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September 1, 2004

Posted at 8:00 PM, EDT

I'll ask Lynne the WebXena to transcribe the conversation with Al Franken some time tomorrow. Al skipped some logic classes at Harvard. That will be self-evident when I get the exchange posted.

I interviewed Matthew Dowd today (and that transcript will follow as well.). His key point: There are three signs of a collapsing campaign. First, the candidate who is falling like a rock challenges his opponent to weekly debates. Second, the candidate who is sinking shuffles his senior staff.  Third, the candidate who is the walking dead says that the only poll that counts is the poll on election day. Dowd  pointed out that Kerry has already scored two of the three. Heh.

Posted at 12:50 PM, EDT

I'll be on Al Franken's radio show slighty after  2 this afternoon. It'll be interesting.

Salon's associate editor Mark Follman is bagging on the RNC bloggers. Yeah, that Mark Follman --the one you never heard of from the "on-line magazine" nobody reads. Somebody tell me when Tommy Franks gives him an interview, or Karl Rove, or Terry McAuliffe.  He should read Glenn Reynolds in today's Wall Street Journal:

"With accredited bloggers at both conventions, this can fairly be called the first presidential election to be blogged. And that just might matter -- though if it does, it will be as much because of big-media vices as it is of bloggers' virtues....

Does this mean that blogs will work in the Bush campaign's favor? Not inevitably, and there are plenty of lefty blogs doing their best to beat Mr. Bush. But so long as the mainstream media are lazy, and biased -- and strongly in favor of a Democrat -- the fact-checking and media-bypassing power of the blogosphere is likely to disproportionately favor Republicans. That's not so much a reflection on blogs, alas, as it is a reflection on big media."

The bloggers at the RNC, like all journalists at the RNC, are not here to discover "breaking news." Follman's critique is just a giant cheap shot because it singles out one slice of the media for a set of criticisms that could be applied to all media.

Follman sounds like a "new media" guy that wants desperately to be old media, and like the black-balled would-be frat or country-club member, is going to try and get in by targeting blows at those similarly situated.  Self-loathing is never attractive, even in cyberspace.

I've had many requests for the transcript of my interview with Terry McAuliffe from yesterday, so I've posted it below:

HEWITT: Sitting across from me Terry McAuliffe. Strike me dead. It’s so good to see you here Mr. Chairman. It’s good to have you at the Democratic National Convention and at the Republican National Convention

MCAULIFFE: Who would have thought that I’d be going around with a credential at the Republican Convention.

HEWITT: Can you stay for a couple of hours?

MCAULIFFE: Love to. Love it here. Everybody is being hospitable to me.

HEWITT: I want to start with some very easy questions.

MCAULIFFE: Yeah.

HEWITT: Do you believe that John Kerry took a CIA man into Cambodia and kept his hat?

MCAULIFFE: Uh, I have no idea.

HEWITT: You have no idea that he made that story to the Washington Post and that he made it again in 2004 to the LA Times?

MCAULIFFE: If John Kerry said he did something, I’ll take John Kerry at his word.

HEWITT: Do you think that he ran guns to anti-communists in Cambodia which he told the U.S. News & World Report on May of 2000?

MCAULIFFE: I don’t know. You’d have to ask John Kerry about that. I don’t know what he did in Cambodia or didn’t. That was a war 35 years ago. I want to talk about this year.

HEWITT: Did he go to Cambodia on Christmas Eve --your understanding-- in 1968?

MCAULIFFE: I think he probably did and probably George Bush when he was in the Alabama National Guard was driving the boat.

HEWITT: Obviously though, George Bush never made that claim but John Kerry has made numerous claims about his record in Cambodia. Does that matter to you?

MCAULIFFE: Oh sure, everything matters what people say. Absolutely. George Bush also said that he showed up in the Alabama National Guard and never showed up.

HEWITT: You’re still holding that story that he never showed up . . .

MCAULIFFE: Hugh, wait a minute. They’ve released the documents and all we’ve got is more questions. He had one dental appointment. Big deal.

HEWITT: Now, should John Kerry meet with the press and answer all the questions about the Cambodia stuff?

MCAULIFFE: I think John Kerry ought to go before the press and answer any questions they put out there. I’m always for that. Absolutely. I also want George Bush to answer some questions why he said he now miscalculated the war in Iraq. He says that we can’t win the war on terror. I have a lot of questions for Bush.

HEWITT: Why hasn’t John Kerry met with the media since the Chris Wallace interview on the Sunday after the convention for extensive questions? He’s had a couple passerby’s on the airplane but nothing on film and he hasn’t met with the press.

MCAULIFFE: This is all news to me, Hugh. I don’t know. I will be glad to ask Senator Kerry why he’s not met with you or any other the other . . .

HEWITT: Not me, but anybody. But Chairman of the party aren’t you concerned he’s hiding from the press?

MCAULIFFE: John Kerry is out campaigning every single day. There are press on his plane, 40 press, there’s a backup plane loaded with press, he talks to them on the rope line going in and out of the plane. I’m on the plane. I see him talking to press every single day.

HEWITT: He hasn’t answered any of these questions about Swift Vote Veterans ads. People want to ask about the CIA man in Cambodia in 2003. Don’t they have a right . . .

MCAULIFFE: First of all, he shouldn’t have to answer questions about Swift Boat ads when you now have all the major publications have now come out and have now said first of all, that these guys are lying and not telling the truth. One gentleman admitted the other day last week what he had said was not actually himself seeing it, it was based on hearsay, so he was caught in a lie. There’s another gentleman come out and say that there was no enemy fire. He got a citation and his medal for enemy fire at the same incident as John Kerry. These Swift Boat ads are riddled with lies.

HEWITT: But Senator Kerry told the Washington Post in the June interview with Laurie Blumenfeld that he had taken this CIA man deep into Cambodia and . . .

MCAULIFFE: You keep asking me about Cambodia and I don’t know the answer.

HEWITT: But that’s not about Cambodia, it’s having made that mistake . . .

MCAULIFFE: What do I look like, Bob McNamara? I don’t know.

HEWITT: Do you think Bob McNamara would know that?

MCAULIFFE: Ask him.

HEWITT: Do you think anyone else who would have gone with him would have stepped forward by this . . .

MCAULIFFE: You’re going to ask him yourself. I just know the issues which relate to Cambodia.

HEWITT: Would you agree with me that he ought to sit down with a reputable member of the press and answer as many questions as possible?

MCAULIFFE: I’d like George Bush to sit down and answer questions too. They both should.

HEWITT: Should John Kerry do it soon?

MCAULIFFE: Listen to this. We have three presidential debates where people are going to ask whatever things they want. So, Hugh, the moderators have already been determined. I think you ought to call them and if this has really got you so stoked up, then you ought to call them and have John Kerry in front a national – 100 million people ask him at the debate. How’s that?

HEWITT: There are lots of Americans who are interested in this and there is plenty of media who would ask if he would only come out from hiding. Don’t you think that presidential candidates should be meeting with the press on at least a weekly basis?

MCAULIFFE: Hugh, he’s not hiding. This man has had the most extensive travel schedule. The press are on his plane. He’s with press constantly. I don’t know why you think he’s hiding.

HEWITT: When was the last time that he took questions on camera from journalists?

MCAULIFFE: I have no idea.

HEWITT: It was over a month.

MCAULIFFE: I will tell him that you are very concerned about this . . .

HEWITT: Does that tell you that the campaign is collapsing and he’s afraid to meet . . .

MCAULIFFE: Were you like this with Ronald Reagan when you could never get near him for eight years and he used to bring his car into the back door . . .

HEWITT: [laugh] I was his lawyer. I couldn’t . . . I was in the White House Counsel’s office.. Let me switch . .

MCAULIFFE: Alright.

HEWITT: John Edwards yesterday said that he should sell the Iranians nuclear fuel. Do you agree with that, Terry McAuliffe?

MCAULIFFE: What did John Edwards say?

HEWITT: That we ought to do a deal with the Iranians that if they don’t get to produce their own nuclear fuel but that we will sell it to them in exchange for strict controls. Do you think that’s an answer to the situation on terror?

MCAULIFFE: If John Edwards said that’s what John Edwards feels and I’m sure that he talked to John Kerry about it.

HEWITT: Do you think that’s a good policy?

