Posted on 08/29/2004 8:39:24 AM PDT by Pikamax
Sunday, Aug. 29, 2004 What the Swifties Cost Us Campaign 2004 gets mired in the Mekong Delta By JOE KLEIN
On the day that the swift boat controversy reached a rabid apogeethat would be the day a Bush campaign lawyer resigned because of his ties to the Swifties, and Max Cleland made the stagy delivery of a protest letter to the Bush rancha woman named Elba Nieves stood at a town meeting in Philadelphia and told John Kerry that she had recently been laid off. The candidate proceeded to ask her a series of questions. She answered with quiet dignity. She had worked in a ribbon factory for four years.
She said the company was having trouble keeping up with foreign competitors and was forced to close when it was refused a new bank loan. She was given no notice of termination, no severance package. Her shiftabout 300 peoplewas simply called together at the end of a workday and dismissed. "They were changing the locks even before we left," she added. The audience, composed mostly of trade unionists, gasped and groaned.
I called Nieves the next day to check the details of her story, and, as it happened, there were some complicating factors. First, she admitted that her question had been precookedher union had asked her to come to the event and tell the story. Kerry turned to Nieves immediately; her question was the first.
This, in itself, isn't a terrible thing: George Bush constantly manages to "find" small-business people at his town meetings whose companies are booming because of his tax cuts. But Nieves went on to tell me that she recently had been called back to work at the ribbon factory and refused to return, on the advice of her union, because the company wouldn't continue her health insurance.
Hmm, I thought: If I were a coldhearted political operative, I could get some rich friends to finance a group of Nieves' fellow employeesperhaps those who had returned to work without health insurancecall them Ribbon Workers for Truth and make this poor woman's life a trial. (As it is, I've acted as a Not-So-Swift Columnist for Truth by revealing some of the more problematic details of her story.) Ribbon Workers for Truth would be a nasty bit of business. It would purposely elide the most important factthe larger truthof Nieves' story: that she was laid off, and in a particularly brutal way.
As she left the factory on Aug. 4, she had no idea how she would support her three children. She still doesn't know. And the uncertainty of her fate is a question with enormous political ramifications: What do we, as a nation, do about the downside of economic globalization? In fact, the real reason why Ribbon Workers for Truth would exist would be to divert attention from that question.
The Ribbies would also turn Nieves' refusal to return to work without a health plan into a "character" issueand thus evade the essential ridiculousness of a health-insurance system that would usually provide Nieves care (through Medicaid) if she were on welfare but doesn't if she is working a full-time job for an employer without a health plan.
But we're not talking only about Elba Nieves here, are we? Now that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have turned out to be anything butthe only "lies" they've turned up are a mistaken date or a mild Kerry exaggeration about operating in Cambodia and a Purple Heart received for a minor woundwe are told their real gripe is that Kerry protested the war after he came home and sullied their service by testifying to atrocities committed by American troops in Vietnam.
These are heartfelt gripes, perhaps, but wrong on the merits. Kerry's protest was not only honorable, it was accurate. The war in Vietnam was an unnecessary disaster, entered into under false pretensesthe fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incidentand fought because of a mistaken intellectual theory: that the Vietnamese national liberation movement was part of an international communist conspiracy to overwhelm Asia. (The subsequent war between Vietnam and China put a crimp in that one.) And, yes, there were atrocities aplenty.
I spent three years in the 1980s writing about a platoon of former Marines, men I consider heroes, and several unburdened themselves of awful memories before we were done: tossing a Vietnamese prisoner out of a helicopter, shooting an obviously innocent woman civilian in the back, collecting the ears of enemy dead. It was a meaningless, despicable war, and insane brutality was not an uncommon reaction.
But we're not really talking about Vietnam here, are we? We are talking about the politics of misdirection, about keeping John Kerry on the defensive by raising spurious questions about his "character."
We may also be talking about Iraqand limiting Kerry's ability to question the President's decision to go to war. If so, the Swifties need not have bothered. Kerry hasn't shown much inclination to raise the real question about Iraq: Was it the right thing to do? And Bush hasn't shown much inclination to talk about the mixed, confusing effects of globalization on people like Elba Nieves. Which means there are nondebates on the two most important issues facing the nation. Not-So-Swift Columnists for Truth is appalled.
a bump for http://www.swiftvets.com/
> But we're not really talking about Vietnam here, are we?
> We are talking about the politics of misdirection, about
? keeping John Kerry on the defensive by raising spurious
> questions about his "character."
