During the Republican National Convention, CNN Headline News
gave Kerry backer, retired General Merrill McPeak, a chance to
counter Republican criticisms of Kerry’s 20-year Senate record of
voting against almost all new weapon systems for the U.S. military.
General McPeak dodged the question and instead touted — guess what
— Kerry’s service in Vietnam. According to McPeak, people like
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who didn’t serve in Vietnam, have
no business criticizing the foreign policy credentials of a combat
veteran like John Kerry. I guess that means that McPeak and the
rest of the Kerry camp believe that only other Vietnam vets have
any business criticizing Kerry. No, I guess that’s not quite true,
is it?
The Kerry campaign is one giant mass of contradiction — or as
Kerry’s supporters like to explain it, Kerry is “complex.” He’s so
complex he often doesn’t understand himself, as when he gallantly
stated, when the Bush “AWOL” story resurfaced early in the
campaign, that he would not make Bush’s Vietnam era National Guard
service an issue. That stance didn’t last long. And now, in the
wake of what appears to have been a rather successful Republican
convention, contrasting his own 4 months of Vietnam combat duty
with Bush’s and Cheney’s activities of 35 years ago seems to be
Kerry’s prime issue.
At Kerry’s bizarre midnight rally in Springfield, Ohio, after
Bush’s RNC acceptance speech, and at subsequent rallies, Kerry
complained that Bush and Cheney “attacked my patriotism and fitness
to serve.” Now it is true that Bush and Cheney, and other speakers
at the Republican convention made the case that Kerry would not be
a good choice for president — taking particular aim at his recent
history as a serial flip-flopper — but neither Bush nor Cheney
were impolite enough to call him “unfit.” And unlike Kerry backers
like Ted Kennedy, who has accused Bush of sending Americans to die
in war to serve selfish political purposes, or Al Gore who says
that Bush “betrayed” the country, or Kerry himself who, though as a
member of the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded at the end of
the Clinton years that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction,
continually accuses Bush of having “misled the country into war,”
no speaker at the RNC questioned Kerry’s patriotism (indeed, many
went out of their way to laud Kerry’s patriotism and Vietnam
service). Nonetheless, Kerry made the bogus charge, and then went
on to call George W. Bush “unfit to serve this nation” and attacked
Bush’s National Guard service and Cheney’s use of college draft
deferments. This, by the way, is not an example of hypocrisy, but
“complexity.”
But this got me to wondering. To use General McPeak’s argument,
where does someone who called not just America’s involvement in
Vietnam criminal, but also accused American soldiers of routinely
committing war crimes, get off criticizing Dick Cheney for avoiding
service in Vietnam by going to college? If Kerry’s infamous Senate
testimony was true, and his antiwar activism justified, then Dick
Cheney’s choice to utilize college deferments was honorable,
indeed, heroic. And to use Kerry’s own language, is an officer who
says he willingly committed war crimes more fit to serve as
Commander-in-Chief than someone who served stateside in the
National Guard, burning down nary a village?
Kerry has a 20-year record in the Senate. Yet the only record he
wants to talk about is his combat service record — and then only
on his terms. Kerry, who has the most liberal voting record of any
senator, not only has no achievements that he can showcase from his
Senate career, but it is a 20-year span of his public life that he
tries to ignore. In a presidential election year in which national
security is the number one issue, he has found his Senate record to
be an embarrassment. Whenever anyone brings it up, the Kerry
campaign does a reenactment of that scene from The Wizard of
Oz: “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! I am the
great and powerful Kerry! Look at my medals!”
On the one hand, it does appear unseemly, during an election
year, to question the legitimacy of a veteran’s medals (as the
Swift Boat Vets have done). But on the other hand, it is also
unseemly to use four months of combat service as the cornerstone of
a presidential campaign. Kerry’s insistence that his Vietnam
service is central to his qualifications to be Commander-in-Chief
makes criticisms such as those made by the Swift Boat Vets fair
game. As a result, among other interesting revelations, we know
that Kerry’s Purple Hearts, as evidenced in one case by Kerry’s own
chronicle, may not have been deserved. And, of course, we know that
the story that Kerry has repeated several times over the years
about having been illegally deployed to Cambodia on Christmas Eve
1968 is false.
Now regardless of whether or not all of Kerry’s medals were
rightly earned or whether he exaggerated some of his experiences,
Kerry’s combat service is, as President Bush has repeatedly said,
honorable. But four months service in a war 35 years ago does not
place anybody’s subsequent policy positions above criticism. Yet
Kerry not only expects such immunity, he demands it. His only
response to criticism of his Senate voting record is to go
ballistic and to lash out with hypocritical venomous personal
attacks.
Being President of the United States takes a certain temperament
— one that Kerry has not shown. In one of the very good lines from
his acceptance speech, Bush stated: “One thing I have learned about
the presidency is that whatever shortcomings you have, people are
going to notice them — and whatever strengths you have you’re
going to need them.” So far in this campaign Kerry has demonstrated
some troubling weaknesses, without any counterbalancing strengths.
George W. Bush has been subjected to some of the most outrageous
personal attacks from supposed responsible members of the
Democratic Party over the past few years. His responses have been
remarkably (and sometimes to his supporters, frustratingly)
diplomatic. He has never lost is cool. Kerry, on the other hand,
seems to have great difficulty in controlling himself even when he
is attacked in comparatively mild ways — flying off the handle
with accusations about imaginary attacks on his patriotism.
Kerry seems intent on portraying himself as a member of one of
the many victim groups that have been the life-blood of the
Democratic Party over recent decades. We should vote for Kerry
because, in addition to serving in Vietnam, the Republicans are
being mean to him. He is a victim of a campaign of “Fear and
Smear.” Now the essence of smear is a false charge. Since the only
false charge being thrown around is the one made by Kerry that Bush
and Cheney are questioning his patriotism, I guess Kerry’s claim to
victimhood is just another example of his complexity. Hiding behind
an old war record while whining unconvincingly about a “smear” is
not wise political strategy. Americans, after all, want to elect a
leader, not, as the governor of California might put it, a
girlie-man. It is quite possible, however, that the Kerry campaign
has become so removed from reality that it does not recognize
this.