MCAULIFFE: If John Edwards is promoting that on behalf of the Kerry/Edwards team, I’m clearly going to let our two candidates talk about how we should be handling the issues as it relates to Iran and the nuclear issue. I would also at the same time, as long as we’re talking about this, why is George Bush as it relates to North Korea continually allowed them to continue to build a nuclear stock piles in Korea . . .

HEWITT: Should we return to the policy of 1994? Clinton/Albright?

MCAULIFFE: Possibly.

HEWITT: Do you think that’s a good idea? Did the policy serve us well?

MCAULIFFE: Well, they clearly were not continuing down the path that we have today. They are a much more dangerous country today than they were in 2000 when George Bush came into office.

HEWITT: Is it your impression that North Korea honored the agreement that Madelyn Albright negotiated and Bill Clinton signed?

MCAULIFFE: No. I wouldn’t say that they met all their agreements. No . . .

HEWITT: So, was it a good idea to enter into that agreement?

MCAULIFFE: I think it’s always important, Hugh that you have discussions with world leaders. I think it’s always important that we have people who are little -- the leader of North Korea’s a lot of questions and you can’t trust him, but I think it’s always good to sit and at least have conversation with them because you can never get to an agreement until you have some type of discussion and dialogue. I think dialogue is good.

HEWITT: Before the 2002 election I remember watching you on with Russert and you said that you were going to crush Jeb Bush in Florida –

MCAULIFFE: Right --

HEWITT: that you were going to him out by 15 points.

MCAULIFFE: I never said 15 points. That’s just not true, Hughie. I think you’re puffing a little bit.

HEWITT: Was it 10?

MCAULIFFE: It was no number. I never said a number.

HEWITT: It was a fake number – you said you were going to blow him out – take him out.

MCAULIFFE: No, no. We never say blow out.

HEWITT: Okay, I’ll go back in a minute. Do you think you’re predictions about this cycle are as accurate as that cycle.

MCAULIFFE: Let me – Hugh, let me not make this too complicated. I’m Chairman of the Democratic party. When a commentator asks me about an election let me be clear so that you have no illusions. I will say that we are going to win every single race –

HEWITT: Even if you don’t believe it?

MCAULIFFE: I’m going to say we’re going to win every single race –

HEWITT: Even if you don’t believe it and you’re going to tell people –

MCAULIFFE: I’m the ultimate optimist. We’re going to win every race. I think I should go on Sunday before a major election and go on Tim Russert and say, Tim, I think we’re going to lose this one Democrats – are you nuts? That’s what the Chairman of the party does.

HEWITT: But you can say something like it’s a tough race but we could pull it out as opposed to we’re going to bury him or whatever it was –

MCAULIFFE: Please don’t be putting words into my mouth, Hughie.

HEWITT: It was close.

MCAULIFFE: We’re going to win it.

HEWITT: It was a big statement –- and didn’t it ______ lose by how much?

MCAULIFFE: I think he lost by 8 points. And let me tell you, I put a lot of money into that race.

HEWITT: So, it wasn’t close?

MCAULIFFE: Let me tell you. Jeb Bush was never over 50% until 10 days before until they had a debate. As you know, Mr. McBride admitted that it was not his finest moment when they asked him how much the costs of his education plan would be and he said I don’t know.

HEWITT: So extrapolating out from that – Terry McAuliffe, would it be fair to say that if you’re prediction was that wrong about Florida 2002 that we ought not to really pay attention to your prediction about Florida in 2004?

MCAULIFFE: We’re going to win Florida. Just take the polls today. I mean we’re up. You know what? We’re going to win all 50 – let me make it easy for you, Hughie. We’re going to win all 50 states.

HEWITT: All –

MCAULIFFE: We’re going to win the House. We’re going to win the Senate. We’re going to win everything. You bet!

HEWITT: Now if –

MCAULIFFE: 50 state sweep. How’s that?

HEWITT: In GQ in the interview that’s out today –

MCAULIFFE: Yeah --

HEWITT: John Kerry called the President – I want to get it right – craven, stupid, and pathetic. Good choice of words for a nominee?

MCAULIFFE: I haven’t seen it. What’d he call the President of the United States?

HEWITT: Craven, pathetic and stupid.

MCAULIFFE: Well, what was it in the context of, Hughie?

HEWITT: Craven, pathetic and stupid.

MCAULIFFE: I mean here’s a president that just said that we can’t win the war on terror and we’ve got a 140,000 troops in Iraq –

HEWITT: Do you agree with that kind of characterization?

MCAULIFFE: He said that he miscalculated the war in Iraq. I think that George Bush has come up with some bad, stupid things.

HEWITT: But do you agree with that characterization – pathetic?

MCAULIFFE: Unless you show it to me, I’m just not going to comment to something that you say on the air. You’re a lawyer. I’m a lawyer.

HEWITT: Terry McAuliffe, can you stick around?

August 31, 2004

Posted at 7:05 PM, EST

To Terry McAuliffe's credit, he sat down for an interview with me. To his discredit, he will not answer questions, he pretends ignorance of well-known controversies surrounding Kerry's repeated tale-telling of secret missions into Cambodia, and he got surly when pressed to answer questions.  I am amazed at his thin-skinned reactions and attempt to get me upset by sneering "Hughie" at least three times after it became clear that I would not be deterred or intimidated.

This is yet another signal of a party in panic --and perhaps a panic that extends beyond Kerry's meltdown. Is McAuliffe's hysteria a signal of a knowledge of what is going on in the polls in the Senate and House, or he always that easily upset and flustered?  You can listen to the interview in the archive of today's show at www.krla870.com.

Posted at 4:15 PM, EDT

Here's the transcript of my interview with Karl Rove from earlier this morning:

HEWITT: It’s a real pleasure to welcome now Karl Rove, Assistant to the President, to the program. Karl, welcome. Thanks for doing the Hugh Hewitt Show.

ROVE: Happy to do it, Hugh.

HEWITT: I want to start with one of the questions that I get most often from my public: on election night how does the President’s team prevent the networks from doing anything like happened on election night 2000?

ROVE: Well, I think they’ve -- I hope they don’t need much cautionary comment from us because the last time around it was so dismal. You could draw a line across the country when they mistakenly called the trifecta and have on the one side of the line the polls that had closed and on the western side of the line the polls that were still open and you’ll find something unusual if you group all those state together. The states whose polls had closed by the time that the networks called the trifecta tended to improve their turnout from 1996 . . that is to say that more people turned out to vote. The states West of that line when they mistakenly called the trifecta Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan for Gore, the turnout dropped from 96 by and large. The differences strictly that people thought that their vote didn’t matter anymore.

HEWITT: Have they had conversations with the campaigns, both Democrat and Republican about moral responsibility?

ROVE: Well, there was a commission appointed by the industry afterwards led by Ben Wattenberg that was quite critical. I think it was actually appointed by CNN and was critical of the network coverage and I think it has served as a cautionary note, and I think 2002 also served as a note because a lot of them ran these exit polls and thought they knew what the outcome was of some of these elections would be. For example, Mr. Zogby forecasted that Wayne Allard in Colorado, Senator Allard would be handedly defeated and it turned out that he handedly won. So I think and I hope that there has been an understanding on the part of the networks that they are supposed to observe politics not deeply influence its outcome.

HEWITT: Second most often asked question Karl Rove is about military ballots coming from overseas. Is there a plan to make sure that every ballot gets counted this time.?

ROVE: Yes, the Secretary of Defense has made it a priority to make it easier for military to apply for an absentee ballot and to speed up the delivery of those ballots through the system and that’s going to be very helpful and then in all of the states that there are significant military installations and with troops deployed overseas and likely to be larger than number of absentee ballots, we’ve been encouraging and lots of nonpartisan groups and Veterans service organizations have been encouraging local elected officials to give this a priority and to make certain that every cast by our military abroad is cast with ease and counted with accuracy.

HEWITT: Yesterday, John Fund gave a little talk where I was at and he noted that the Democrats have already lined up with a division of about 10,000 lawyers – sort of a strike force and that the country should be prepared for not one but many Floridas. Do you agree with that assessment, that warning?

