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Mark Steyn: Kerry’s quagmire
The Spectator (U.K.) ^ | 08/28/04 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 08/26/2004 6:11:58 AM PDT by Pokey78

Mark Steyn says the Democratic contender has made a big mistake in campaigning on his Vietnam war record

I have no views on whether one or more of John Kerry’s bemedalled wounds from the Mekong Delta 35 years ago were self-inflicted — though the Kerry campaign, in its second big concession to his chastisers, now says his first Purple Heart-earning wound might have been ‘unintentionally self-inflicted’. But there’s no doubt every wound from the last 35 days is self-inflicted, beginning with the candidate’s disastrous decision at the Democratic Convention to play up Vietnam and play down Iraq, 9/11 and anything else that happened in the last 30 years. Since then Kerry’s shot himself in the foot so many times he ought to put in for a good dozen more Purple Hearts.

The flaw in the Senator’s strategy to run for president as a plucky 24-year-old Swift boat lieutenant was an obvious one. The argument that his Swift boat command demonstrates his superb qualities of leadership falls apart once you notice his striking lack of the first ingredient of leadership: followers. Aside from the three or four Swiftees who’ve been persuaded to travel around the country with him, all the hundreds of other Swiftvets loathe him, and many of them are determined to stick to him like DNA to Monica’s dress. This was entirely foreseeable — I’ve been getting emails from aggrieved veterans for two years now, so I’d guess the Democrats have too.

But the party that likes to sneer that Bush never had a plan to deal with Iraq’s inevitable insurgents doesn’t seem to mind that Kerry never had a plan to deal with the Swiftees’ equally inevitable insurgents. A guy awash in gazillions from Barbra Streisand and co. who can’t see off a couple of hundred middle-aged ‘liars’ and their minimal ad-buy? Is that really the fellow you want to put up against al-Qa’eda, the ayatollahs and Kim Jong-Il?

The Kerry campaign’s bumbling ineptness this last month is a bit of a stunner to those of us who followed Bill Clinton for eight years. The Democrats may not know how to run a school district or a highway department, but they’re supposed to be able to run scandals.

Consider, by way of comparison, James E. McGreevey, Democratic Governor of New Jersey. A couple of weeks ago, Governor McGreevey turned up for a 4 p.m. press conference with his wife loyally standing by his side and declared, ‘My truth is that I am a gay American.’

The following day it emerged that other folks’ truth is that McGreevey’s a corrupt sexual predator who got the hots for an Israeli poet, put him on the payroll as the state’s $110,000-per-annum homeland security adviser, a position for which he had no obvious qualification, and allegedly forcibly performed oral sex on him as well as other acts, one of which may or may not have been responsible for the Governor mysteriously breaking a leg on the beach this summer.

I thought McGreevey’s moment-of-truth press conference performance was completely revolting, even before it emerged that ‘I am a gay American’ was a phrase ‘developed’ by the Governor in consultation with a gay rights group that tested it in focus groups.

At one level, this is utterly contemptible. But at another it’s magnificently professional. The New Jersey Dems have arranged things to deny the people an early chance to vote on McGreevey’s replacement and, by the time they do get their say, the hack machine pol who’ll be taking over from him will be running as an established incumbent.

Dealt an unpromising hand, Garden State Democrats nevertheless defined the scandal on their terms. That’s how I figured Kerry would handle the Swift vets problem. He’d be shameless but effective. He’d have focus-grouped some weaselly form of words that would put him beyond reach, and the whole business would have dribbled away. But instead, cosseted away with Teresa, he’s apparently been running the fightback himself, disastrously. First, he got his heavies to send out menacing letters of empty threats to TV stations considering running the Swift vets’ ad. Then he demanded that his lawyers write similar missives to stores carrying the Swiftees’ book. Imagine if Bush did that every time Michael Moore or Al Franken released yet another lame Bush-bashing tract: the shelves would be half empty. If anything, the buyers for the big chains underestimated the demand for the Swift book because they fell for the Boston Globe/New York Times spin that no one was interested in these embittered old losers. Now the store managers are reeling under a barrage of customers who think the unavailability of the book is due to Kerry’s political muscle rather than incompetent ordering.

