REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Kerry's Medals Strategy
Why Democrats are attacking George Bush's Vietnam service.
Monday, February 9, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
In case you've been busy making a living, the Presidential campaign is in full swing, and it's already getting nasty. Likely Democratic nominee John Kerry set the tone for his autumn candidacy yesterday by disparaging President Bush's military service.
"The issue here, as I have heard it raised, is was he present and active on duty in Alabama at the times he was supposed to be? I don't have the answer to that question," the Massachusetts Senator declared at a news conference while campaigning in Virginia. "Just because you get an honorable discharge does not in fact answer that question."
We assume Mr. Bush can defend himself on this point, since it's been raised many times before. As he noted yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press," his military service records are open and the press has combed through them going back to his first campaign for Texas governor in 1994. Mr. Bush flew jets for the Texas Air National Guard in the early 1970s, and while his unit was never dispatched to Vietnam, flying any fighter aircraft is not exactly a risk-free exercise.
The far more intriguing story here is why Mr. Kerry is playing this Vietnam-service card. This is the same John Kerry who declared in 1992 that Bill Clinton's draft avoidance record should be out of political bounds. His precise words, defending Mr. Clinton against an attack from fellow Democrat Bob Kerrey at the time, were that "We do not need to divide America over who served and how." Why does he now want to assail Mr. Bush for service that was far more extensive than Mr. Clinton's?
The transparent answer is that the Senator is trying to use his Vietnam biography as a political shield against his national security voting record. Mr. Kerry has a proud record as a Navy lieutenant from that troubled war, including medals for valor and three Purple Hearts. His advisers no doubt hope to use this as a kind of political trump on the vital question of whether he should be commander-in-chief. To this end, he has draped himself on the stump with veterans and routinely invokes his own war record. As Mr. Kerry's antiwar friends used to say during the 1960s, the personal is the political.
Especially in the wake of September 11, the commander-in-chief standard has returned in the minds of voters in a way it hasn't been since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. That tends to be an advantage for Republicans, who every poll shows have a nearly two-to-one credibility edge over Democrats on national security. We all remember Mike Dukakis in that famous tank. Mr. Kerry (who was Mr. Dukakis's lieutenant governor) wants voters to focus on his medals, not his voting record.
We rather doubt this gambit will work, and it shouldn't. A candidate's service history is one window on his character, but far more important is his judgment on the major security issues of his time. In Mr. Kerry's case, he has taken the dovish side of nearly every foreign policy debate since he entered public life.
After fighting in Vietnam, he returned to lead the protests against that war and urge the U.S. withdrawal that turned Indochina over to Communist rule for a generation. He was in favor of the nuclear freeze movement in the 1980s that would have frozen the Cold War in place with a Soviet advantage. He denounced the invasion of Grenada in 1983, though he now cites it as an example of a use of force he favors. He also opposed U.S. support for anti-Communist movements in Central America in the 1980s that helped bring democracy to Nicaragua and elsewhere.
These policy instincts have held even after the Soviet collapse vindicated the Ronald Reagan strategy that Mr. Kerry opposed. The Senator voted against the first Gulf War, arguing that Saddam Hussein could be contained without force. But in 2002 he voted to give this President Bush the power to disarm Saddam, only to oppose a year later the $87 billion to finish the job. We'd argue that these votes say more about the policies and judgment of a future President Kerry than does his Navy career.
A record of military service deserves to be respected, but it shouldn't be a kind of sovereign political immunity. Mr. Kerry in particular may want to avoid making the personal too political, because his own post-Vietnam behavior will also come under scrutiny. Throwing away someone else's medals as if they were his own says something about character too.
All indications are that this election is going to include the most important national security debate in a generation. September 11 exposed America's acute vulnerability to terrorists with weapons of mass destruction, and Mr. Bush has pursued a strategy to defend against it. Senator Kerry and his fellow Democrats have every right to attack that strategy and offer better ideas for fighting global terrorism, if they can. But the debate ought to be about who has the best policies to keep America safe, not who won the most medals 30 years ago |
