When Republicans attack

The Swift boat ads have been exposed by the press as blatantly false, but that hasn't stopped the Bush machine from pushing them. Has Kerry figured out how to fight back against the lies and the lying liars who tell them?

By Tim Grieve

Aug 25, 2004 |

Speaking in New York on Tuesday morning, John Kerry said the Bush campaign and its political allies are using the "fear and smear" tactics of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in a "calculated effort" to evade serious debate on the issues facing America. A few hours later in Ohio, John Edwards railed against the president for failing to denounce the Swift Boat Veterans' ads. In between, the Kerry campaign arranged a conference call with reporters -- the second in two days -- to address the Swift Boat Veterans' attacks, then distributed comments from former Sen. Bob Kerrey, himself a decorated Vietnam veteran, condemning the attacks.

After taking flak for not responding quickly enough to the Swift Boat Veterans, the Kerry campaign now seems determined to talk the problem away. On the conference call with reporters Tuesday afternoon, Democratic Rep. Jim Turner said it's time to "get beyond" the Swift Boat Veterans' attacks and to start "talking about the real issues that matter to the American people." He then introduced reporters to yet another pro-Kerry Swift boater -- just how many of these guys were there? -- who proceeded to offer his own insights into the allegations made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

The bad news for John Kerry: Talking about the Swift boat smears won't make them go away. The worse news for John Kerry: Nothing else he can do is going to work, either.

The Swift Boat Veterans' charges have largely been debunked. Reporters at the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times have both dismantled the allegations; on Tuesday morning, an L.A. Times editorial declared: "These charges against John Kerry are false. Or at least there is no good evidence that they are true."

But in the non-condemnation condemnations of the president, in the slippery "If so many people say something it must be true" logic of former Sen. Bob Dole, in the echoes that bounce back and forth between Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and spill over onto CNN, the allegations against Kerry have taken hold. Even if they're not true -- and by all credible accounts, they're not -- the allegations raise doubts in the minds of voters paying just enough attention to know that there's some "question" about Kerry's war record.

The Kerry campaign clearly sees some advantage in keeping the issue alive -- in further debunking the charges, in tying them ever tighter to George Bush and Karl Rove -- but Democratic strategists are increasingly concerned. "Even if you're winning on points now, I'm not sure strategically this is getting you where you want to go," said Paul Maslin, a veteran strategist and pollster who worked for Howard Dean's campaign. The key for Democrats is to stay focused on Bush's record in office, Maslin said. "Every week that you don't do that, you let Bush creep back into this thing a little bit."

In his speech at New York's Cooper Union Tuesday, Kerry tried to focus on Bush's record on the economy, on jobs, on healthcare. But as he must have known it would, the press focused almost exclusively on Kerry's charge that the Bush administration was avoiding debate over these issues by engaging in the "tactics of fear and smear."

It's hard to change the subject, especially when you're still talking about it. Maslin said that Kerry should just stop responding to questions about the Swift Boat Veterans. The press will get tired of asking, and the focus will shift to the Republican Convention. While the Swift boat issue won't go away, it will at least slide off the front page.

That's one way to change take the storyline. But Steve McMahon, another former Dean advisor who is now handling advertising for the Media Fund, said he believes that Kerry should take a more direct approach. "If I were advising John Kerry, which I'm not, I'd say, 'Let's call Bush out. Let's challenge him to a debate.'" The subject: the military service records of John Kerry and George W. Bush.

When voters go to the polls in November, McMahon said, they won't be choosing between John Kerry and "Unfit for Command" author John O'Neill; they'll be choosing between Kerry and Bush. "The choice is between a guy who volunteered to serve, went to war, fought on the front line, took enemy fire, was highly decorated, and saved the life of at least one of the troops -- and a guy who did everything he could to avoid service, jumped over 500 people to get into the National Guard, didn't show up for service in Alabama, and can't prove he was there."

Like many other Democrats, McMahon is incredulous that -- in light of Bush's record -- Vietnam service is even an issue in the campaign. "It seems to me that the president has an awful lot of explaining to do, particularly because he can't produce a single person, he can't remember where he lived, he can't remember who he hug out with, the folks he went drinking with, the bars he hung out in, and we're expected to take seriously their allegations about how many bullets were flying one day in Vietnam?"

Wayne Slater isn't surprised at all. Slater, the veteran Dallas Morning News reporter who coauthored "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential," said Tuesday that the Swift Boat Veterans attack was entirely predictable. Slater has watched Karl Rove work for nearly two decades, and he said the "mark of Rove" in a campaign is always the same: Aim nasty attacks right at your opponent's strength, but keep your own fingerprints off them.

Next Page: Why won't the Democrats fight fire with fire?

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