Kerry Counter Attacks on Swift Boat Vet Ads

The Kerry-Edwards campaign is responding to attacks from the Bush-Cheney crowd, and the GOP hard core isn’t quite sure how to respond. Usually the whispering campaign followed by vicious ads from “independent” groups get the opposition on its heels. Sometimes, the victim is too naïve to respond, or in the case of Senator John McCain, too worried about personal dignity. The Democrats want to win so badly this year, they are responding in kind and they are drawing blood. So, former POW and member of the Bush veterans’ steering committee, Colonel Ken Cordier (ret.), resigned from his position in the official Bush campaign after participating in an ad by the misnamed “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.”

Under America’s rather ridiculous campaign finance laws, there cannot be any coordination between the presidential candidates’ campaigns and groups that support them. If there is, then the spending laws and disclosure rules would apply to the supporting groups. This is silly, but if the GOP is going to be the party of law and order, it must follow the rules. The rules here were clearly broken, and Colonel Cordier did, at least, do the right thing and quit (please note, Governor McGreevey).

Precisely what happened in Vietnam all those years ago is not only difficult to establish, but it is not relevant. The supporters of Messrs. Bush and Cheney, chickenhawks both, should simply ignore what happened a generation ago, because it doesn’t play to their strengths. And the Kerry-Edwards camp should give it a rest. To be quite honest, how one behaved under fire in Vietnam in one’s youth has very little to do with guiding the world’s hyper-power in the year 2005 and beyond. Lord Jim is a fine book, but its lesson is that a man’s life ought not to be judged on a single act – whether brave or cowardly.

However, the Bush family is not used to instant responses to their usual whispering attacks. And the GOP hasn’t had to run against a motivated Democratic Party since before those sad and twisted days in Chicago in 1968. Before this is all over, Laura Bush’s adult life will be in the spotlight, or the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP by any other name . . . ) can back of Ms. Heinz-Kerry. All of this is a sign that something has changed in US politics.

The American people, naïve and silly though they often are when it comes to electing presidents, really do understand that the stakes this time around are the highest they have been since 1940. They want a nice clean campaign, and whoever appears to be mean and dirty will suffer for it. And this is a hard thing for the Bush family, which has played dirty ever since Prescott Bush tasted defeat in a Senate race in 1950. (Doubters are encouraged to review the 1980 Bush-Reagan fight for the GOP convention.) It’s a case of being able to dish it out, but not being able to take it. Perhaps, the White House should try running on its record, rather than on Mr. Kerry’s.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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