Dean blasts Kerry on Vietnam
Senator retorts that combat gives him executive gravitas
By Sam Dealey
hillnews.com
By Sam Dealey
Howard Dean’s presidential campaign sharply criticized Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) yesterday for seemingly flip-flopping on the importance of serving in Vietnam in presidential politics.
Kerry seeks to distinguish himself from his White House rivals — both Democratic and Republican — by drawing attention to his war record. But this emphasis stands in marked contrast to his past utterances about service in Vietnam as a qualification for the highest office.
“Before he became a political candidate for president, John Kerry clearly believed that military service should not be used for political gain,” said Jay Carson, a spokesman for Dean, the former governor of Vermont who is running well ahead of Kerry in recent New Hampshire polls.
“And he was right about that,” Carson added. “Unfortunately, now John Kerry and his campaign have a strategy to use that record to further his political career.”
On numerous occasions this year, Kerry cited his distinguished war record as a decisive factor in who should be the nominee. As a naval officer, Kerry earned the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with combat V, and three Purple Hearts for his service on a gunboat patrolling the Mekong.
Kelley Benander, a spokeswoman for Kerry’s campaign, responded to the charges by saying:
“John Kerry has always said military experience is not a pre-requisite for the presidency, but it informs the tough questions he asks and it certainly gives him the firsthand perspective you can’t learn in the situation room. He is the only person running for president who combines military experience, broad foreign policy experience and a tested commitment to Democratic values — and yes, we will talk about that.”
Asked Monday at a New Hampshire gathering about the possible reinstatement of the draft, for example, Kerry told the audience it should be administered “without politics and favoritism.” He added, “There are some people in high office today who pulled strings to get into the National Guard.”
President Bush served as a pilot in the Air National Guard.
At a Democratic presidential debate last Thursday, Kerry responded to a jibe from rival Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) about his privileged upbringing by recalling his war experience.
“Can I say that when I was serving in Vietnam on a small boat, the one thing I learned was nobody asked you where you came from,” Kerry said. “Nobody worried about your background. You fought together, you lived together and you bled together.”
Kerry then sought to turn his answer into political capital.
“I think I stand here with a broader base of experience, both in domestic affairs and in foreign affairs, than any other person,” he said of his Democratic primary opponents.
In May, Kerry told the Orlando Sentinel, “I am the only person running for this job who has actually fought in a war.”
A decade ago, however, Kerry rose in the Senate on two separate occasions to decry presidential candidates who used their military service record as a qualification for the highest office.
On Feb. 27, 1992, Kerry defended then presidential candidate Bill Clinton against an attack by his Democratic rival Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.). As the primary season unfolded, Kerrey, who lost part of his leg in Vietnam, had peppered Clinton with uncomfortable questions about whether the Arkansan had evaded the draft.
Kerry hit back at his Senate colleague, saying: “I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into the campaign, and that it has been inserted in what I feel to be the worst possible way… What saddens me most is that Democrats, above all those who shared the agonies of that generation, should now be re-fighting the many conflicts of Vietnam in order to win the current political conflict of a presidential primary.”
Jan Scruggs, president and founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, attributed Kerry’s shifting position to political expedience.
“It was just smart politics,” said Scruggs. “Kerrey was a presidential candidate, and John Kerry was basically defending the guy who was going to win.”
In October 1992, Kerry again defended Clinton from remarks by President George H.W. Bush. In a television interview, the president had questioned Clinton’s involvement in anti-war protests while a Rhodes scholar at Oxford and a trip by Clinton to Moscow as a post-graduate student in 1969.
In prefacing his Senate remarks, Kerry recalled the words Bush had spoken four years earlier. “This is a fact: The final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation can long afford to be sundered by a memory,” Bush then said.
Kerry proceeded to ask a series of biting rhetorical questions of Bush from the Senate floor.
“What has happened to the George Bush who made that statement?” Kerry asked.
“Why, President Bush, now do you choose to break another promise? Why do you choose to break your own statute of limitations?
“Why do you choose yourself to bring back the memory that only four years ago you said sundered this nation? Is your desire to hold office really so great that you would betray your own sense of decency and fairness? Is your desperation now really so great that you would adopt a conscious strategy of reopening and pouring salt on some of the most painful wounds that our nation has ever expected?
“You and I know that if service or non-service in the war is to become a test of qualification for high office, you would not have a vice president, nor would you have a secretary of defense, and our nation would never recover from the divisions created by that war.”
Then Vice President Dan Quayle served in the National Guard. Dick Cheney, then
Defense secretary and now vice president, never served.
“It’s unfortunate that [Kerry’s Vietnam record] has become the stock answer for almost every issue for Kerry’s campaign,” said an aide to a rival campaign. “At a certain point, Kerry’s going to have to articulate a vision that speaks to voters across America and not simply lapse into his military record.”
But Benander said: “Good luck to the aspiring president who would argue that national security credentials haven’t taken on greater importance in the post- Sept. 11th world. John Kerry’s Vietnam service, 19 years on the Foreign Relations Committee and overall national security experience are part of who he is and what kind of president he’ll be.”
“When you’re running, you use everything that may get you a few votes,” observed Scruggs. |