ROVE: I think Democrats have decided that they are going to try and effect in court the election. Yes, they’ve already begun filing lawsuits trying to knock down either Federal or state provisionsthat do things such as for example, provisional voting. This is where if a voter is challenged, they are as to whether they are able to vote, they can vote, but the vote is set aside so that it can be researched and a decision made as to whether or not that vote was cast by a person who was both capable of voting and was that person. They are trying to knock that out in states. In other states for example, in Missouri they are trying to get rid of the requirement that there be positive identification at the polls. You remember last time in Missouri Democrats went to a pet judge and got that judge to literally to allow polling places in certain parts in St. Louis City to be kept open after the time that state law requires polls to be closed. We had to go find a judge to enforce the law that said that all polls must close at a fixed time and the people that are standing in line at that point would be allowed to vote. It is clear that that Democrats have got an organized and deliberate effort to let’s say to extend and distort election laws in ways that would benefit them.

HEWITT: Do you have a team that ‘s sort of looking at sort of the campaign after the campaign already?

ROVE: Well, I don’t want to get into details but this is a problem that we’ve been aware of for quite some time.

HEWITT: In the new GQ John Kerry calls the President’s team “craven, pathetic and stupid” and that sort of continues the unprecedented campaign bilification that’s out there. I know it’s the Bush policy never to whine about this stuff, but historically is there any precedent for this kind of presidential campaign?

ROVE: Well it’s sort of sad and I knew there was something weird when he started getting up on stages and invoking my name and taking a couple of whacks at me. I can’t imagine that this President ever standing up and invoking the name of an operative from the Kerry campaign. I think it’s sad and demeaning. I also think that it is a sign of something deeper and I hate to be personal about it, but Senator Kerry stood up on a stage in Pittsburgh and attacked me saying that I’d gone to great lengths to avoid service in Vietnam and then on the flight between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia at his next rally, a reporter asked him what do you know about Karl Rove’s draft status and he said I don’t know anything. So, here he stood up and took my good name as a cheap campaign ploy and knocked me around a little bit and admitted that he didn’t have a bit of evidence or knowledge how old I was or where I was during the Vietnam . . when he was in Vietnam, I was in high school.

HEWITT: Yep. I know that because we are roughly the same age. Is this strategy or inability to control emotion?

ROVE: I don’t know what it is. I just think it’s a sign of how petty and small that campaign can be. That’s their problem. We’re not going to worry about it there’s nothing we can do to affect it and nothing that this President is going to spend thinking about.

HEWITT: Last night, Senator McCain brought up Michael Moore and the crowd booed lustily. Has Michael Moore hurt the Democrats?

ROVE: I think he has. I think he is so outrageous. He is so out there in the fever swamp and he says so many things that are preposterous and he’s so ugly and vicious that the Kerry campaign would be, in my opinion, wise unsolicited advice worth exactly what they paid for but I think they’d be wise to muzzle their spokesman. But instead, they like having him out there. They put him in the president’s – the president’s so-called presidential box at the Democratic National Convention. What kind of endorsement of this guy is that? I just . . he’s had a popular film, made a bunch of money, more power to him, but he’s ugly and vicious and a propagandist who without respect for the truth or honestly and the Kerry campaign seems to think that they get a lot out of him out there.

HEWITT: Karl Rove you are a student of history and there are a lot of attempts to draw parallels to the election of 2004 some people say 1864 some say 1968 or 1972. Is there a precedent out there that parallels the dynamic that works this issue?

ROVE: Well there are lots that come close but it is a pretty unique election. If a country is as narrowly divided as the country has been . . . that is to say that the parties are a rough parity and we’ve been in that situation before in American politics. If the country is at war like we have been say in 1944, 1864, but there’s also a different dynamic in that this is a different kind of war. We are not fighting a nation state that has a capitol to defend and a people who suffer and assets in the forms of towns and factories and bridges and airports that can be destroyed or put at risk. We’re fighting a shadowy network of an international conspiracy that flows across international borders and it’s a different kind of war . . . requires us to think and act in a different kind of way. It requires us to fight it in a different way and it’s going to be a difficult one because it requires such resolve and focus and discipline. We’ve been at war for a long time before we were willing to acknowledge it where they struck us in Beirut in 1983, they struck us in Somalia in 1993, they struck us in the World Trade Center in 1993, they struck us in the East Africa bombings, they struck us on the USS Cole, they struck us at the Cobart Towers in Saudi Arabia, they declared war . . they openly declared war Al Qaeda did I think in 1998 and it has taken a while for us to acknowledge that we are in a war against a different kind of enemy that is going to require a lot of resolve and determination on the part of America and our allies.

HEWITT: As you study the data, has the reality of that war had a fundamental impact on American politics that is not showing up at the polls in terms of realigning blocks and changing the way that people vote in politics?

ROVE: I think it probably has. I think that this idea . . I was struck last night and I hate to make to make too much of polls and I hate to make too much of antidotes but last night when those three powerful women were talking about their connection to 9/11 and they panned across the crowd, I noticed that a lot of people, particularly a lot of women, were clearly moved by emotion. I think this idea of soccer moms, moms who are concerned about what kind of world their children and grandchildren are going to live in is going to reshape American politics.

HEWITT: Karl Rove, a few practical questions in our time left here. Do you read the blogs?

ROVE: I sometimes do. I don’t have enough time. I ‘m rushing to hither and to way too much, but I have a fellow on my staff who is very attentive to the blogs and pulls off interesting items for me to read.

HEWITT: Has the new information technology changed the pace in which you have to run a campaign?

ROVE: Oh, huge, hugely so. It’s also, ironically enough made campaigns in a way very old-fashioned too because it has given campaigns the ability to put into the hands of individual supporters data that helps organize the campaign, persuade people and mobilize people to register and then turn them out. It really is amazing how. . . it’s like my wife, she has got on the Bush campaign, we’ve got a thing called the Virtual Precinct and it’s a way to basically organize your own precinct of people all around the country. So my sister and brother-in-law in Reno, and my brother in Reno ,and my brother in Denver, my sister in Denver, my nieces in Cheyenne and Denver area, wife’s cousin in Hattiesburg, and her aunt in Hattiesburg, her cousin who’s at Fort Brag, her sister whose in Austin, they are all part of our virtual precinct and my wife’s job is to use these tools on the webpage of the Bush campaign to help make certain that she keeps in touch with all these people, makes certain that they are all registered, and gets them the right forms to request a ballot or registration form if they are not, and it is really pretty amazing how it has helped reinvigorate the sort of grass roots of the Republican party.

HEWITT: That’s remarkable. Let’s look at the debates in the fall, Karl Rove. Have you folks agreed to that false dichotomy of a debate on domestic issues and a debate on international . . .

ROVE: We have not yet announced our debate negotiating team and we we’ll deal with those issues in public after we name them.

HEWITT: Alright. Some particular demographics. Michael Barone yesterday in conversation said that the President is behind where Reagan was in ’84 and Clinton was in ’96 in the 18-34 demographic. Agree or disagree and how do you strengthen the connection with that demographic?

ROVE: I think that’s probably accurate and, of course, Michael who is a very smart guy, where we’re ahead in other demographics, but that is one that we want to work on very much. We’re not that much behind where either one were in ’84 or ’96, but I would remind you that both of them went on to pretty convincing victories. Clinton I think had a 7 or 8 point lead and 1984 I think it was approaching a 10 or 11 point lead so you know, we’re in a much more closely fought election but we’re working very hard on the younger voter.

HEWITT: John Podhoretz pointed out yesterday on this program . . .

ROVE: You talk to all the smart guys.

HEWITT: I try to. That’s how I trick people into thinking that I know what I’m doing [laughter]. I talked to John yesterday and he said that John Kerry did not mention Israel in his acceptance speech. Will the President and is the Jewish American vote in play?

ROVE: It is very much in play, and I’m not going to get into the specifics of what the President is going to say or not say in the speech, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right. Yes, it is very much in play. They recognize what a -- how important his leadership in the war against terror is for the United States and the world and particularly for Israel for this scourge to be defeated and they applaud his moral clarity. They also appreciate the fact that he has had the readiness and the willingness to speak the truth about the rise of anti-semitism in Europe. This President has spoken out publicly against the rise anti-semitism and the burning of Synagogues and anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe, and he has also made it a point to talk with European leaders about it which makes some of them distinctly uncomfortable.

HEWITT: Karl, I don’t know if its an urban myth or not, but you were once quoted as having said that “four million of the nation’s eight million evangelical voters did not show up in 2000.” What’s the situation vis-à-vis that vote in this election?

