Wednesday, August 04, 2004

How Low will We Go?

As low as it takes, if Kerry's campaign is to be believed.

Yep, looks suspiciously like Republican dirty campaigning to me.

It always amazes me how, in an election year, politicians seem to forget that when they run for President, their lives are placed under a microscope. They forget that however carefully polished your image might appear, there will always be those who will do their level best to cast aspersions at it. If you want to run for President, folks, be prepared to have every single utterance -- whether by you or someone who represents you -- dissected, deconstructed, and decomposed by your political enemies. Remember them? Their name is Legion.

Key quote:
The Kerry campaign responded it has been 35 years since the medals were awarded and no one raised the issue before Kerry got involved in the race for the White House.
Really? 35 years? Amazing. So, just because no one has complained before now, isn't this a little like admitting you inhaled 35 years ago and never got caught?

Career politicians (and freshman politicians who hire career political consultants) apparently find safe ground in the popular whine "I question the timing of this revelation." This charge has been fired back and forth throughout the entire campaign, although it admittedly has seemed terribly one-sided since the DemCon. I'm certain the whining will commence on the GOP side once RepCon finishes.

In this case, I can understanding the whining. It does look suspicious that in the run-up to the Convention, a book is announced tearing deep into the fabric of Mr. Kerry's alleged heroism in Viet Nam; a conflict steeped in controversy and, itself, a political hot-button in times past. Suspicious indeed. But the whining doesn't justify questioning the motives of the vets who decided to tell all.
"This is pay for play, and the dirtiest of all dirty tricks ever played on a candidate for the presidency. How low can they go?"
How low, indeed? Instead of crying foul, why not ask instead, "What was their motivation?" Was it really pay for play? Or perhaps, just perhaps, could it have been a sincere desire of these veterans to keep a man out of office who would act like this?

I guess what the Dems want is a statement from the RNC that reads something like this:

"Ahem. We freely and fully admit to having paid these veterans to write a book about Kerry's alleged heroism in Viet Nam. There. Feel better now?"

Like that's ever gonna happen...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Kerry supporters are comparing the effort by the veterans to the Arkansas State troopers tell-all against Bill Clinton."

Hmmm...I'm glad the Dems reminded me of that. I see now that there's a trend amongst their candidates.

That they accuse first cops, then war vets of these "improprieties" just cures the concrete for me. Is this the same group that accuses these brotherhoods of keeping secrets to protect each other?

-PBWriter

Woody said...

No, no, no! That would be the Berkeley-UCDavis-pot-smoking-pinko fringe that was accusing...

Oh, wait...

Cameron said...

Kerry only has himself to blame. He's the one who made the decision to use his Vietnam service as his sole argument for his ability to be a wartime president. How he ever came to the conclusion that he could make that claim and then not have every day of his (cynical, for me) service picked over goes a long way to proving another thesis beginning to make its way through the blogosphere: He's a functional idiot. His grades were worse than Bush's, after all, and everyone knows what a drooling pinhead Bush with his average gpa is supposed to be.

Woody said...

True, but don't forget: Kerry always considered himself to be the heir-apparent to Kennedy's Camelot. For a man who touts himself as being opposed to tax relief for the wealthy, he sure seems to fit the mold of an American aristocracy -- one of the things at the top of the Founders' lists of things to eliminate in their new nation.