Feeley's 'chickenhawk' blunder: Hugh Hewitt slams 'all hat, no cattle' Dem

Colorado's 7th Congressional District is an "open" seat, created by judicial order and carefully balanced between registered Republicans and Democrats. It is a shame that the Democratic candidate for the seat, Mike Feeley, couldn't have been as balanced as the district he seeks to represent.

This is a story of one candidate's meltdown, but it also an indictment of the leadership of Tom Daschle and Al Gore. Feeley could understandably claim that these two leaders made him do "it."

What is it that he did? Feeley branded the president and vice president as "chickenhawks" and called Cheney an "SOB" to boot. Then he tried to squirm out of having done so.

The Republican candidate is businessman and community stalwart Bob Beauprez. Beauprez is believed to have a small but significant lead in the race which both parties have targeted. Beauprez and Feeley met to debate on the same night that Tom Daschle melted down on the Senate floor, two days after Al Gore went hard left in a bid to lead the Democratic peace caucus.

Feeley must have been carried away by the rhetoric he heard that day, as he used the debate to demand an apology from the president. If the president didn't apologize to the Senate, Feeley said, "we'll play politics." He continued, "I'll talk about every chickenhawk Republican running for office – who never served a day in uniform defending his nation – asking for your vote so they can go to Washington and send someone else's child to war."

Reaction was immediate and negative. Feeley may have counted on his three-year hitch in the Marine Corps as cover for such an inflammatory statement, but veterans and non-veterans alike weren't buying this tactic. Not even Silver Star recipient Sen. John Kerry or Medal of Honor recipient Sen. Daniel Inouye try such fundamentally un-American rhetoric, and Feeley's three years as an electronics technician in California, Washington, D.C. and Okinawa, though honorable, hardly armors him to the point that he can use rhetoric that combat veterans eschew.

Feeley came on my radio program on Friday after a day of pounding from callers and commentators throughout the Denver region. My first two questions were: Is the president a chickenhawk? Feeley said no. Is the vice president a chickenhawk? Feeley said no. Would Feeley define "chickenhawk." Feeley wouldn't. Did Feeley want to apologize for using a word he couldn't define? No.

Listeners responded that Feeley's performance was among the most self-destructive they had ever heard. The questions weren't hard, but Feeley would neither back down nor stand up. The impression he left was of a loudmouth caught in the spotlight, or as they say in Texas, "all hat and no cattle." It didn't help him when Feeley went on to declare against parental notification in the case of minors seeking abortion and to stoutly defend the necessity of keeping legal partial birth abortion. The only answers he could confidently give were on litmus tests of the far left.

But the pain will continue for Feeley this week as well, because just hours before appearing on my show he gave an interview to Rocky Mountain News columnist Mike Littwin.

"[Feeley's] an ex-Marine, and he was angry enough to demand his own apology from those who managed not to fight in the Vietnam War," wrote Littwin. Note that the phrasing of this sentence may lead a reader to conclude that Feeley was a combat veteran. Again, Feeley gets the full credit for serving his country, but has he been overstating his own war-record, or allowing others to draw wrong conclusions? Those questions become relevant, because Feeley goes on to attack the president's military record, which you may recall involved, as one caller put it, "strapping a jet on his back."

About Cheney, Feeley tells Littwin, "I thought, you know, 'You SOB.’ You've got to be kidding me. At least Bush showed up at the Guard a couple of times ... but Cheney didn't even do that. He had other things to do."

The sound you hear is of a minor-leaguer going zero for 30 in his first, and last, trip to the big league. Bluster is never pretty, and even veteran pals like Daschle do pratfalls when they start demanding apologies from presidents. But I have searched my memory in vain for any other figure of respect and authority calling Dick Cheney an SOB and a chickenhawk, only to flatly state hours later that, indeed, the vice president was not a chickenhawk. Feeley, in short, set some kind of a record for immaturity in his brief turn on the national stage.

Of course Feeley's a bit player in the comedy that is the Democratic campaign of 2002, but he was taking his cues from the national leadership. Feeley's fiasco is playing itself out over and over again across the country, whether it is Congressman Jim McDermott's crazy trip to Iraq and crazier remarks on his return, or the idea of having Bobby "Rolexes" Torricelli give the Democrats' national radio address two days after new revelations of the depth of his corruption.

At some point voters begin to wonder that, all issues aside, if the Democrats can't run a political campaign, how in the world are they going to run a war on terror?

"...Feeley must have been carried away by the rhetoric he heard that day, as he used the debate to demand an apology from the president.
If the president didn't apologize to the Senate, Feeley said, "we'll play politics."
He continued, "I'll talk about every chickenhawk Republican running for office – who never served a day in uniform defending his nation – asking for your vote so they can go to Washington and send someone else's child to war."
Reaction was immediate and negative.
Feeley may have counted on his three-year hitch in the Marine Corps as cover for such an inflammatory statement, but veterans and non-veterans alike weren't buying this tactic.
Not even Silver Star recipient Sen. John Kerry or Medal of Honor recipient Sen. Daniel Inouye try such fundamentally un-American rhetoric, and Feeley's three years as an electronics technician in California, Washington, D.C. and Okinawa, though honorable, hardly armors him to the point that he can use rhetoric that combat veterans eschew..." - Hugh Hewitt
.