Still, that’s no reason not to dig yourself in a little deeper. On Monday, Kerry called Bob Dole. Dole had gone on TV on Sunday and unburdened himself of some musings on the unusual circumstance of a war protester running as war hero: ‘One day he’s saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their ears, cutting off their heads, throwing away his medals or his ribbons. The next day he’s standing there: “I want to be president because I’m a Vietnam veteran.” Maybe he should apologise to all the other 2.5 million veterans who served. He wasn’t the only one in Vietnam.’ Dole, of course, is a visibly scarred second world war vet, and he was out there a lot longer than four months.

But Kerry was hopping mad about this breach of senatorial clubbability and rang the old boy to complain. Dole refused to apologise and recounted his subsequent conversation with the candidate to Sean Hannity’s radio audience a couple of hours later. Here’s the bit I like. Kerry is whining about this and that, and Dole says to him, ‘Everybody likes quiet heroes, John. Everybody knows you were in Vietnam and the less you say about it the better.’

It’s a bit late to try that approach now. Last week Kerry dusted off his blustery primary-season slogan — if Bush wants to make this campaign about service in Vietnam, ‘I have three words: BRING — IT — ON!’ After a couple more days dodging questions, Kerry decided it was time to try out another three words and sent Pretty Boy John Edwards to lay down the gauntlet to the President. ‘This is a moment of truth for George W. Bush,’ said Edwards. ‘We want to hear three words: Stop these ads.’ Having decided to hoard his campaign cash through August for the big ad-buys of September, Kerry changed his mind and blew a pile of dough on a new commercial demanding Bush repudiate the Swiftees and ‘stop these ads’.

Swift Boat Veterans For Truth is what they call a ‘527’ advocacy group, the latest predictable loophole from the latest round of idiotic ‘campaign finance reform’. There are no formal connections permitted between 527s and political candidates, so Bush can’t call a halt. Nonetheless, he responded to Kerry and Edwards with his own three words: sure, why not? ‘I don’t think we ought to have 527s. I can’t be more plain about it,’ said Bush, saying that he was opposed to ‘that ad’ and ‘every other ad’. ‘I hope my opponent joins me in condemning these activities of the 527s.’

Er, well, that’s not quite what Kerry was hoping for. Nine of the top ten 527s are anti-Bush groups — moveon.org and similar — funded by the likes of George Soros. The way Kerry’s chums at the New York Times have been trumpeting links between the Swiftees and ‘prominent Republicans’, you’d think ‘prominent Republicans’ were the Mafia. In fact, 19 of the top 20 individual donors to 527s are prominent Democrat supporters. If the 527s got yanked from the air, Kerry would be clobbered far worse than Bush, which is all the more reason not to be a big whiny ninny about one lousy ad running in a couple of states.

As the coup de grâce, Bush added, ‘I think Senator Kerry served admirably, and he ought to be proud of his record. But the question is who’s best to lead the country in the war on terror ...I think we ought to be looking forward, not backward.’

Bush didn’t bring it on. Kerry brought it on himself. All that Senator Weenie has achieved by his stumblebum responses is to amplify the charges and broaden the field of attack against him. Take Dole’s sardonic characterisation of Kerry’s ‘wounds’: ‘Three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they’re all superficial wounds ... Never spent one day in the hospital ... And boasting about three Purple Hearts when you think of some of the people who really got shot up in Vietnam....’ Dole is the only political heavyweight visibly war-wounded enough to be able to say such things about Kerry, and he wouldn’t have done so if Kerry’s goons hadn’t started smearing the Swiftvets as ‘liars’.

