at her breasts. What the hell did you expect?
When you turn the Democratic National Convention into a four-day screening of Apocalypse Now — complete with the candidate's own home movies; when you stride to the podium with a crisp salute and a <font color=blue>"reporting for duty"<font color=black>; when your political entourage has more military uniforms in it than the coatroom of a Subic Bay bordello; in short, when you base much of your campaign for president on two tours of duty in 'Nam — you, sir, have no right to complain that your opponents are too obsessed with the past.
If there were ever a candidate who is getting exactly the campaign treatment he deserves, that man is John F. Kerry.
What I, a former GOP political flak and campaign lackey, can't figure out is what genius in the Democratic Party looked at John Kerry and said, <font color=blue>"Yeah, Vietnam — that's the ticket!"<font color=black> Why not get Scott Peterson to run for attorney general as the pro-life candidate?
There are people in American public life for whom Vietnam would be a worse campaign issue than it is for John Kerry. Jane Fonda, former members of the Kent State National Guard, Lt. William Calley of My Lai …
That's about it.
But for John Kerry, whose weakness as a candidate is the perception (fair or otherwise) that he is a typical Massachusetts liberal, it's hard to think of an issue better suited to cement that perception than a campaign reminding people that he launched his political career as a long-haired, ribbon-throwing, fist-shaking, Fonda-friendly peacenik.
There are plenty of veterans who still haven't forgiven Kerry for his wartime denunciations of American soldiers and their <font color=blue>"atrocities"<font color=black> while men still fought in Vietnam. They haven't forgotten that some of those soldiers were being beaten and tortured in North Vietnamese prisons, where John Kerry's own congressional testimony attacking the military was read to these prisoners by their Communist captors.
But most voters didn't serve in Vietnam. Quite of few of them don't even remember it. These voters just want to vote for a guy who they perceive as <font color=blue>"one of us,"<font color=black> a candidate who they believe shares their basic view of America.
In 2000, Southerner Al Gore became perceived as <font color=blue>"one of them"<font color=black> in a majority of states from West Virginia to New Mexico — including his home state of Tennessee — and it cost him the election. For the Boston Brahmin millionaire Sen. John "Heinz" Kerry and his world-citizen wife, the core challenge for the campaign has always been how to make <font color=blue>"one of us"<font color=black> out of a Massachusetts liberal with a voting record to the left of Ted Kennedy.
Campaigning on Kerry's military service certainly makes him more relatable to Mr. and Mrs. Typical American. However, it also makes Kerry's record as an anti-war activist relevant, too. This was always the Achilles heel, calf, thigh and lower torso of the Kerry <font color=blue>"war hero"<font color=black> strategy. Do you really want Mr. and Mrs. Typical flipping through photo albums of John Kerry hanging out with hippies and throwing away the ribbons from his medals?
Enter Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, just a few dozen men with less than $1 million in TV ads who have set the perfect trap for Kerry and his media allies. For a year, Kerry's anti-war antics were largely ignored by the networks and the newspapers. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth wisely launched their first assault against Kerry's <font color=blue>"war hero"<font color=black> record instead, giving the Kerry campaign and the lapdog press a target they couldn't resist, as no members of the group served on Kerry's boat and some have changed their stories. Kerry and the press corps dived right into a <font color=blue>"he said/she said"<font color=black> battle that could only be fought to a draw.
That's when Swift Boat Veterans for Truth opened fire with the big guns: Kerry's words and deeds after he returned home from Vietnam.
We may never know who was or wasn't shooting when John Kerry was wounded in Vietnam, but the words <font color=blue>"atrocities," "human genitals" and "cut off heads"<font color=black> are a matter of public record. Kerry's book, The New Soldier, written with the now-discredited leftist organization <font color=blue>"Vietnam Veterans Against the War,"<font color=black> is available on Amazon.com (albeit for $798). The web site does not, alas, have a photo of the book's cover featuring an upside down American flag.
Because John Kerry's record as an opportunistic, anti-war political activist is not obscured by the fog of war, it is the only story the press can cover from Vietnam with any confidence. And more importantly, with any relevance.
If the Kerry campaign were about his plans for a different approach in Iraq, then Kerry's days as a <font color=blue>"Hanoi Jane"<font color=black> lefty would be ancient history. If Kerry were running as a <font color=blue>"lion of the Senate"<font color=black> and his 20-year voting record, then the '70s would be, like, far out, man.
But for the saluting Vietnam vet whose campaign theme is <font color=blue>"I defended America as a young man and I will do the same as president,"<font color=black> John Kerry's days as a peacenik fighting against the establishment are the here and now. Thanks to John Kerry, a Jane Fonda, anti-war liberal isn't who he was. It's who he is.
The Kerry campaign may long for the day when their candidate was just another Massachusetts liberal. |
