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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Like with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth --
Exactly! As a veteran listener of talk radio, I can tell you the conservative shows were strongly airing the Swift Boat issue in April. Now how in the world didn't the Democratic strategists still have any response ready for this in August? Was it such a big surprise? If so, the superstructure of the Democratic Party is totally divorced from reality. It evidently has no sense whatever about the real dynamics of political thought among the electorate at large. If Kerry loses this election, the entire Democratic Party establishment needs to be torn to pieces and built up again, because it won't just be his failure, it will be the party's failure. Kerry's weakness as a personality became clear when he wasn't able to dislodge [Democratic National Committee chairman Terry] McAuliffe from the DNC. He wanted to get rid of McAuliffe -- that servile water boy of the Clintons -- and he choked. Kerry didn't have the balls to get rid of him. Every time that yapping buffoon McAuliffe is on the air, the Democrats lose the votes of the undecided.
I think a lot of people wonder how anyone can take the Swift Boat Vets seriously. How did they build any cachet?
Early on, the Republican strategists showed their wit and cunning in labeling Kerry a "flip-flopper." It was the kind of prankishness I would have expected from Democrats, a 1960s Yippies style. As soon as Kerry went out after the Democratic convention, there were these little groups of Republicans in the first rows holding rubber flip-flop sandals above their heads and flapping them like undulating waves of tideland grasses. It was hilarious! If that stuck in the public mind, it was for a reason. Kerry was far too professorial with his answers on TV, "On the one hand this, on the other hand that." Now, it's absolutely true that complex times call for complex answers. But Kerry's difficulty in speaking plainly to the mass audience has been a major problem in this campaign.
From the start, the right wing tried to tag Kerry with Jane Fonda; one of the earliest images flying around the Web during the primaries showed him sitting on the ground a few rows back from Jane Fonda at an antiwar protest. They weren't together, but the two were definitely in each other's presence. That was the first attempt to tar Kerry with Fonda. And I think we Democrats owe Jane Fonda a tremendous debt by the way she cannily, shrewdly held back. Many another diva actress would have leapt into the spotlight and made herself a focus. But because Fonda wisely stayed in the shadows, she didn't add energy to this peripheral issue of the Kerry-Fonda connection. It never got traction.
The problem, however, is that there really is ambiguity about how Kerry won his medals. There was a story there. And the gross failure of the major media, with their bias toward the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, was not to let that story be fully examined early on in a fair and impartial manner. By their silence they simply empowered this story and made it worse and worse. I heard about the Swift Boat vets' claims on a late-night radio talk show in April, and believe me, my eyes popped open! I couldn't believe what I was hearing -- it seemed so preposterous. Yet the story had legs and grew and grew.
There were legitimate questions, but it was months before the major media addressed them in a systematic and responsible way. And then they did a good job, with maps and graphs that ultimately reinforced Kerry's credibility. But all that should have been done in April or May. To delay it until late summer allowed the issue to become a tsunami -- and at a time when the Kerry campaign seemed dead in the water. The impact of that story on talk radio was indescribable -- because it turned out that there really was ambiguity about the events surrounding Kerry's medals. I absolutely believe Kerry was injured, but I was certainly very surprised to learn that he won three Purple Hearts for wounds that never required hospitalization. He had minimal medical treatment and never missed a day of work. Compare that to other veterans who lost limbs or, like Sen. John McCain, can't even lift their arms and need help to put on a jacket.
Look, Kerry was there -- he put himself in danger and could have been killed or mutilated at any moment on those tiny boats. Kerry deserves credit for that, and he deserves medals for any wounds suffered. But it's his inability to handle this issue from the start that injured his candidacy. He should have said, "This is outrageous! I don't need to tolerate it! How dare you?" Show some emotion and conviction! Defend yourself! I don't want to hear that, oh, Mary Cahill or Bob Shrum told him to hang back and let it all blow over. It's his reputation. He should have had the guts to step forward and defend his honor.
So then the Democrats had to use their convention -- which should have been an intergalactic platform to attack Bush and the war -- for this ridiculous, necrophiliac stage show, with Kerry giving a lame salute and telling us he was "reporting for duty"! If that wasn't the stupidest, most lame-brained way to introduce yourself to the American people -- he looked like an idiot! And of course it conveniently laid the groundwork for all the trumped-up Vietnam exposés that followed. The convention should have rained down abuse on Bush and the Republicans over Iraq! But no, the resident airheads -- McAuliffe and company -- told them to play nicey-nice so as not to alienate independent voters. What dolts!