ROVE: This is a pretty interesting observation made to me by a fellow by the name of Ed Goeaz whom I think you may know who is a pollster and Ed looked at the results of the 2000 election and roughly 15% of the vote came from self identified Evangelicals, fundamentals, charismatics and Pentecostals when they make up about 19% of the adult population. If you work the numbers, that’s roughly 4 million people who might have been expected to be at the polls if they turned out in the same number that they are of the population and, if . . . I think that community is far more energized. I think there may have been multiple number of reasons why they didn’t turn out to vote last time around but I know that they feel that many of them feel very strongly about the leadership of this President on issues of values and are more likely to participate this time than they did last.

HEWITT: Does that apply to the Catholic demographic as well?

ROVE: Well, Catholics are about a quarter of the electorate and they were about a quarter of the vote last time around. Uh, the difference among Catholics and among those who attend mass at l once, at least one or more times a week than those who don’t and among those who are more regular mass attenders we do better and among those that are not as regular mass attenders the Democrats do better. It’s an important group and it’s so large and diverse we’re talking about Latinos, Irish, Italians – you’re talking about a pretty diverse population of people.

HEWITT: Last question, Karl Rove. I don’t want to abuse your time. The oh my-my states: Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota seem to me to be at the center of this campaign -- not really a unique observation -- how do you win those three because if you win those three, the election is won, correct?

ROVE: Yeah. I think the board is a little bit bigger than that. I mean like Pennsylvania for example I’d put on that list of key states – I don’t know how you “oh ma-pa “ [laughter] but Pennsylvania which there are two new polls out, Gallup and Pew and show the President leading in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin the new Gallup poll shows us with a 3 or 4 point lead in the state. We’re going to keep emphasizing this President’s message of determined leadership on the war on terror, the right view of going about strengthening our economy and talking about the big issues and the big contrast between these two candidates who just campaign aggressively like we’re running for Governor of each of those states.

HEWITT: Karl Rove, always a pleasure. Thank you. I look forward to seeing you in the hall sometime this week.

ROVE: Hugh, I enjoyed your book.

HEWITT: Thank you!

ROVE: Thanks for sending me a copy.

HEWITT: My pleasure.

Posted at 10:00 AM, EST

I interviewed Karl Rove this morning on everything from the networks' conduct on election nights 2000 and 2004, to Michael Moore, and the absentee ballots of the military serving overseas.  I will post a transcript once I can get the WebXena a CD, and of course will play the interview to open the program today.

Rove was available at 7:15 AM, so we were back on radio row at 6:45 AM to prep and get the lights blinking. Not a blogger in sight. Radio row never sleeps, but the rest of the media does.

A grand slam by Rudy last night, and a home run by McCain, and the game-within-the-game heats up.  2008 is not that far off, and lined up for the consideration of the amassed national media and the money men and women are those two, plus Governors Owens, Romney, Pataki and Pawlenty, Senators Allen and Frist, and a couple of cabinet members to be announced.  (Most who will speak on the subject don't think Governor Bush can run to succeed President Bush, but no one says that on the record.) Unless someone says "absolutely not," they are thinking about it, and the delegates have little else to chat about, so the speculation is constant. The perpetual hot stove league of politics gets furnace-like at conventions. One idea put forward by a very credible figure who I won't name unless I am given permission to do so later: Cheney steps down mid-second term and W selects a successor.  That will put a premium on hard-work in the states this fall.

The Kerry interview in GQ is on stands now, and it is pretty bizarre, as well as venal.  Kerry brands the Bush operations as "craven," "pathetic," and "stupid."  These are terms for surrogates and the punditry, not the nominee. Unless the nominee is defeated and embittered.  Which Kerry is increasingly behaving as.  So now he's about to jet off to the American Legion to try and appear to be other than avoiding interviews, but he continues to avoid interviews. If the nominee isn't tough enough to talk to Tim Russert or Chris Wallace, is he tough enough to deal with the terrorists?  David Brooks this morning writes about the courage issue. Kerry isn't displaying much in his refusal to meet the charges of his old comrades-in-arms head-on, with cameras-rolling and the questions unrestrained by preconditions. Then there is this transparent lie:

"GQ: What do you think about what the Republicans did to Max Cleland? JK: It's one of the reasons I'm running. I was so angry. It's one of the reasons Teresa switched her party. I think politics reached a new low, an unbelievable, irresponsible, I mean just horrendous level when it goes after a guy like Max Cleland. It's the lack of decency, a lack of common decency when you can attack someone like Max Cleland for not being patriotic. You may not like his vote. But then go ahead and argue about his vote. But don't say he's weak on defense and he's not a patriot and won't stand up for America. Which is what they said. I think it's one of the most disgraceful moments in American politics. And it motivated me within two weeks of that election to go on Meet the Press and say, "I'm going to run for President." Because we got to change what's happening in this country. Absolutely. You better believe it."

I am not referring to the lie about challenging Cleland's patriotism. Zell Miller, who campaigned alongside of his good friend Cleland has repeatedly said that is a bogus charge, but one which the fever swamp loves to repeat. I mean the stuff about "one of the reasons I'm running."  Yeah, right. John Kerry saw the nasty GOP mistreating Max Cleland and was moved to get into the presidential race.

He also cites Conor Larkin as one of his literary heroes. Larkin was the IRA killer-patriot in Uris' Trinity, who drank to excess, blew town for New Zealand when the going got tough, came back and got himself martyred.  And he likes Huck Finn as well.  And Tom Sawyer. And the only Dylan tune he can name is Lay Lady Lay. And the left thinks the president can't communicate.

Kerry's off in a strange world of his own making. In the real world, at least a dozen innocents were blown up in Israel this morning --a country that Kerry didn't mention in his acceptance speech. In the real world, Iran should not be shipped nuclear fuel, which John Edwards proposed doing yesterday, and which left Roger Simon speechless when I told him about it yesterday.

There's a serious party with a serious nominee, and there's a silly party led by a narcissist and inspired by a repugnant propagandist.  The contrast will continue to emerge with devastating political impact tonight. 

August 30, 2004

Posted at 5:55, EST

You already know that the lines into the building are long; that the stress level among the public safety pros is high; that the humidity is unpleasant, and that there are some access issues for the bloggers.  But...the RNC has made a wise move in placing the bloggers immediately adjacent to radio row, recognizing that the web is on par with the old media of radio and print. The DNC had us in the balcony. It has been said over and over that the Kerry campaign wasn't ready for the impact of the web on the campaign.  The Bush campaign hasn't been tested yet, but there are signs of much more sophistication when it comes to the bloggers.

Technorati has a new Election Watch 2004 up and running. Be sure to visit and bookmark. The side-by-side comparison of liberal and conservative stories is entertaining and informative.

I spent a few hours with John Podhoretz, David Frum, Richard Wirthlin, Brent Bozell, Michael Barone, Richard Viguerie, Bob Barr, Linda Chavez, George Marlin, Cal Thomas, Brad Miner and Senator Zell Miller at an American Compass book club-organized author roundtable. (The club's five books for one dollar --including my book!-- is an incredible offer that the club is using to launch its membership.) You learn a lot around very smart people. Some takeaways from the conversations:

*from Barone:  Bush lags behind Clinton in '96 and Reagan in '84 in 18-to-30 year olds. Bush can turn this around, especially with the opportunity society proposals, but he does have to focus on it.

*from Wirthlin:  John Kerry's salute will prove to be the greatest strategic error of his campaign

*from Chavez: Republicans are underestimating the sheer scope of the labor effort. The numbers were indeed stunning in terms of monet and manpower devoted to beating Bush.

*from Frum and Podhoretz:  New media has won. Old media knows it.  And old media are very unhappy.

*from Fund:  The lawyers mobilized on both sides to litigate the election will provide not one but many Floridas if it is close. Pray that it isn't close.

*from me:  The reason the new media is so powerful is that people with opinions no longer need to persuade people to be allowed to persuade people. The gatekeepers are finished.

*from Bozell: don't underestimate the power of a handful of bloggers, recalling that it was three East Gedrman students who in essence organized the 1989 revolution via a mimeo machine and a battered car.

Meta-message: Kerry's devastated and the pros know it. The Vietnam issue isn't gone at all, but still eating away at his numbers. The buzz about his inability to respond effectively is turning into a buzz about how that inability equals an admission. The Kerry defeat will join liberal mythology of victimization --first Gore, then Cleland, then Kerry, the three musketeers of whining, examples that fathers teach their children not to emulate when it comes to the aftermath of defeat.

