John Kerry — A Question of Character?
Barrett Kalellis
Thursday, Aug. 12, 2004
Does anyone remember the “character” issue that surrounded Bill Clinton when he made his first run at the presidency back in 1992? When his legendary hijinks in Arkansas started appearing on the nation’s radar screens, and people began to realize that Clinton’s lips and the truth were usually strangers?
The list of pre-White House scandals was impressive — Whitewater, Troopergate, Gennifer Flowers, the Mena airport coke smuggling, the draft-dodging, antiwar demonstrations while a Rhodes scholar, etc. — and all threatened to derail his candidacy.
The character issue had been raised and needed to be addressed. With his army of war room spinmeisters and shills, Slick Willie and his wife were able to cleverly tiptoe their way around the truth, with the help of a compliant, partisan media, enough to defeat George Bush.
Other than outright lying about these scandals, the main claims for dismissing their substance either took the form of denying that Clinton did no wrong, or that youthful indiscretions, particularly those about marital infidelity, were not relevant to whether he could successfully fill the role of president.
Thus we heard arguments that past revered presidents like FDR and Eisenhower also had mistresses on the side, which did not affect their job effectiveness. If they could do it with impunity, the story went, so could Bill Clinton. “Character counts” became an empty phrase and not dispositive in electing a president.
As if to prove that character had been underrated or overlooked as a palpable issue, once Clinton was elected, a veritable plethora of new scandals sprouted to supplant the old ones: Travelgate, the Vincent Foster death, Web Hubbell hush money, Paula Jones, Cattlegate, Filegate, the billing records, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick, Chinagate, impeachment, the presidential pardons, and of course, Monica Lewinsky.
The other, more sinister side of the Clinton scandals — used effectively by the shills or in unattributable leaks to the media — were the ad hominem attacks against accusers. Invectives were slopped onto anyone who spoke against the Clintons, from being “trailer park trash,” (Paula Jones), and a “sex-crazed, witch-hunting prosecutor” (Kenneth Starr) to the ominous “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
Now comes John Kerry, with soi-disant advance billing as a “Vietnam War hero,” a scandal all his own. Fellow soldier John O’Neill and co-author Jerome Corsi have written Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, a devastating critical examination of Kerry’s claim to war heroics.
Since Kerry has studiously avoided mentioning his 19-year Senate career and liberal voting record in favor of positioning himself as an honored veteran, a major scandal challenging both the facts and his integrity could literally blow his swift boat out of the water.
Once again, the heretofore unemployed Clinton slime machine has jumped back in action, trying to defame and discredit the Kerry accusers. Lanny Davis, Terry McAuliffe, Susan Estrich and others in the Kerry camp are jamming the media airwaves with name-calling as well as having attorneys attempt to bring legal action against television stations that air a scathing anti-Kerry ad produced by a Vietnam vets organization.
It won’t be so easy this time. The vets say they have dozens of eyewitness accounts challenging Kerry’s account of his actions in Vietnam, which, after all, only amount to four months of service. The awards and ribbons that Kerry won are also being questioned. Detractors say that he falsified his reports about his “injuries,” which they claim were self-inflicted scratches. This reminds me of Gracie Allen claiming that George Burns was also awarded a Purple Heart during World War II — for sitting on his flashlight.
They are claiming that Kerry is a liar — and a crafty, cunning and calculating one. The book’s highly documented charges cannot be easily dismissed, however, nor can they, or should they, be swept under the rug.
One cannot learn the truth of these matters until a dispassionate mainstream media assigns reporters to fully investigate them. If these war vets are accurate, John Kerry is dishonest, and he deserves neither our respect nor our votes.
The lessons to be learned from the Clinton years is that character indeed does count, and that one of the responsibilities of the press is to ferret out the truth, without partison guile, and to let the chips fall where they may.
If John Kerry cannot be trusted before election to the presidency, he certainly cannot be afterwards. |