Once Kerry tossed his hat in the ring, it was probably
inevitable that the SBVFT would form to oppose him. But
had the Kerry campaign focused on the recent past, and
the Kerry plan-of-the-moment, the Swifties would not
have had much traction.
By publishing "Tour of Duty", Kerry really incited the
Swifties to action, and handed them some powerful
evidence.
By using the unit photo without the consent of all
depicted, Kerry, enraged the Swifties further.
By making the Vietnam theme the core of the campaign
(and ignoring just about everything else), Kerry
enabled the topic for national debate.
The Pravda Press is lamenting that "their" party has
nominated an expert foot shooter (with no character).
Name names, Joe Klein. Or, is this more of the Winter Soldiers?
I would suggest that Joe got to Stolen Valor and watch the videos.
But Time is a nooooze-magazine. Everything they say must be true because it's noooooooze.
I think history will record Kerry as having the stupidest campaign slogan of all time: "If you want to know what John Kerry is made of, ask someone who served with him."
Seldom have I seen any politician so hoisted by his own petard. This article would make some sense if Kerry hadn't made Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. Much as Klein and the rest of Kerry's MSM support would like, they and Kerry did Vietnam as nausem for months now they can't get out of their own trap.
The Kerry flap will get those Vietnam vets to the polls. My Marine buddy flames when he talks about Americans incited by the likes of Kerry spitting on him. He'll make sure he gets to the polls to vote!!
A Bush outside counsel provided legal advice to both the Swifties and the Bush campaign and, to avoid any appearance of conflict, he cut any ties to the Bush campaign. Joe Klein squeals.
A Kerry outside counsel continues to provide legal advice to both the MoveOn.org and the Kerry campaign. Joe Klein says absolutely nothing about it.
The Liberal news media is nothing more than a Democrat 527 group.
The Luddite fallacy, recast in the language of the 21st century. What will the weavers do, now that Jacquard-loom textiles are cheap? What will all the buggy-whip makers do, now that people drive cars? What will the ribbon makers do--for health insurance, anyway--now that third-world peasants make them cheaper?
Same old story. Same old answer: find another job.
From Amazon.com:
Now, in The Running Mate, Klein takes the reader on an exuberant, wicked, and unerringly wise political journey with Senator Charlie Martin, a decorated veteran of the war in Vietnam. The experience of combat and his easy dominance of home-state politics have made Charlie fearless. He's a hot, if occasionally reckless, political property--dashing, honorable, and irreverent.And then Charlie's life begins to fall apart. He campaigns for the presidency and fails. The wacky father of a volunteer decks him--in front of the cameras; a well-kept secret from Charlie's Vietnam days is revealed; he reluctantly finds himself at the center of a friend's cliff-hanging confirmation process for Secretary of Defense....And Senator Martin begins to learn that politics in an era of spin, marketing, and vicious personal assaults can be as treacherous--and life-threatening--as combat was.
No longer denial. MSM is now is full battle mode to shut down the story. They know the inconsistencies, lies and exaggerations Kerry has told. Does anyone think they're going to enumerate them for all to see? Nope, they're past denial and well into suppression.
John Kerry started it. His entire campaign for president has been one long flashback to his four months in Vietnam.
It's his flashback of course and he can see it any way he pleases, as long as he keeps it to himself. Once he bases his Campaign for President on how he chooses to define the events of those four months, it becomes every voters business, and we have a need and a right to know the truth. Not just Kerry's version of what is truth, but Swift Vets for truth's version as well.
Sign that form 180 matey and we will all decide for ourselves.
If you have a problem with the Vietnam war being an issue, Joe, go bitch at John Kerry about it.
She said the company was having trouble keeping up with foreign competitors and was forced to close when it was refused a new bank loan. She was given no notice of termination, no severance package. Her shiftabout 300 peoplewas simply called together at the end of a workday and dismissed. "They were changing the locks even before we left," she added. The audience, composed mostly of trade unionists, gasped and groaned.
I called Nieves the next day to check the details of her story, and, as it happened, there were some complicating factors. First, she admitted that her question had been precookedher union had asked her to come to the event and tell the story. Kerry turned to Nieves immediately; her question was the first.
This, in itself, isn't a terrible thing: George Bush constantly manages to "find" small-business people at his town meetings whose companies are booming because of his tax cuts. But Nieves went on to tell me that she recently had been called back to work at the ribbon factory and refused to return, on the advice of her union, because the company wouldn't continue her health insurance.
Fascinating.
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