Why is it so harmful to Kerry? Wirthlin judged "the salute" to have been too obvious and too great a stretch from the reality of Kerry's rather complicated Vietnam story to the picture he was trying to present.  The salute remained on the public's mind even as the public was reminded of Kerry's '71 testimony and the truthful charges of exaggeration were surfaced and authenticated.  Candidates cannot overreach in that fashion without alienating the electorate, and Kerry has.

Wirthlin's widely recognized as one of the greats when it comes to understanding the electorate (as is Barone.) The campaign is far, far from over, of course, but Bush is in a tremendous position as the prime time convention opens.

Lileks suggests I had a chance to even touch the bottle I brought to the party.  Hah! Read Fraters to figure out who --other than James and the giant Ute-- got the good stuff. I barely got an oreo.  That's right. James served oreos, swiss cheese, cigars and carrots, and took us all on a tour of his Hummells.  

Time for radio row.

Posted at 9:40 AM, EST

Dueling with Laura Flanders on Washington Journal this morning wasn't very taxing. She's enthused about yesterday's demonstrations. So am I.  She won't answer questions about Kerry's Vietnam boasts. Neither will Kerry.  She doesn't want to talk seriously about the realities of the war against Islamist extremism, and neither do any of the Michael Moore Democrats, who are in the ascendancy on the Democratic side of the aisle.

Last night, at David Dreier's party, all of the delegates, journalists, guests and who-knows-who-else assembled, were in the sort of high spirits that one expects when momentum is on your side. (On the Sunday night of the DNC, John Kerry had bounced a ball into home plate at Fenway, and the small talk was of Kerry's abysmal campaigning style). This morning the papers across America are full of pictures of the nutty left, led by Michael Moore.  The Dems do not seem to understand how this plays outside of Manhattan, perhaps because they honestly don't have any idea. The country knows there is a war going on, and that the Democrats aren't talking about it.  The Republican convention will talk of little else as the media talks about John Kerry's disappearing act. That's a deadly combo for Kerry's hopes in the fall.

Posted at 6:30 AM, EST

Are the mullahs laughing today?

John Kerry has sent John Edwards out to offer the Iranian rulers a "great deal," according to the Washington Post: They get to have reactors while others supply the fuel, but only if they promise not to produce bombs. And if they don't sign on to pretending not to build nukes? "Heavy sanctions."  Really. Do you suppose the mullahs are more intimidated by the prospect of Kerry-Edwards or of Bush-Cheney? Here are a couple of key graphs:

"Iran has insisted that it be allowed to produce nuclear fuel, which would give it access to weapons-grade material. Under Kerry's proposal, the Iranian fuel supply would be supervised and provided by other countries."

"Experts on Iran have long speculated that some sort of 'grand bargain' that would cover the nuclear programs, a lifting of sanctions and renewed relations with the United States would help solve the impasse between the two countries. But campaign aides later said Edwards was not suggesting an agreement that covered more than the nuclear programs. In the December speech, Kerry criticized Bush for failing to 'conduct a realistic, nonconfrontational policy with Iran.'"

"Experts?" Which experts? Madeline Albright and Sandy Berger?

The timing of the Edwards' interview is transparently engineered to provide the massed media something to talk about other than the Swift Boat Vets. But my guess is that the Demo story of the day will be that the Kerry daughters getting booed at the MTV awards.  

But if anyone does bite on the Kerry-to-Tehran "grand bargain" nonsense, they ought to be asking the questions that were not asked of North Korea in 1994, which led to the crisis in that country. Kerry-Edwards are proposing to appease Iran --it is that simple.  It did not work with North Korea and it will not work with Iran.

Does the combo of a flawed "grand bargain" with Iran and the GOP party in NYC knock the Swifties off the radar. Not a chance. Read Beldar this morning.  And James Taranto, who is spot on in understanding what the Democrats have done to themselves, a problem compounded by the demonstrations yesterday.  And while you are at OpinionJournal, be sure to read Fred Barnes on the challenge, and the opportunity, ahead of the president this week.

Off to C-SPAN to educate the bleary-eyed on blogging.  The Los Angeles Times has started a "blog watch," which will in turn have to be watched. Poor Patterico.  His labors grow.  I will aim this morning to plug the four "Ps": Patterico, Powerline, PoliPundit, and PrestoPundit.  Strengthening the new center-right media means building the awareness of the great blogs on that turf.

And it is easier to remember four "Ps."

August 29, 2004

Posted at 6:20 PM, EST

I am scheduled as a guest on C-SPAN's Washington Journal tomorrow morning, to discuss blogging the convention.  I have been asked repeatedly: Why bother? The answer for a blogger is the same as for a radio talk show host, a print journalist or a television anchor --and I have been all four. Journalists of all sorts attend political events even where the outcome is known for the same reason they attend the State of the Union or campaign events where the stump speech is given: To stand in the middle of the mighty river "Information Flow" and see what you pick up from hundreds of different conversations.  Today I wandered around mid-town Manhattan assembling the credentials, three times coming across the Billionaires for Bush protestors, who are a pretty funny bunch, though their message gets a little lost with the Heinz fortune in the background. On 42nd street a huge banner is up proclaiming that "Democracy Is Best Spread By Example, Not War," which just begs for a sign opposite with just the dates 1941-1945, or perhaps a huge picture of Neville Chamberlain. And you really can't get a feel for how large the police/army presence is until you walk a few miles and are never out of sight of at least four or five of NYC's finest.  You just have to be here to get the story in full.

I am off to dinner soon with some of the convention bloggers, though I am unsure how many. This follows a late night at Jasperwood --which followed a book signing which followed four hours at the Minnesota State Fair-- in the company of a fine assortment of folks gathered by James. Except for the fact that it turned out to be an accidental blogging intervention, where five or six folks with superb design sense tell me this site looks like --well, they don't like it. At all. Content's great, etc, but they just hate the "look and feel." "Look and feel this, James" I said as I hurled the remains of a bottle of single malt at his pal the giant Ute. Well, not really. I meekly accept their judgment, and will redesign after the election.  What really bummed me is the discovery that I have been paying way too much to keep the technology side of this running.  The Elder let out a strangled peep when he heard what I had paid over the past few weeks to get various glitches worked out.  Oh well.  The cigars and cheese were good, and the conversation excellent.  No sense worrying about disastrous technology choices that make even amateurs collapse in laughter.  Blogging has taken off because there is just so much talent that has found a way to get some air, and because it is a great way to find people who are genuinely smart, entertaining and decent, and spend some time with them.

Why blog the convention? Why televise the convention? Why send reporters to the convention? Because it is where the news is and will be all week. 

August 28, 2004

Posted at 5:15 PM,  EST

There is a battle underway in the Twin Cities between a pampered, bullying lefty deputy editor at the Star Tribune by the name of Jim Boyd and the Powerline bloggers.  For relative newcomers to the blogosphere, Powerline is among the most respected political blogs in the country, credentialed to the RNC and widely and frequently cited by journalists working both in and outside of cyberspace.  This isn't surprising because the three proprietors of Powerline are extremely smart, highly credential and successful lawyers with the work habits and intellects that accompany success at the highest levels of the law.  They are also fine and good men, widely and rightly considered to be pillars of their community.  They are serious intellectuals, of a center-right variety.

On August 18, two of the Powerline three authored a piece on Kerry's Cambodian charade, which ran in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and a series of events began to unfold, summarized here. Boyd was incensed by the article's relentless factual case against Kerry, but rather than answer the charges --which as every sentient journalist now understands cannot be answered because Kerry wove a tapestry of half-truths and lies about his excellent adventures in Cambodia-- Boyd lashed out in what to my eye was an actionable defamatory screed directed at the Powerline writers. Though they are public figures, the Powerline gents could sue the Star Tribune with a decent chance of proving the necessary degree of malevolence on Boyd's part, but instead they have challenged Boyd to defend his hack job and rebut their column.

Tomorrow's Strib carries columns by both the Powerline authors and by Boyd, and I have read them both in the advance edition of the Sunday paper.  The Powerline piece is, again, sober, fact-filled and devastating both as to Kerry and to Boyd.  Boyd's piece is not a response at all, but another windy exercise in frat-boy name calling, the sort of response a tabloid's gossip columnist might churn out. It really does include a "I could prove you wrong if I had the space" claim by Boyd, a genuinely hilarious admission that he hasn't got even one error on which to hang his hysteria of last week.  The Boyd column is an embarrassment to himself and to his colleagues on the editorial pages and to the entire paper.  In an age of accountability, he would be fired. Because the Strib's editorial pages have long ago given up on even a remote association with intellectual honesty, he will instead be treated to sympathetic slaps on the back and mutterings about the right wing --and left secure in his poisoned view of the world as were southern slave owners were in the face of the abolitionist movement, and the appeasers upon hearing from Churchill throughout the '30s that they had judged developments on the continent wrongly.  Clinging to discredited certainties is a sure sign of a fool or a fanatic.  Boyd doesn't have the talent to be the latter.

