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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (64965)	8/28/2004 6:32:45 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793963

Fred highlights some points about this controversy that passed us by. McCain's reaction to Kerry's ad, and Cleland's reception in Texas. John McCain Was Right From the September 6, 2004 issue: Kerry should have taken his advice about Vietnam. by Fred Barnes Weekly Standard ....The Kerry campaign effectively disputed some Vietnam allegations, but not others. In struggling to validate Kerry's claim that he spent Christmas Eve 1968 in Cambodia, his aides confused the geography of Vietnam and conflated Kerry's two separate assignments there. Later, they gave up, conceding Kerry probably wasn't in Cambodia in 1968. Also, at McCain's insistence, they removed an anti-Bush ad with a clip of McCain confronting Bush in 2000. Then they tried a stunt, dispatching former Democratic senator Max Cleland of Georgia, a triple amputee veteran of Vietnam, to Texas to give Bush a letter calling for him to stop the Swift Boat ads. Used to a sympathetic media, the Kerry campaign miscalculated how the press would react. They should have known reporters love to unmask stunts. "Can you explain what the genesis of this trip was?" one reporter asked Cleland. "Because yesterday, Senator Kerry...said, let's move on. Let's discuss the issues of this campaign. And now you fly down here and draw further attention to the Swift Boat ads, further attention to the controversy. What does the Kerry campaign want? Does it want us to focus on the Swift Boat ads or does it want us to focus on the issues?" Cleland was confounded. He responded with an attack on Bush. Oddly enough, the flap may have brought Bush and McCain closer together. Although McCain had already been campaigning at Bush's side, aides of Bush believe McCain has become more fervent in his support because of his distaste for Kerry's stress on Vietnam. A more cynical view is that McCain, 68, is reconciling with Bush Republicans with an eye to running for president in 2008. In any case, while McCain said Bush should specifically condemn the first Swift Boat ad, the two agreed that all independent ads by so-called 527 groups should be stopped. This put the spotlight on pro-Kerry 527s, which have spent more than $60 million vilifying Bush. That was not Kerry's biggest Vietnam problem. A second TV spot by the Swift Boat vets criticizes Kerry's antiwar activity after he returned from Vietnam. In a meeting with editors of the Washington Post last week, McCain distinguished between this ad and the first one disputing Kerry's service. It is an important distinction. Kerry's antiwar stance, especially his 1971 Senate testimony accusing American troops of committing war crimes daily in Vietnam, has always been a ripe target. Now McCain has, in effect, given a green light to zeroing in on it. This makes it difficult for Kerry to insist the second ad is over the line. McCain, who was a POW in North Vietnam at the time Kerry was talking about war crimes, believes Kerry's Senate testimony was both wrong and harmful. Kerry's fixation on Vietnam caught Bush campaign advisers by surprise. They expected him to pound Bush on domestic issues at the convention. They believe he blundered by concentrating on the one thing everyone already knew about him: He's a Vietnam vet. Worse, he turned his advantage on Vietnam into a disadvantage. Kerry has only himself to blame. "I don't think there's any doubt that Senator Kerry made [Vietnam] a very big part of his campaign and therefore legitimized this issue," McCain told the Chicago Tribune. Now he's paying a price for not heeding McCain's advice in the first place. weeklystandard.com

To: LindyBill who wrote (64965)	8/30/2004 4:16:47 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793963

They will run the Middle East if Kerry wins. Hard to imagine how Kerry could do more to hand it to them than Bush has done. Hard to reverse it now in any event. We cast the die, and we cast it with blind optimism about the outcome. Whoever wins is going to have to deal with one unholy mess, whether he created it or not, and there is no certainty that any policy will produce positive results. Best way to dig yourself out of a hole is not to jump into it in the first place, but it’s a little late for that sentiment now. Our situation with Iran is worse now than my most pessimistic pre-war predictions. Amusing that I of all people should err on the side of optimism, but nobody’s 100% prescient.