MILSPANKED:

An Attack on Bush Backfires: A criticism of Bush’s “negativity” gets it positively wrong. (Byron York, 6/02/04, National Review)

[I]t appears that Bush officials are correct, and the Post wrong, on at least three major points.

The first concerns a speech by Vice President Dick Cheney, delivered in Arkansas on May 24. "Vice President Cheney said Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry 'has questioned whether the war on terror is really a war at all,'" Post reporters Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei wrote. Cheney's charge, along with others made by the Bush campaign was, the authors said, "tough, serious — and wrong, or at least highly misleading."

"Kerry did not question the war on terrorism," Milbank and VandeHei explained, suggesting that Cheney's statement was not only untrue but also part of a Bush administration effort to deflect attention from its own record. [...]

Kerry's interview with the Times is available on the paper's website, and in the portion in question, he said the following:

The final victory in the war on terror depends on a victory in the war of ideas, much more than the war on the battlefield. And the war — not the war, I don't want to use that terminology. The engagement of economies, the economic transformation, the transformation to modernity of a whole bunch of countries that have been avoiding the future. And that future's coming at us like it or not, in the context of terror, and in the context of failed states, and dysfunctional economies, and all that goes with that.

In a second area, Bush officials say the Post understated the number of negative ads that have been run by the Kerry campaign. [...]

A third area in which the Post authors said the Bush campaign has made charges that are tough, serious, and wrong, deals with Kerry's position on the Patriot Act. [...]

[T]he campaign...released a transcript of the conference call cited by the Post, in which Mehlman fielded questions about the Patriot Act ad:

Question: Ken, on their conference call this morning, Eric Holder and Admiral Crowe, based on this ad, accused the Bush-Cheney Campaign of playing politics with this issue, and said the ad "distorts the Senator's position that what he's calling for is a thoughtful reexamination of the Act." What's your response to their allegation?

Mehlman: Well, my response is twofold. First of all, talking about your principal position on an issue is not the same as having no principles on the issues and changing your position for political gain. But what our ad points out is, in Senator Kerry's own words, the following: On Hardball, and this is in our materials, 9/24/01, he stated: "It's absolutely outdated to have a wiretap linked only to a telephone number in a modern age where you throw one away and use another 10 minutes later. So I think it's absolutely legitimate to track the wiretap to a specific individual." Then, later on his website said, critically: "The Justice Department can use roving wiretaps without adequate checks or safeguards. This roving wiretap authority threatens personal privacy." So our ad is pointing out the change in John Kerry's position as reflected in his own words about a critical tool in the war in terror. An ad talking about an issue is not the same as changing your position for political gain, which is what our reflects.

Question: Ken, the language of the ad says, talking about wiretaps, subpoena powers and surveillances, "Kerry would now repeal the Patriot Act's use of these tools against terrorists." But what it says on Kerry's website, and some of which you cited in your own email, is that he would require more evidence, he would set a higher bar, various checks and balances. Is that the same as repeal the use of these tools?

Answer: I would also call your attention, in addition to his website, and it's in our "Ad Fact Background," his speech on 12/01/03 at the Iowa State University, where he said: "So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act." And has in other occasions also, and it's reflected in our materials, spoken this way. So he has said we need to replace the Patriot Act, and his website has called for these provisions being problematic which, taken together, indicate — I think a common sense reading indicate that in fact he intends to repeal these important tools.

Says one Bush campaign official: "I don't understand why the Washington Post views it as unreasonable that John Kerry's quote saying he wants to replace the Patriot Act be interpreted by this campaign as saying he wants to replace the Patriot Act. Would any reasonable person in that room who listened to that speech walk out with any other conclusion than John Kerry wanted to replace the Patriot Act?" The official further says that it is reasonable to argue that if Kerry wants to replace the Act, then he wants to repeal the present law.

So that settles that, eh?

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 2, 2004 11:53 AM