But poor, embarrassed Jim Boyd has performed a service, even in his humiliation. His exposure as a blustery, bullying and ultimately bitter hack is another warning sign in a month of such warnings to old media. The rules have changed. The monopoly is broken.  You can't ignore the truth or the people who publicize it, and if you slander them, they have the tools of both rebuttal and exposure.  As I wrote last week, it takes a considerable amount more talent, learning and drive to succeed at the highest level of the law than it does to be a time-serving fast food outlet for cliches of the left at a largely ignored editorial page of a second tier paper.  Boyd mixed it up with the wrong guys, and even if his friends won't tell him the truth, he must already know that his paper saw what he did and gave the Powerline men another column as a result.

My language is harsh because Boyd is a bully who used his position to attempt to cudgel an opposing point of view into silence. He has been smacked down as a result, and it couldn't have happened at a better time. Had he simply apologized, his further exposure wouldn't have been necessary, but tomorrow's piece is another arrogant slander not just of the Powerline people but also of the real journalists who did the real journalism on Kerry's record and who won't sign on to Boyd's agenda of protecting Kerry from his own frauds. I am hoping many link to Boyd's self-indictment tomorrow and that his transparent posturing gets the ridicule it deserves.  Journalism is shedding its bias, but not quick enough if the editorial page equivalents of Jayson Blair get to keep spinning out defamations of good people.

Posted at 11 AM, EST

Yesterday I posted a long piece on the sources of the anger driving the Swift Boat Vets for Truth.  Many Vietnam vets have e-mailed their assessments of the piece, some with high praise for these paragraphs:

"America then and America now was and is undeniably the greatest force for good in the world. Its troops, then and now, fought and still fight to protect and defend the United States and to stop evil men, regimes, and ideologies from murdering millions of innocents. In those fights, there will be terrible tolls, and many innocents will die or be injured, but American armies fight wars --then and now-- with more concern for the innocent and with more discipline and accountability than any armies in history.

At one point in his life, John Kerry rejected the core principles of the preceding paragraph. He has never confessed that error and asked for forgiveness of the people he slandered at that time.  That's why he won't be the president. That's why Peter [Beinart] is wrong. And it is why the restraint that Professor Hanson wishes were still in place is not there and won't return to campaign 2004. The men John Kerry slandered are now fighting for their honor --again. Karl Rove didn't tell them to do so, and they aren't going to stop because Peter Beinart thinks they deserved to be branded barbarians.

It was a branding. It is still a brand --a dishonest, slanderous one. Men fight for their honor, and the ads aren't going away as a result."

Now three much better writers than me have taken up the task of getting to the core of this dispute, and the columns by Mark Steyn in the Chicago Sun Times and by Fred Barnes and Mackubin Thomas Owens in the new Weekly Standard should be read by anyone trying to understand the campaign, and especially by the president's speechwriter, Michael Gerson.

Mr. Gerson has a problem.  He cannot ignore the story that has dominated the last month, but he also must realize that the president does not want to divide a nation at war by replaying the divisions of the Vietnam War --although such a tactic would probably be immensely effective.  Bush could in fact use his speech to make the points these columns and my essay make, and cripple the Kerry candidacy beyond repair, but at a cost of taking an already polarized electorate to a depth of partisan rage that would linger even more than Florida 2000.

So how to handle these events in the president's speech? Perhaps by saying something like this:

"All of us have watched this past month as the differences from long ago have risen to divide us again. As I have often said, I honor John Kerry's service and his valor. I also honor the service and the honor of the men who served with John Kerry, both those standing at his side in this campaign and those who challenged him this past month.  Everyone who served, and everyone who loved someone who served, deserves our nation's thanks.  I am proud of my service, as John Kerry is of his, as all Vietnam vets should be of theirs, as all veterans should be of all time spent in uniform.  Defending your country and your fellow citizens is the highest calling, and all of America thanks all of its soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines past, present, and future."

"Now we must put aside the debates of an old war to focus on the new war. When England was suffering through the nightly bombings of the blitz, Churchill did not debate the pros and cons of the strategies of World War One.  His every energy, his complete focus was on winning the life and death struggle then underway."

[Now I borrow a paragraph sent to me by Tarzana Joe, a frequent literary contributor to my radio program, and a fine playwrite]

"History shows us that many men are killed at the start of a struggle
because the generals and leaders are busy fighting the last war. Technology or tactics change and the men who rose to leadership in the old ways are
reluctant to stray from what they know well. But in this new war against
terrorism, we can not afford to make that mistake again. Because the cost
of that mistake today will not be defeat in a single battle or delay in a
campaign--but the potential loss of thousands of innocent lives. Critics
have said America is doing something it has never done before. My
friends...and my opponents...we must open our eyes to a changed world.
Because if we insist on fighting the last war, we will surely lose this one.  And for the sake of the world--that we will not do."

Gerson, John McConnell and the rest of the White House writing crew have no doubt spent months helping George W. Bush prepare for Thursday night's speech, but I hope they are in rewrite mode, because they can't ignore the sudden explosion of this long-concealed anger over Vietnam-era slanders. Kerry lit the match, Brinkley provided the powder, and the vets of that era who were slandered are retuning fire. The president can't, it seems to me at least, avoid the topic in the biggest speech of his political career.

On the subject of Kerry's service, Thomas Lipscomb has another piece in the Chicago Sun Times on the huge peculiarities in Kerry's file.  And Jonathan Last at the Weekly Standard does history a service by detailing how old media was obliged by new media to cover the story of Kerry's many distortions which has in turn led us now to the real issue presented by Kerry's Vietnam-era record.  I think Jonathan left out a mention of Captain'sQuarters as one of the prime movers of the larger story, but other than that, it is a fine record of the media revolution that passed a major milestone in August, 2004.

A final two pointers this morning:  Powerline's write-up on the trouble Douglas Brinkley finds himself in should be a fair warning that the "new" material Brinkley puts in the soon-to-appear paperback edition of his book will be thoroughly scrubbed by the blogs. (And since Brinkley has released the Kerrry campaign from what the Kerry campaign has claimed was the impediment to the release of Kerry's wartime journals, when will the journals be posted on the web?)  Second, take a look at an evolving timeline of John Kerry's life and various events and statements. It is really helpful in keeping various details straight, but it contains a reference to a Harvard Crimson interview, that for some reason I think as been discredited in some way.  Would someone send me a link or an explanation of how that interview has figured in the campaign?

August  27, 2004

Posted at 4:45 PM, EST

Instapundit sent me to this Chicago Sun Times piece on John Kerry's decorations, as well as to KerrySpot's devastating recounting of the Kerry's criticism of Admiral Boorda's wearing of the wrong decoration. Kerry said then  --shortly after Boorda's 1996 suicide- that Boorda's conduct was "sufficient to question [Boorda's] leadership position." Kerry told the Globe then: “If you wind up being less than what you’re pretending to be, there is a major confrontation with value and self-esteem and your sense of how others view you.”

Put the Sun Times article together with Kerry's own standard and statement, and you have a candidate teetering on the brink of collapse. His arrogance may blind him to it, but Kerry's long trail of lies, half-truths, exaggerations and willingness to judge others' service is catching up with him with a vengeance.

Posted at 12 PM, EST

The attempt by John Kerry and his allies in big media to assign responsibility for the Swift Boat vets' ads to President Bush and Karl Rove ignores a crucial and obvious fact:  If George Bush was not the candidate --if Kerry had won the Democratic nomination in 2008 and was facing off against, say Mitt Romney-- these ads would have run then in substantially the same form.  The ads are anti-Kerry, motivated by an intense anger at Kerry rooted in the events of the Vietnam protest era.  They are devastatingly effective because they are so undeniably authentic.  Much of the anger on the left is also rooted in the reopening of the debates of that era. The attack on Kerry is also felt by many on the left as an attack on every marcher from that era.  Those of us too young to have been participants in the debates of that era and not to have been worried about the draft may be incapable of understanding the defensiveness of those who hit the age of 18 between the years 1966 and 1972, even as we are unable to understand the depth of anger among Vietnam vets against Kerry for his actions upon his return home.  I had thought that Bill Clinton's election had officially ended the era in which Vietnam would impact American politics, but the Democrats have nominated the one figure who could and has reignited the passions of that time.

