August 22, 2004
IT'S NOT THE 4.5 MONTHS, IT'S THE SUBSEQUENT 35 YEARS:
Marching to November: The politics of chest-thumping. (Andrew Ferguson, 08/30/2004, Weekly Standard)
Democrats need to reassure themselves they aren't wimps.But now Republican activists are forcing on the campaign obsessions of their
own--almost a mirror image of the Democrats' desperate overcompensation. The dissonance and frustration this year's election rouses in the mind of the dedicated Republican cannot be underestimated. Conservatives actually do revere the military, without reservation. It is not their inclination to debunk combat heroes. Some Republicans, when they drink enough beer, really do wonder whether civilian control of the military is such a great idea. For them, it was never plausible that our boys in Vietnam had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads . . . cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians," and so on, as young John Kerry testified they did.Yet in 2004, Republicans find themselves supporting a candidate, George W. Bush, with a slender and ambiguous military record against a man whose combat heroism has never (until now) been disputed. Further--and here we'll let slip a thinly disguised secret--Republicans are supporting a candidate that relatively few of them find personally or politically appealing. This is not the choice Republicans are supposed to be faced with. The 1990s were far better. In those days the Democrats did the proper thing, nominating a draft-dodger to run against George H.W. Bush, who was the youngest combat pilot in the Pacific theater in World War II, and then later, in 1996, against Bob Dole, who left a portion of his body on the beach at Anzio.
Republicans have no such luck this time, and so they scramble to reassure themselves that they nevertheless are doing the right thing, voting against a war hero. The simplest way to do this is to convince themselves that the war hero isn't really a war hero. If sufficient doubt about Kerry's record can be raised, we can vote for Bush without remorse. But the calculations are transparently desperate. Reading some of the anti-Kerry attacks over the last several weeks, you might conclude that this is the new conservative position: A veteran who volunteered for combat duty, spent four months under fire in Vietnam, and then exaggerated a bit so he could go home early is the inferior, morally and otherwise, of a man who had his father pull strings so he wouldn't have to go to Vietnam in the first place.
Needless to say, the proposition will be a hard sell in those dim and tiny reaches of the electorate where voters have yet to make up their minds. Indeed, it's far more likely that moderates and fence-sitters will be disgusted by the lengths to which partisans will go to discredit a rival. But this anti-Kerry campaign is not designed to win undecided votes. It's designed to reassure uneasy minds.
Mr. Ferguson is one of our very favorite political writers and he's certainly entitled to be offended by the attacks on John Kerry, but his analysis of Republicans here seems quite wrong. The iconic figure on the Right is Ronald Reagan, who served stateside during WWII, not in combat. Republicans never warmed to their war heroes--George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole--and they chose George W. Bush over John McCain, whose entire campaign, like Mr. Kerry's, was based on his service in Vietnam. Mr. Bush paid no price whatsoever for attacks on Senator McCain that were just as tough as these on John Kerry. And while the folks at the Weekly Standard were among the few who did prefer John McCain to George Bush, there has never been a candidate more popular with the party faithful than George Bush is now.
The reasons for GOP hatred of John Kerry may indeed be psychological, but they do not derive from self-doubt. He is hated because of his opposition to the Vietnam War, a cause which the hyper-patriotic GOP believes to have been a just cause and opposition to which is viewed as nearly, if not actually, treasonous. Mr. Kerry thinks his service in Vietnam to have been his defining moment--for Republicans it is incidental, if not insignificant. For them (us) he is defined instead by his opposition to his own country and his support for regimes from Hanoi to Moscow to Managua to Baghdad. Millions of Americans have served their country honorably during wartime--including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush even if they didn't make it into combat--but relatively few have fought to defeat America, as John Kerry did when he returned home. He represents everything that the Right hates about the self-indulgent 60s generation and the protest movement just as surely as Bill Clinton did. That may not be healthy psychologically, but it tells us something far different than the lesson Mr. Ferguson has mistakenly drawn.
Posted by Orrin Judd at August 22, 2004 12:27 PM
Ferguson misses the crucial point of the Swift Vets - the entire "Kerry as war hero" persona is invented, if their charges are indeed correct. Which renders the whole "attacking a war hero" thing irrelevant, and actually recasts it as searching for truth. Which is what conservatives stand for.
Posted by: Jeff Brokaw at August 22, 2004 12:48 PMI also, however, agree with you OJ that it's the time since he got back from Vietnam that matters most, including his VVAW activism. And it is impossible to spin that as any known type of "heroism", especially in the eyes of Vietnam Vets. Quite a little pickle the Kerry campaign has chosen for itself.
Posted by: Jeff Brokaw at August 22, 2004 1:02 PMFred Barnes excluded, the Standard's editorial line during the 2000 election, and particularly during the primaries, was very much against Bush and in favor of McCain. It's a rift that still lies just under the surface and shows up occassionally in Kristol/Kagan columns, and in pieces like this by Ferguson.
