TWO MEN IN THE ARENA:

Service Winner: Kerry's bio ads build a rags-to-ribbons myth. (William Saletan and Jacob Weisberg, May 4, 2004, Slate)

True, Kerry talked a lot about Vietnam during the primaries. Like other journalists, I've grown bored with this shtick. But I've also grown bored with Bush's endless talk about standing up for freedom and against terror. The stuff that bores people like us often turns out to be the stuff that swings elections, largely because most voters tune in later than we do. Until now, the campaign was shaping up as a fight between simplicity (Bush) and complexity (Kerry). Complexity never wins that fight. "I supported the Iraq war resolution because I wanted to get the United Nations involved so that we could enforce the demands of the Security Council in the right way" is not a winning message. "I risked my life while my opponent was AWOL" might be.

Does a 38-year-old war really tell you much about these two men? Kerry's new ads, "Heart" and "Lifetime," make the best case that it does. They repeatedly use the terms "fight" and "serve" to link the phases of his career. "If you look at my father's time in service to this country, whether it's as a veteran, prosecutor, or senator, he has shown an ability to fight for things that matter," says Kerry's daughter Vanessa in "Heart." Fighting is exactly what Kerry stands accused of failing to do in the Senate. The charge from the Bush camp is that Kerry flips and flops with the political winds. The point of these new ads is to transplant the testosterone of Kerry's youth to his Senate years. You're supposed to walk away with the sense that he's been fighting as bravely in Washington in recent years as he did in Vietnam long ago.

That's the "fight" half of the message. The "serve" half does the dirty work. "I enlisted because I believed in service to country," Kerry says in "Heart." "I thought it was important if you had a lot of privileges as I had had, to go to a great university like Yale, to give something back to your country." The Yale reference appears in both ads, suggesting a dig at the other Yalie running for president. The implicit message is that while Kerry viewed his fancy education as a gift and used it to help others, Bush viewed the same education as a birthright and used it to help himself. I'll leave it to you, as Slate's authority on higher education in New Haven, to adjudicate.

Yeah, what has the President of the United States of America ever done to serve his country?

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 6, 2004 1:45 PM