Those passions may be a tremendous diversion from the critical issue of our time --how to win the war against the Islamofascists. The threat of diversion may have motivated one of the most complex and interesting pieces ever written by Victor Davis Hanson, one which is surprisingly sympathetic to John Kerry.

Professor Hanson strikes a tone I have heard in my brother-in-law's few comments on Vietnam over the 25 years I have known him.  George served two tours in Vietnam as a Marine Corps lieutenant and captain, the first shortly after his graduation from Annapolis.  George is from a very long line of warriors, stretching back to his great grandfather, also an Annapolis grad, as were his grandfather and father --a father that George doesn't remember because he died commanding a ship that was sunk in the battle of Okinawa.  Whatever opinions George holds on the Vietnam protestors, he is entitled to hold, but he has said very little over the years, and like most of the military professionals I know, is very slow to discuss those years or to attack the choices anyone made during them.  This attitude is wise and wide-spread among the military, and I think an example that most civilian commentators prudently adopted over the past 15 years.

John Kerry's candidacy could have tried to avoid rekindling the old debate --it might not have worked, because of the anger now on display-- but the only way to have managed such a campaign successfully would have required both an apology for the things he said and a disciplined refusal to trade on his time in Vietnam, time marked both by bravery but also by very unusual circumstances and stories.

Kerry obviously chose a different course, one that has slowly but inevitably required everyone to refight not the Vietnam War but the domestic political battles of those years.

This erupted on my radio program yesterday when I debated Peter Beinart about the Swift Boat ads.  I hadn't graduated from high school when the Paris accords were signed, and it may be that Peter hadn't even been born then.  But when Peter proclaimed that John Kerry had nothing to apologize for and that the famed "Winter Soldier" investigations hadn't been discredited, the fact that neither of us had anything to do with the politics of that time became irrelevant. I immediately challenged the absurdity of those hearings and of any generalized indictment of the actions of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in Vietnam, but Peter wouldn't budge, citing the research he had done and written up for his most recent TRB column in TNR.  Here's the key excerpts from that column:

"Some of the organizers of the Winter Soldier Investigation have been discredited, but most of the testimonies themselves have not. Miami University Professor Jeffrey Kimball, one of the most respected Vietnam historians, says, 'On the whole, the Winter Soldier Investigations established that some Americans committed atrocities in Vietnam. Claims that their testimony has been discredited are unwarranted.' Another prominent historian of the war, Wayne State University's Mel Small, says, 'Most of the evidence of atrocities presented by the [Winter Soldier] vets remains unchallenged to this day.'"

"On the question of atrocities more broadly, Kerry's claims also find widespread academic support. The University of Kentucky's George Herring, author of America's Longest War , says, 'The atrocities that took place are pretty much those described by Kerry in 1971.' In a recent interview with The Boston Globe , Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History , also said Kerry got it right. Even Robert McNamara himself has stated that 'there were atrocities, without any question. ... I don't think enough attention was paid to it by the chain of command.'

So Peter is buying into the generalized indictment of American troops as modern day hordes of Genghis Khan-like murderers, rapists and looters who "generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."  It is the word "generally" that destroys Kerry these days, because by using it he extends his damning words from particular atrocity committers to every serviceman who went to Vietnam. To be sure, Peter uses an old trick of throwing in one more graph that tries to limit what Kerry said to the --in the eyes of Peter-- most defensible thing that Peter said:

"Conservatives have taken special umbrage at Kerry's statement, in a 1971 'Meet the Press' interview, that he 'committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers.' What they generally ignore is that Kerry was referring to the fact that he 'took part in shootings in free-fire zones'--zones where the U.S. military designated any Vietnamese who did not evacuate as combatants. And Kerry was right: The free-fire zones violated the fourth Geneva Convention, which outlaws indiscriminate attacks against areas in which civilians are present."

That's deception or ignorance.  Kerry wasn't warning America that a few dozen of its soldiers were out of control, or that the policy of free fire zones needed to be ended. He was damning the war and all of its features and all of the men who fought it.  He branded them all as barbarians, and he meant it to be believed even if he did not himself believe it.

I think Peter's credentials as an international lawyer would need burnishing before we bought into his interpretation of the fourth Geneva Convention, but the intellectual dishonesty in this column and in all defenses of Kerry that use such tactics is not the parsing of treaties or the very selective reading of Kerry's many anti-war activities or the quoting of academics with unknown ideological bents.  The intellectual dishonesty is both in failing to credit Kerry for what Kerry said he believed in those days, and for trying to ignore what happened after the left succeeded in forcing America out of Vietnam. Peter warns about hacks in his column, but "hackery" surely includes ignoring what Kerry said and believed in 1971.

Kerry slandered all soldiers, and he still refuses to apologize, and his new allies are resurrecting these slanders.

And Kerry ignored the huge moral difference between America's mission and the mission of the communists, another blindness now replicating among the Peter's of the partisan left.  

In one part of Kerry's testimony, he told the Senate committee that we would have to get about 3,000 South Vietnamese out of the country because they would be targeted by the communists. Of course the terrible scale of the atrocities of the North upon the South and the genocide in neighboring Cambodia was neither discussed nor predicted by Kerry and his allies, and never since accounted for in the math they do when settling accounts on the Vietnam War.  Kerry, and his allies then and now, are still peddling the Genghis Khan myth, and still haven't figured out what happened in Hue during Tet, the tactics of the VC that led to free fire zones, or anything else that would cloud their arrogant moral certainty about who was right and who was wrong about then and now.

Read the Winter Soldier testimony. Read the critics' of the testimony. Read John Kerry's testimony, and allow yourself to linger on his blindness:

"At any time that an actual threat is posed to this country or to the security and freedom I will be one of the first people to pick up a gun and defend it, but right now we are reacting with paranoia to this question of peace and the people taking over the world. I think if were are ever going to get down to the question of dropping those bombs most of us in my generation simply don't want to be alive afterwards because of the kind of world that it would be with mutations and the genetic probabilities of freaks and everything else.

Therefore, I think it is ridiculous to assume we have to play this power game based on total warfare. I think there will be guerrilla wars and I think we must have a capability to fight those. And we may have to fight them somewhere based on legitimate threats, but we must learn, in this country, how to define those threats and that is what I would say to the question of world peace. I think it is bogus, totally artificial. There is no threat. The Communists are not about to take over our McDonald hamburger stands."

It wasn't about hamburger stands.  It was about stopping the Pol Pots and the "more civilized" variant of communism in the North. It was a noble effort. It failed for many reasons, but especially because of the domestic left in the United States, which slandered the front line soldiers as a tactic in the effort to withdraw America from Vietnam, and to settle the issue of moral superiority versus moral equivalence in the global contest then underway between freedom and totalitarianism.

America then and America now was and is undeniably the greatest force for good in the world. Its troops, then and now, fought and still fight to protect and defend the United States and to stop evil men, regimes, and ideologies from murdering millions of innocents.  In those fights, there will be terrible tolls, and many innocents will die or be injured, but American armies fight wars --then and now-- with more concern for the innocent and with more discipline and accountability than any armies in history.

At one point in his life, John Kerry rejected the core principles of the preceding paragraph. He has never confessed that error and asked for forgiveness of the people he slandered at that time.  That's why he won't be the president. That's why Peter is wrong. And it is why the restraint that Professor Hanson wishes were still in place is not there and won't return to campaign 2004.  The men John Kerry slandered are now fighting for their honor --again. Karl Rove didn't tell them to do so, and they aren't going to stop because Peter Beinart thinks they deserved to be branded barbarians.

It was a branding.  It is still a brand --a dishonest, slanderous one.  Men fight for their honor, and the ads aren't going away as a result.

Posted at 12:45 AM, Pacific

John Kerry and I were both at the great Minnesota Get-Together --the state fair-- today.  Kerry grabbed a corn-dog, took a few photos, and tried hard to connect with ordinary voters.  He didn't do himself any good in Wisconsin when he called Lambeau Field "Lambert Field."  More off key notes from an off-key, and rapidly collapsing, candidacy.  Kerry's call for "weekly debates" is a sure sign of panic from within the confused campaign. With more bad news on the way from Swift Boat vets, the buzz that Kerry will try high profile mea culpas over his 1971 testimony.  Mark Steyn explains it all for you. I don't see any way out for Kerry.  Does the Torricelli Option still exist?

