A Nasty Business

By NiallO’Dowd

JUDGING by the latest charge and counter charge, we are in for a very rocky road between now and the November election when it comes to the presidential race.

The allegations about who did what in Vietnam occur against a backdrop of many serious political issues which seemingly have no bearing on the race itself, but have everything to do with people’s lives.

We have hardly heard a peep about health care, employment, Iraq and other major issues in comparison to the serve and volleying about Vietnam, a war fought so long ago that voters born in the last 40 years will remember nothing about it.

It seems the baby boom generation will go their graves arguing and hollering about Vietnam. It was the defining moment for their generation, and whether you were for it or against it has defined the political landscape ever since.

It seems as if this great Republic is demeaning itself by allowing such an issue to take center stage at a time when there are so many real pressing issues in people’s lives. Who can remember what they were doing 35 years ago on a given day? Well, both Republicans and Democrats seem determined to prove that they remember better than the other side.

It is extraordinary how the Republicans have taken what seems one of their most vulnerable issues, the lack of military service by either President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney, and parlayed it into an all-out assault on Senator John Kerry and his heroic war service.

By deconstructing Kerry’s service, practically day by day for the four months that he served in the heat of the battle, the Bush/Cheney team has succeeded in totally deflecting the issue from themselves.

Kerry has not helped himself by being slow to respond to the charges, and it remains to be seen if he can effectively do that. All is fair in love, war and politics it seems these days, but this new furor marks a particularly low point. 

It seems simple — Bush chose not to serve, Kerry chose to serve. It is a measure of the political skill of the Bush White House that they appear to have turned that very basic fact on its head and focused attention on Kerry’s war record and not their own.