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Hi, nopardons - You should have heard Hugh SKEWER this bozo on the radio!

The definitive analysis on this "chicken hawk" fallacy was written in a Washington COMPost article - which we are not allowed to post the FULL TEXT of here, but here is the HEART of that unassailable argument:
"...The second variant of "chicken hawk" is that veterans per se are uniquely qualified to make judgments on matters of war and peace.
How does that work, though? Does a former airborne ranger get twice as loud a voice as an ICBM crew chief? Does the stateside finance corps lieutenant count more than the civilian who came under fire running an aid mission in Mogadishu?
According to this view, to fill a senior policy position during a war one would of course prefer a West Point graduate who had led a regiment in combat, as opposed to a corporate lawyer turned politician with a few weeks' experience in a militia unit that did not fight.
The former profile fits Jefferson Davis and the latter Abraham Lincoln. Not only did Davis turn against the Constitution he had sworn to uphold, he was a poor commander in chief, while Lincoln was the greatest of our war presidents.
Being a veteran is no guarantee of strategic wisdom..."
more

But the pain will continue for Feeley this week as well, because just hours before appearing on my show he gave an interview to Rocky Mountain News columnist Mike Littwin.
That would be THIS article, from www.rockymountainnews.com

Littwin: Does new enemy call for new reality?
September 28, 2002
Stephanie Phibbs was breathless. She was breathless and excited and, like a lot of people, stunned.
She was one of the organizers of the anti-Iraqi-war protest, which she figured would attract maybe 100 participants. The organizers had just a few weeks to put this together, and the war protest movement hasn't exactly taken off. I mean, before Friday - actually, even after Friday - just who had heard of a group called Coloradans Against Bush's War on Iraq? And, while we're on the subject, can someone help them with a new name?
And yet, several thousand protesters showed up in honor of the president's fund-raising trip here. There were Nixon masks for you nostalgia freaks. But according to reports, nobody sang Give Peace a Chance, which tells you something about which generation was leading the protest.
"Oh, my God," is how Phibbs, who's 31, put it. "This was way beyond what we expected."
It was clearly unexpected. I'm just wondering if it's possibly meaningful.
When Bush went to the United Nations to press the case against Iraq, he gave a brilliant performance, another in a series of his "Which side are you on?" speeches. He grabbed the moral high ground and dared anyone to push him off.
And just like that, the nation's story line shifted from Enron to regime change, from Global Crossing to weapons of mass destruction, from Martha Stewart to Saddam Hussein. And it didn't seem to hurt the Republicans' chances in November.
Bush has demanded a new resolution from the United Nations. He demanded a resolution from Congress. And the Democrats - hoping to change the subject - were tripping over one another, much like you'd imagine Brian Griese at a kennel, to see who could embrace the president's position first.
But I wonder if the momentum has slowed just slightly. You've heard the speeches. Al Gore made his usual infelicitous remarks - but they seemed to embolden some in his party. Ted Kennedy spoke up Friday. Democrats are starting to ask why inspectors shouldn't be given a chance to work. Some wise old Republican heads had already questioned the Bush policy.
And when Bush and Cheney overreached, seeming to question the patriotism of the Democrats, Tom Daschle, who never gets angry, made a fiery speech, demanding an apology.
Mike Feeley did the same. He's running as a Democrat in the 7th District - the tossup race that brought Bush here to raise money for Bob Beauprez.
And Feeley, eating a corned-beef sandwich at a candidates' forum at the East Side Kosher Deli while the Republicans were doing their $1,000-a-plate thing, would love to run on economic issues.
But he's an ex-Marine, and he was angry enough to demand his own apology from those who managed not to fight in the Vietnam War.
"You use the word 'chickenhawk,' and you get a lot of attention," Feeley said. "It just sort of infuriates me. I was angry at the president because people hang on his every word. He has to choose his language very, very carefully. In a political moment, when he lets down his guard and steps over the line, you've got to call him on it."
Feeley said he was more angry with Cheney, who had said, in one speech, that those who want to win the war should vote for Republicans.
"I thought, you know, 'You SOB,' " Feeley said, with feeling. "You've got to be kidding me. At least Bush showed up at the Guard a couple of times . . . but Cheney didn't even do that. He had other things to do."
What you have to understand is that Feeley, like Daschle, basically backs the president on Iraq.
The protesters are different. Most believe Bush is pushing the war for political reasons. Certainly, many in the Bush administration have wanted this battle for years. But why now?
Why wouldn't deterrence work against Saddam? The last time he used weapons of mass destruction was the '80s. Why can't inspectors, at a minimum, put a stop to Iraq's weapons acquisition? How sure are we that a war wouldn't destabilize the region? Are we really prepared for the possibility that the fighting could devolve into an urban street fight? The questions go on.
And there's a greater issue. The president, who wasn't exactly elected by acclamation, has decided on his own that containment doesn't work anymore and that pre-emption is the new American doctrine.
We pick the fight when we want it against whom we choose.
Maybe, with a new kind of enemy, there needs to be a new reality.
But, of course, in a noisy old democracy, where some people still care enough to spend their lunch hour on the march, maybe we ought to take enough time to talk about it first.

Mike Littwin's column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Call him at (303) 892-5428, or e-mail him at littwinm@RockyMountain News.com.

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