(In a way, I'd like to see McCain run in 2008, just so this group could find out when it comes to "dirty tactics" the South Carolina campaign that remains to them what Florida is to Democrats would be small potatoes compared to what would be thrown at McCain during the general election. That, combined with the lack of fawning press support the senator would get once he had an opponent with a "D" after his name, would stun even the most cynical among the Standard's group.)
Posted by: John at August 22, 2004 1:05 PMRood's piece seems to be dispositive. The Swift vets' didn't get their act together and now they're a terrible embarassment to the GOP, as far as Vietnam goes.
Post-Vietnam is another story.
Cambodia is another story.
But it's the medal event that seems to have the interest, and that one's blown up.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at August 22, 2004 2:55 PMHarry's right, the medal issue is dead whether you want it to be or not. Any further B*t*hing on that subject is overkill. (bush should graciously say that publicly)
Direct questions about demagoguery via lying by Kerry on his presence in Cambodia can be done by Republican Congressman. (perhaps Gingwich).
Henceforth the focus should be on Kerry's aid in constructing the so-called Vietnam Syndrome over the last 30 years which Kerry as much as any other elected politician is certainly an important part of. As a result of which America has become a timid, self-hating, sitting-duck for evil Mullahs, terrorist, and bloviating French politicians.
Once again, we must recall that Benedict Arnold had been a genuine American war hero.
It unnecessary to hypothecize that this man would place himself in combat for 4.5 months to position himself for a career of service to Communist masters. If we give this man ~~~~y benefit of the doubt for the quality of his brief service, we must still face the reality of the subesquent conduct which earned his picture a place of honor in the Victory Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.
Posted by: Lou Gots at August 22, 2004 4:38 PMI'm a little tired of being put on the couch by people like Mr. Ferguson, Kerry campaign hysterics, and blog commenters.
I have no need to prove to myself that W is a man in order to vote for him. I know he freed 50 million people by military force and by the force of knowing clearly what is the right thing to do and then doing it. I'm not sorry he did it, either, no matter how many columnists try to project their pessimism and other psychological problems onto me. And I'll be voting unencumbered by any doubts about the testicles of my candidate and I'll be doing so in one of those vaunted swing states.
Posted by: Melissa at August 22, 2004 4:56 PM"I know he freed 50 million people by military force and by the force of knowing clearly what is the right thing to do and then doing it."
It's not clear to many of the 50 million. They have the disadvantage of living in the freed regions, where conditions conspire against the clarity of vision you and the president enjoy.
From the now famous Sports Illustrated article:
"My problems are not with the American people," says Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad. "They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy verything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?"
Harry:
You know better than that--facts never make controversies go away.
Posted by: oj at August 22, 2004 5:18 PMKyle:
An unhappy aparatchik--the world is filled with them. ex-Soviet coaches want their dachas back.
Posted by: oj at August 22, 2004 5:26 PMKyle, in your omniscience, how many of the 50 million is freedom not clear to? I know the one heroic disgruntled soccer player, but our charming press corps never bothers to interview anyone who might have a different take -- like the children who were freed from Saddam's prisons. Furthermore, it's a ridiculous canard (and a widespread one used in the Middle East) to separate the American people from their government. We are one and the same. We vote our government in as representatives of the people. I don't see Arabs having any trouble wiping out thousands of the 'American people'on September 11th. Nor do terrorists have any trouble wiping out the 'Iraqi people' in terrorist attacks in Iraq.
Posted by: Melissa at August 22, 2004 5:53 PMKyle: He's a foreigner. 1. We don't expect him to know any better. 2. Who cares what foreigners think?
Posted by: David Cohen at August 22, 2004 6:05 PMOrrin, when you, Andrew Ferguson and others work with iconic caricature, you can draw conclusions almost any way you wish. Orrin, it's so apparent, via this documentation, that you're as shallow as Mr. Ferguson.
Stupidity through simplicity is indeed in good health. The goal for you, now, is to proceed from the two dimensional to even fewer dimensions.
Comments about particulars:
1 - the word "iconic" is a splendid selection. "Iconic" is so appropriate!
2 - John Kerry could have expressed opposition to the Vietnam War in so many ways without generating the antipathy of either Vietnam veterans or civilians. Kerry's PARTICULAR claims are the issue.
--Some Republicans, when they drink enough beer,--
I thought the rich only drank champagne, wine and the blood of the oppressed???
Posted by: Sandy P at August 22, 2004 8:47 PMKyle:
Sports Illustrated "interviews" a member of the Iraqui soccer team.
First. Its MSM.
Second, noboby at SI speaks Arabic. They hired one of the ex-Ba'athist minders who hangs around the hotels inside the green zone.
He asks the soccer player how his hamstring is in Arabic. The soccer player says it will be fine in time for the Olympics in Arabic.
Then the minder feeds the SI idiot this crap about Bush in English which causes the SI idiot to have an orgasm and give the minder a big tip, since it confirms all of his prejudices.
The editors love it. They think: "See, they really hate Bush, Just like everybody we know."
And you believed them.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at August 23, 2004 2:19 AMMaybe Ferguson himself feels guilty about something and is just projecting.
Posted by: David at August 23, 2004 10:16 PM