But now Dole’s said it, he’s made it easier for others. I haven’t written much about Kerry’s medals, because if you come from a country in the British military tradition, the whole Purple Heart thing is hard to get your head around. ‘You mean, most of his medals are for being wounded?’ said my wife in amazement, her father and uncles having gone off to war in 1939 and two thirds of them having returned in far worse shape than Dole, never mind Kerry. ‘And if you get three of these Purple Hearts they send you home?’

Well, no. They don’t send you home. But you can choose to leave. And that’s what Kerry did. He got three scratches and went home eight months early. Despite the convention speech about how ‘we were all in the same boat’, the commander left his men in the boat and cleared off back to Massachusetts. That’s the essence of the Kerry military record, and the more the clumsy Democrat operatives insult anti-Kerry veterans, the easier it is to summarise the candidate as devastatingly as Bob Dole does.

The risk in running on biography is that voters won’t find your life story as compelling as you do. They might be churlish enough to be more interested in, say, health care or terrorism than what you were doing in 1968. That risk becomes a certainty when your appealing soft-focus narrative comes under attack and your campaign degenerates into a defence of your biography. The minute you start running ads demanding that voters ‘tell George W Bush to stop telling lies about what a weally weally big war hero I am’, you sound ridiculous. Especially when your opponent is a guy who’s never complained about anything – not the ‘Bush is Hitler’ stuff, not the ‘Bush knew about 9/11 in advance’ stuff, not even the comparatively mild Michael Moore slur that he’s a moron so paralysed without his minders that he continued reading My Pet Goat to Florida grade-schoolers for a full seven minutes on September 11. Kerry himself made sneering cracks about the pet goat business, and Bush didn’t whine about it.

Happily, the boys on the bus are still doing their bit for Kerry. Editor & Publisher had an hilarious headline this week: ‘Campaign Journalists: Has Swift Boat Story Gone On Too Long?’ Too long? It took two weeks before the New York Times could bring itself to say a word about it. Nonetheless, ‘it probably has had too long a life,’ said Frank James, a Chicago Tribune reporter. ‘We wish someone would put a stake in this vampire.’

If Frank’s getting a little bored on the campaign plane, why not ask to see the hat Kerry told the Washington Post he travels with all the time and which he claims was given to him by a CIA guy on one of his ‘secret missions’? If he produces the hat, ask if you can have it carbon-dated to see if it dates from the late Sixties. Many of us would indulge the Mad Hatter in his wacky fantasies if he’s gone to a lot of trouble to get the period details right.

Here’s an interesting Rasmussen poll of likely voters from the end of last week — i.e., a point at which the big networks and agenda-setting newspapers were still insisting, in the words of the Boston Globe’s Thomas Oliphant, that the story ‘does not meet basic standards’ for coverage in the mainstream media. In other words, the circulation of the story was confined to the Internet and ‘right-wing talk-radio’, and already the numbers looked like this:

‘About his service in Vietnam, is Kerry...
Telling the truth 39%
Exaggerating the truth 31%
Lying 15%’

A Kerry guy spun that to me as great news: hey, only 15 per cent think he’s lying about his service record! Hang on, man, 46 per cent think he’s exaggerating or lying. Your boy’s negatives outweigh his positives on the sole issue you’ve chosen to define the man and his candidacy. Among independents — i.e., all those critical swing voters — 34 per cent think he’s telling the truth, and 48 per cent think he’s either exaggerating or lying.

He’s got a week off now for the Republican convention. If the Swift vets are still hounding Kerry by mid-September, he’ll be mired in a Vietnam quagmire of his own making. And, unlike the original, no matter how many hits you take, there’s no early release.


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 229; bush2004; kerry; marksteyn
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To: Graybeard58
Reminds me of clintons "vivid memories" of church burnings in Arkansas when he was growing up. Then it was found that there were NO churches burned in Arkansas in that time frame.

Clinton's favorite dreams perhaps?

101 posted on 08/26/2004 8:47:17 AM PDT by American in Israel (A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but the foolish mans heart directs him toward the left.)
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To: bmwcyle; A Citizen Reporter; ABG(anybody but Gore); AFPhys; Angelwood; arazitjh; b4its2late; ...

