Sullivan agrees with you in this Sunday London Times column.
Circling The Drain
The Campaigns Begin
It's only February, but the atmosphere in Washington is like a fetid 100 degree summer stinker.
I'd say that mud is flying, but that feels like an insult to mud. You can sum up the story pretty succinctly by pointing out that elements on one side are yelling "Deserter!" at Bush and elements elsewhere (it's not clear who the source of the rumor is) are yelling "Adulterer!" at Kerry. Charming, no? Of course we could talk about the growing deficits, the war in Iraq, marriages for gay couples ... oh fuhgeddaboutit. Back to deserters and adulterers.
The latest scandal cycle began a few weeks back when Michael Moore, the lardy lefty, assailed president Bush as a "deserter" in front of Moore's favored candidate, Wesley Clark. Deserter? That was a new one. We already knew that Bush killed little babies in his spare time, was cruel to animals and admired Hitler. But deserter? Clark said nothing and later, in the final spiral of his campaign, refused to disown the charge in a debate. That set off Terry McAuliffe, the wide-boy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who reminded reporters of old charges that the president had been AWOL during his National Guard service in the Vietnam war era in the early 1970s.
The basic story is this: back when many young American men were either being drafted to go to Vietnam or dodging the draft, young George W. Bush secured a highly sought-after posting to the National Guard in Texas. He was required to perform a minimum amount of service, for which he was paid. But there were absences in the formal record, suggesting to some doubters that Bush had somehow wangled an easy ride because of his father's connections. There was a five-month gap when Bush did not report for duty at all. He was working on a political campaign and now says that he made up the lost time later, as the Guard allows. Bush was also given an honourable discharge, suggesting that there was nothing awry with his period of duty. But there were still gaps in the record that his opponents - in previous campaigns as well - tried to make hay out of. And the press inquiries this time around became so insistent that last Sunday, Bush agreed in an NBC interview to release all the relevant records that he could find to clear the air.
Instead, it got muggier. The White House released forms that showed that Bush had indeed been paid for his full service in 1972 and 1973, indicating that the Guard considered his duty fulfilled. But there was no data on which days he reported for duty, nor where he was or what his duties were. Moreover, there were blacked out sections on the forms which detailed previous arrests and medical records. Bush had admitted he had an arrest record during his wild days - for stealing a wreath and yobbish behavior at a Yale-Princeton game. But some were asking if there had been drinking or drug arrests as well. If that had been the case, Bush might have been denied access to the much-sought-after place in the Guard. But there's no evidence to prove this. Then on Thursday, the white Hous released records showing that Bush did have previous arrests for speeding. Usually, a candidate for the Guard would have needed a waiver to get in under those circumstances. Bush didn't get a waiver. The implication is that his daddy fixed it - and thereby helped his son avoid the draft.
Then along came a disgruntled former Guard employee, one Bill Burkett, who claimed he had overheard Guard officials and Bush advisers discussing the records as recently as 1997. He said he witnessed a conversation on a speaker-phone where the Guard officials were talking about the need to "cleanse" the records with a major Bush ally. On Wednesday, the White House described the allegations as an "outrageously false statement." Scott McLellan, the White House spokesman, described those seeking more details as "trolling for trash for political gain," and engaging in "gutter politics." On Friday, the Boston Globe, one of the papers pursuing the story hardest, severely undercut Burkett's claims, citing another named source who denied any memory of the alleged event Burkett said he was a witness to.
Scandal scorecard: so far, a small scratch on Bush. And a lot of animus and bad blood. Was the Kerry camp firing a shot across the bow? "This is not the Dukakis campaign," one Kerry adviser told the New York Times. "We're not going to take it. And if they're going to come at us with stuff, whatever that stuff may be, if it goes to a place where the '88 campaign did, then everything is on the table. Everything."
Hmmm. Next thing we know, the Drudge Report - the source that broke the Lewinsky scandal - runs a banner headline suggesting a recent liaison between Senator Kerry and a young female Washington intern. All sorts of conspiracy theories suddenly abounded. Was this allegation planted by the Clintons, trying to derail Kerry to make way for Hillary? Was it begun instead by a Democratic dirty-trickster, Chris Lehane, and fanned by Wesley Clark? Were the Bushies behind it instead? Very few people knew anything - but Drudge got 15 million visits in one 24 hour period. There isn't a single journalist in D.C. who is not aware of the story. Local television stations ran the story across the country but the networks and mainstream papers stayed away for the week. On Friday morning, on the Imus radio show, Kerry knocked the story down completely: "Well, there is nothing to report. So there is nothing to talk about. I'm not worried about it. No."
Kerry, in my view, deserves as much privacy as he can get. If there's no legal issue, alleged adultery is not something that should be part of a political campaign. Some have even speculated that the Kerry campaign knew something like this might erupt in the campaign so decided to get the story out there early in order to squash it, draw a clear line around the candidate and move on. If that's so, it's smart. But Kerry's blanket denial is also a liability. The cover-up is always, always worse than any peccadillo. We'll see, in due course - and it's going to be a fascinating insight into what the American media can and cannot now report. It will also be revealing about where the American public is on matters of public life and sex six years after the Lewinsky mess.
But it's also a sign that this campaign could prove to be one of the most brutal and ugly and long of any in a long time. These personal smears will continue to pile up. Even on the issues, it's getting ugly. The Bush team has sent coded messages that it is going to use the gay marriage issue as a wedge to divide Democrats and ratchet up support among fundamentalist whites for their campaign. The Kerry campaign may use Bush's "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier photo-op, when the president dressed up in military gear, as an excuse for raising doubts about Bush's own record of service, compared to Kerry's time in Vietnam.
The wounds of 2000, in other words, remain unhealed. The bitterness endures. In a very close campaign race, we have already started out in the gutter. We'll be circling the drain by the summer.
February 14, 2004, Sunday Times of London.
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