NAMSTER DANCE:

Apocalypse Kerry (Lawrence F. Kaplan, 07.30.04, New Republic)

A few weeks back, a colleague of mine at TNR joked that the Kerry campaign should create a miniature river in the FleetCenter, in which the candidate and his "band of brothers" could wend their way toward the podium in a swift boat. Then came news that the Kerry campaign had actually hunted for a Vietnam-era swift boat to plunk down in the convention center. Alas, none was found, and Kerry had to settle for a water taxi ride with his boat mates. In the end, it didn't really matter. No one who watched his acceptance speech last night could have missed the fact that, yes, John Kerry served heroically in Vietnam. Easier to miss was that, as a guide to what sort of approach to national security Kerry will enshrine in official policy--presumably the whole point of the exercise--last night's martial imagery and rhetoric told us nothing at all. Or, rather, worse than nothing.

There were, in fact, three Vietnams haunting the convention hall last night. One was on the stage, which, with its "band of brothers" and "greatest generation" tributes, somehow attached World War II nostalgia to our national tragedy in Vietnam. The second was in the audience, where nine out of ten delegates view the war in Iraq through the prism of their views of that earlier conflict--that is, they would just as soon bolt--and where Kerry's Vietnam service seems to be regarded as some sort of anthropological (and heaven-sent) oddity. The final Vietnam was in John Kerry's words, which blended the stage and audience versions into some approximation of the candidate's own views about the war. None of it furthered the cause of rational discourse.

Isn't there a last, and scarier, Vietnam, the one that Kerry seemingly still lives in mentally?

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 31, 2004 7:59 AM