Ping to the list, and thanks to bmwcyle ... this one is a pleasurable 4-page read.




... there’s no doubt every wound from the last 35 days is self-inflicted, beginning with the candidate’s disastrous decision at the Democratic Convention to play up Vietnam and play down Iraq, 9/11 and anything else that happened in the last 30 years. Since then Kerry’s shot himself in the foot so many times he ought to put in for a good dozen more Purple Hearts.

The flaw in the Senator’s strategy to run for president as a plucky 24-year-old Swift boat lieutenant was an obvious one. The argument that his Swift boat command demonstrates his superb qualities of leadership falls apart once you notice his striking lack of the first ingredient of leadership: followers. ...

...But the party that likes to sneer that Bush never had a plan to deal with Iraq’s inevitable insurgents doesn’t seem to mind that Kerry never had a plan to deal with the Swiftees’ equally inevitable insurgents. A guy awash in gazillions from Barbra Streisand and co. who can’t see off a couple of hundred middle-aged ‘liars’ and their minimal ad-buy? Is that really the fellow you want to put up against al-Qa’eda, the ayatollahs and Kim Jong-Il?

The Kerry campaign’s bumbling ineptness this last month is a bit of a stunner to those of us who followed Bill Clinton for eight years. The Democrats may not know how to run a school district or a highway department, but they’re supposed to be able to run scandals.




I think Steyn missed only one opportunity ... when he said, "He got three scratches and went home eight months early.", he could have stated instead, "As a result of his three scratches, he served only a third of a normal tour of duty."

I would also like to see it mentioned that being in charge of 5 sailors on a small boat does not exactly mean you have outstanding leadership credentials.

This is an excellent, and funny piece...
.


102 posted on 08/26/2004 8:49:34 AM PDT by AFPhys ((.Praying for President Bush, our troops, their families, and all my American neighbors..))
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Comment #103 Removed by Moderator

To: Pokey78

Steyn is marvelous! I don't even know which lines I like best, nearly spewed my coffee several times. Thank you for posting this. He has an amazingly insightful grasp of the whole situation, and knows how to express it with wit and grace.


104 posted on 08/26/2004 8:53:09 AM PDT by VRWCer (Everything that is hidden will be found out, and every secret will be known. Luke 12:2)
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To: BigDaddyTX

Somewhere in Washington, Congress is missing a senator.


105 posted on 08/26/2004 8:56:27 AM PDT by VRWCer (Everything that is hidden will be found out, and every secret will be known. Luke 12:2)
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Comment #106 Removed by Moderator

To: Pokey78

God, I love this man..............


107 posted on 08/26/2004 9:14:55 AM PDT by shield (The Greatest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God!!!! by Dr. H. Ross, Astrophysicist)
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To: Pokey78
The minute you start running ads demanding that voters ‘tell George W Bush to stop telling lies about what a weally weally big war hero I am’, you sound ridiculous. Especially when your opponent is a guy who’s never complained about anything – not the ‘Bush is Hitler’ stuff, not the ‘Bush knew about 9/11 in advance’ stuff, not even the comparatively mild Michael Moore slur that he’s a moron so paralysed without his minders that he continued reading My Pet Goat to Florida grade-schoolers for a full seven minutes on September 11. Kerry himself made sneering cracks about the pet goat business, and Bush didn’t whine about it.

Yep, Americans are coming to understand who truly is the MAN in this contest.

108 posted on 08/26/2004 9:18:47 AM PDT by SuziQ (Bush in 2004-Because we MUST!!!)
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To: AmericanMade1776

Love that graphic. Have you noticed that the most recent Democrat President and leading candidate have spent a good deal of time trying to 'act cool'. There was Slick Willie with his saxophone, trying desperately to be Clarence Clemons, and here's Kerry trying to be Pete Townsend!


