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Friday, August 20, 2004
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WHEREIN JOHN KERRY BELATEDLY AND TEPIDLY HITS BACK BEFORE REMINDING US THAT HE WAS IN VIETNAM
Well, it took the better part of three weeks, but Senator John Kerry yesterday assured voters that he did not perpetuate a fraud on the United States Navy. Here is an excerpt of his speech.
Over the last week or so, a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has been attacking me. Of course, this group isn't interested in the truth, and they're not telling the truth. They didn't even exist until I won the nomination for president.
But here's what you really need to know about them. They're funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas. They're a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the President won't denounce what they're up to tells you everything you need to know.he wants them to do his dirty work.
Thirty years ago, official Navy reports documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Thirty years ago, this was the plain truth. It still is. And I still carry the shrapnel in my leg from a wound in Vietnam.
As firefighters you risk your lives everyday. You know what it's like to see the truth in the moment. You're proud of what you've done, and so am I.
Of course, the President keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that. Well, if he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: "Bring it on."
As you might imagine, I have a few thoughs on this.
Firstly, the response is too little and far too late. Even in beginning his defense, Kerry misspoke. He says that the controversy has been going on for "the last week or so." As matter of fact, the ads and the book that spawned them were released nearly two weeks ago. The details of them were posted on the Drudge Report nearly a week before that. For all of that time, the candidate has ignored the subject, presumably hoping that it would go away.
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how politics works. In a modern campaign, if an accusation is leveled, it MUST be responded to immediately. That way, your denial or specific spin are included in the initial media accounts of the allegation. Such is reality in a 24 hour news cycle. The general rule of thumb is as follows: if you don't deny it, it's true. If you waste too much time before responding, it appears that you've been trying to get your story straight. Let me put it this way, if I were to put up a post saying that you killed your wife and you take three weeks to deny it, a large percentage of my readers are going to believe me. That your wife may be sitting beside you matters not. In politics, as in media relations, the appearance is every bit as important as the reality.
The iron rule of a modern campaign is, if you get hit, hit back even harder, but hit back immediately. The Clinton campaign and administration excelled at this. If you said something nasty about them, rest assured, you would be seeing something nasty about yourself on television within the half hour. The Clinton people are pros. The Kerry people are not. For almost three weeks, Kerry's message has vanished in the media, eclipsed by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The fact that the central message of the campaign is, "Hey did you know I was in Vietnam?" only compounds the damage. This campaign is amateur hour.
This is largely because Kerry has never run for anything outside of Massachusetts before. If you're a Democrat there, campaigns aren't extremely difficult due to the paucity of Republicans. The campaign is being managed by Mary Beth Cahill, the former chief of staff and political wunderkind of Senator Ted Kennedy. When was the last time you heard of someone named Kennedy losing an election in Massachusetts? Kerry obviously thought a national race would be just like one in his home state. Presidential campaigns are anything but. State races in Massachusetts are gentlemanly contests, where, with very race exceptions, it is naturally assumed that the Democrat will win. Presidential campaigns are anything but. A national race is a blood sport, a death match. Lose a national campaign, and you're done in politics. Lose badly and you become an obscure historical punchline in jokes written by people like me.
In an ordinary election year, the primaries will toughen up a candidate enough to get ready for the general election campaign. That didn't happen this time. Kerry was far behind as late as January that no one was paying attention to him. Then Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt demonstrated what "Mutually Assured Destruction" meant in Iowa and Kerry was the last man standing. He didn't win the nomination, the other guys lost it.
The second major problem with Kerry's response was its focus. What he should have done was say, "To impugn what I did and what happened to me in Vietnam is worse than a moral outrage, it is a slander on my name and the legacy that I will someday to my children. Let there remain no doubt, I will do whatever it takes to clear my name and restore that legacy. Rest assured, anyone engaging in this libel will face me court once this campaign is over, whether I win or lose matters not."
Instead, Kerry essentially came out and said, "The Republicans are being mean to me." Of course, Republicans are mean. For the most part, they are professional politicians and, as such, enjoy winning elections. Michael Dukakis thought American politics is about a gentlemanly debate of heady issues. I think Michael Dukakis is now teaching woodshop somewhere in Central Florida today as a consequence. John McCain refused to get nasty with George Bush four years ago and Bush humiliated him in South Carolina, which drove him right out of the race. When people understood that McCain wasn't going to fight fire with fire, his fundraising withered and finally died.
Third, it gives Kerry exactly what he wants, which is to make this a campaign about Vietnam. Perhaps he would like to refight the 1968 campaign. Unfortunately, that campaign didn't work out like it was supposed to for the Democrats. Or maybe he would feels more comfortable with 1972, the last campaign where a liberal senator voted for a war before voting against it. The problem is, that didn't turn out really well either. John Kerry would do well to remember that George McGovern had a record of distinguished military service, too. Far more distinguished than the president he challenged. He still lost 49 states.
Kerry is campaigning on Vietnam because its all he can safely campaign on. He would have a very hard time pitching voters with, "The Iraq war, which I now may or may not oppose but voted for at the time..." And the same applies to the No Child Left Behind Act, the USA Patriot Act, the list is endless. There's a reason that Kerry is so reluctant to remind you that he is an elected member of the United States Senate. Usually when an incumbent member of Congress runs for president, they like to tell people, "Hey, vote for me! I know how a bill becomes a law!" This impresses American voters because so many of them don't.
If Kerry makes his senate experience an issue, Bush gets to point out his many interesting changes of position. Kerry can't explain those differences in a snappy, concise way. The senator seems to realize this. What he doesn't realize is that the president is going to do this anyway.
So Kerry wants to campaign on Vietnam. This would be wise if he actually stayed there until the Iowa caucuses. He didn't. He returned and became an anti-war activist. During that time, he said several inflammatory and unwise things. Many of them on television. His 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee should be seen in some very interesting commercials very soon. Expect to see the senator as a dashing young man in a flack jacket talking about committing "atrocities" and engaging in "Genghis Khan-like tactics." I imagine the voice over at the end will say something along the lines of, "So how do you like your war hero now? Re-elect President Bush."
Having spent the past year acting like Rambo, he's going to have a very hard time explaining how he sounded like Jane Fonda when he got home. My guess is that either the RNC or another 527 will roll out those spots in a few weeks. The closer to the debates, the better the impact.
There's very little that John Kerry has done properly since he announced for president last year. That this race is even remotely close, let alone as close as it is, is vivid testimony to just how much trouble President Bush is in. And when George Bush gets in trouble, he gets very, very nasty. Buy John McCain a beer someday and he'll tell you all about it.
UPDATE-10:12 AM According to this just released CBS News poll, the Swift Boat boys ad, and Kerry's long refusal to acknowledge it, have done what it was designed to. Of particular importance are the numbers relating to veterans. Veterans are regarded as being among the most reliable of Republican voters. Following Kerry's convention speech, Kerry and Bush had them evenly divided at 46% a piece, with Ralph Nader getting 1%. As of today, it's 55% Bush, 37% Kerry, 1% Nader. That's an 18 point spread in less than a month. I can't think of anything other than the current controversy to explain that dynamic a shift in so short a time.
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