109 posted on 08/26/2004 9:21:39 AM PDT by SuziQ (Bush in 2004-Because we MUST!!!)
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To: nyconse

Good post. You are good at quickly compiling news!

Something you said got me thinking: Kerry's defenders are spinning that it was "brave" to protest Vietnam in the 70s. I remember the 70s, and the entire pop culture was, by then, deadset against the war, It took no bravery to join the chorus.

While viewing images of Kerry from his VVAW days it hit me: Kerry was a late-comer hippie, a wannabe. He returned to America and found the scene awash with pot, patchouli, peasant dresses and hippies donning military fatiques in irony. He was jealous to join the fun, as were thousands of returning GIs.

I knew plenty of these types. They over-corrected. They missed the Hendrix/Doors/Iron Butterfly era and discovered Hait Ashbury too late. As George Harrison said, the authentic hippies were gone and it was now just a sad skid row. Kerry missed the exciting years of 66-69 and was desperate to be a true counter-culture freak.

So he, and a million more, tried too hard in 70-73 to ape the scocialist hippie protester image, but it was all too late and sad. Led Zeppelin and Alice Cooper were playing, not Donovan and Sgt Pepper Beatles. He missed it, and he's been scratching for street cred with the smelly hippie cult ever since.

Just a theory based on an observation.


110 posted on 08/26/2004 9:22:47 AM PDT by moodyskeptic (www.WinWithHumor.com)
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To: baraboolaw
We are being played.

He and the MSM only THINK they're playing us. The Swift Boat Vets are doing their thing and reminding everyone of Kerry's duplicity in dealing with his Vietnam 'brothers'. The President's job, and he's doing it admirably, is to remind us of Kerry's most recent actions; his work, or lack of it, in the Senate. This is what the President has been concentrating on out on the campaign trail, and what he'll zero in on in the debates!

111 posted on 08/26/2004 9:24:54 AM PDT by SuziQ (Bush in 2004-Because we MUST!!!)
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To: ClearCase_guy

To be honest, the Bronze Star shows consistency: he ran away BEFORE he came back...


112 posted on 08/26/2004 9:43:55 AM PDT by hocndoc (Choice is the # 1 killer in the US)
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To: scholar; Bullish; linear; yoda swings

Ping


113 posted on 08/26/2004 10:23:41 AM PDT by knighthawk (We will always remember We will always be proud We will always be prepared so we may always be free)
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To: ninenot

NO, No. MLK was in the North Pole on Christmas Eve with a moose and a sled. Kerry's dog was in viet nam with Teresa who was in Mozambique...Where the hell WAS Kerry?


114 posted on 08/26/2004 10:24:24 AM PDT by Safetgiver (Is Clinton's book a "bone tome"?)
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To: Enterprise
LOL - John Kerry: BRING IT ON! A short time later: CALL IT OFF!

I wanted them to bring it in, before I wanted them to stop.

115 posted on 08/26/2004 10:42:09 AM PDT by malakhi
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To: VRWCer
Somewhere in Washington, Congress is missing a senator.

He may be absent, but I doubt he's missed.

116 posted on 08/26/2004 10:53:08 AM PDT by malakhi
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To: Pokey78

Bring it on baby. Bring it on.


117 posted on 08/26/2004 10:54:28 AM PDT by sweetiepiezer (We have to stop Kerry for our grandkids sake!!!!!!!! GO W)
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To: Pokey78

Classic Steyn Bump


118 posted on 08/26/2004 11:38:27 AM PDT by jazzo
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To: Pokey78
Thanks for the whole thing Pokey.

As usual, Steyn nails it.

L

119 posted on 08/26/2004 11:40:03 AM PDT by Lurker ( Rope, tree, liberal. Adult assembly required.)
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To: Safetgiver
Where the hell WAS Kerry?

One toke OVer the Line, Sweet Jesus,

One Toke Over the Line...

120 posted on 08/26/2004 11:48:39 AM PDT by ninenot (Minister of Membership, TomasTorquemadaGentlemen'sClub)
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