I will broadcast tomorrow on what was an epic clash of bloggers and talk show hosts at Keegan's trivia challenge this evening. There was much controversy, and when the smoke cleared, I was obliged to wear Ed's Steeler's hat on Saturday, to cede my blog to Mitch one day in the future, and the Fraters had been held to a draw.  I won't blame the tie on Lileks, though most sober observers did.  It was one for the ages.

The best part was meeting Yale Diva.   Visit her blog and encourage the next generation of information commandos.

UPDATE: The recriminations over last night's trivia bar brawl continue.  Jo, how could you?  Rooting for Fraters? And Lileks has not written up the epic battle --waiting, perhaps, for other accounts to set out the narrative?  I will not say more than James is the Roberto de Vincenzo of bloggers playing trivia.

I am however glad to see what we lawyers refer to as an "admission against interest" over at Plastic Hallway, a member of Mitch's and Ed's team, which authoritatively states that they did not win.  Meaning, I guess, that I don't have to give Mitch my blog for a day or wear Captain Ed's Pittsburg Steelers lid.  Helloooo, Chapter Two proclaims himself "blurry" over the entire episode.  For the record: The match was won by Mike Nelson's wife and Atomizer's trial lawyer dad. No one at our table knew the names of Michael Jackson's children --which is sort of a win in itself-- the difference between a burro and a donkey, or the number of stitches in a baseball.

But I do know that enterprising bar-keeps the country over ought to follow Keegan's lead and organize such Thursday night trivia fests and encourage local bloggers to attend.  It is a great way to meet the community of cyber-scribblers and also indulge the competitiveness that most certainly drives people to take up their keyboards and comment. Plus, many of them appear to drink heavily, making it a pretty good promotion when it comes to the night's receipts, not to mention the write-ups in the blogs the next day.

How long until some enterprising casino in Vegas dumps the Texas Hold-em tourney one weekend for a blogger trivia shoot-out?  Actually, that would be a great promotion.  Somebody call Caesar's Palace and tell them how many blogs there are and how much free cyber ink they'd get by hosting the first Fraters' Face-Off in the Blogosphere Comes to Vegas Weekend.

I'll be there with my club.  But we're taking the pencil out of James' hand.

August 26, 2004

Posted at 9:15 AM, EST

Welcome WSJ Online readers.  Most first-time visitors find it convenient to purchase many copies of my new book by clicking here.

The Washington Times updates yesterday's WSJ story on the new pro-Bush 527 going up with ads in Iowa and Wisconsin.

The Los Angels Times poll  --notoriously pro-Democrat in the past-- has put Bush in the lead.  What a fine August John Kerry is having.

The Washington Post profiles the Daschle-Thune race, but manages to do so without mentioning the three South Dakota blogs that are all over the contest.  That is a major oversight, as DaschlevThune, SDPolitics, and Sibby brought some accountability to the hugely pro-Daschle media in South Dakota, and have pushed story after story in front of readers.  Right now these blogs are helping shame Daschle into additional debates with Thune, debates Daschle doesn't want after the clobbering he took in his first head-to-head with Thune.  Blogging had indeed affected the presidential race with the John Kerry not-in-Cambodia and related stories, but if John Thune does indeed unseat Daschle, blogging will have had a major impact on that result.

Time to board.  Visit JohnThune.com and make a contribution towards ending obstruction in the U.S. Senate.

Posted at 12:30 AM, EST

A travel day to Minnesota, so light posting.  Here's my WeeklyStandard.com column on John Kerry and his gay marriage back-flips: "The Wrong Question."  While at the site, be sure to read David Skinners's "Note Bene," and Fred Barnes' "It's Getting a Bit Dodgy."  The magazine's web-site has become a must-read on a daily basis.

And be sure to visit the Northern Alliance blogs:  Lileks, Shot in the Dark, SCSU Scholars, Spitbull, Powerline, Captain's Quarters, and even FratersLibertas.  Well, maybe not FratersLibertas.

I am taking my annual trip to the Minnesota State Fair, which is a wonderful and yet strangely disorienting experience.  Odd things happen during the Fair, as they happen during the St. Paul Winter Carnival.  Then it is on to NYC and the GOP Convo, which will be festive given the Kerry meltdown.  It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

See you at the Fair.

August 25, 2004

Posted at 5:45 PM, Pacific

I interviewed General Tommy Franks today  --a genuinely engaging, candid and provocative voice that stands out immediately against a backdrop of chattering class members.  Franks is on a book tour that is covering more ground in less time than the armies under his command covered in spring, 2003.  I am pressed for time on this getaway day, but here's the excerpt of the interview in which we touched on the situation in Iran:

HH: "Do you expect a confrontation with Iran in the next couple of years, and if so, any doubt in your mind about how that would go?"

TF: "There is no doubt how it would go. I don't know whether to expect it or not.  I personally hope not, but on the other hand, hope is not a method, as you and I both know.  One thing that I do believe very firmly is that the world is a better place, a safer place, and so is our country, because Saddam Hussein is no longer in Iraq, at least in charge, and the Taliban are no longer in charge in Afghanistan because what happens is, when a sanctuary is created, the bad guys --the terrorists-- can operate out of the sanctuary. If we don't see that happening in Iran, we should be very, very thoughtful before we do something.  If we do see that happening in Iran, I am afraid we will have to take care of it, Hugh."

HH: "Did you see it happening on your watch?"

TF: "I hope not."

HH: "But I mean, did you see evidence that Al Qaeda was coming across the border from Afghanistan, after the Afghanistan war?"

TF: "You talking about into Iran?"

HH: "Yes."

TF: "Yes.  Yes.  But what we have seen is transitory, we have seen transits, but I don't think we have seen the staging of Al Qaeda out of Iran."

Hmmm.  It doesn't take much guesswork to puzzle out what the opinion of General Franks is about what the automatic reaction to the presence of Al Qaeda in Iran ought to be, which I believe would apply equally to any known terrorist groups found to be operating there. Those are the realities of the post 9/11 world, realities not well suited to a waffler like Kerry.

I also caught up with Steve Gardner on today's program, a Swift Boat vet who served from November, 1968 to January 23, 1969 on Kerry's Swift Boat 44.  I asked him about Kerry's tale of "VC --combat dog:"

HH:  "Steve, was there a dog named VC on your boat?"

SG: ""Buddy, to the best of my knowledge (laughing), I never saw any dog at any time on the 44 boat."

HH: "Is it possible that it was on the other boat."

SG: "Oh, a distinct possibility (laughing)."

HH: "In the time that you were on the swift boats --totally-- did any of the swift boats have a dog?"

SG: "Never saw one, ever."

HH: "Would it have been a good idea to have a dog on the swift boats?"

SG: "Not likely."

HH: "Why not?"

SG: "Because there was just too much action going on.  We had hot brass rolling around there any time we were in a firefight.  He would have got beat up."

HH: "Is this the first time you have ever heard of the dog story?"

SG: "It sure is."

Look.  It is possible that Kerry had a dog named VC after Gardner left Kerry's command.  And it is possible that VC the combat dog got blown off the boat when the boat hit a mine --even though there's no reference to the mine that would fit the occasion.  And just because many of my listeners have e-mailed me to note that there was a dog on Martin Sheen's boat in Apocalypse Now doesn't mean that Kerry "borrowed" the dog from the movie.

But that so many people have concluded just that does underscore John Kerry's massive credibility problem --a problem that grows larger and larger every day he doesn't meet the press.  Jon Stewart asked him last night if he'd ever been in Cambodia.  Kerry lamely played it for a laugh by not answering --by not saying anything at all.  Who is advising him?  Has Bush-Cheney got plants in the Kerry organization?

Posted at 1:50 PM, Pacific

A new poll in Arizona shows why Kerry is panicked, and why he won't be taking many questions from the media soon.  There was a nine point swing in favor of the president in this poll in the last 30 days  --and Arizona has been targeted by Kerry.  More bad news in the poll: "The poll suggests that Bush's increasing support is largely coming from registered independents."  And, I'll bet, veterans.

Posted at 12:30 PM, Pacific

DID THE DOG GO INTO CAMBODIA? DID THE DOG BARK AT THE CIA MAN, THUS PROMPTING THE CIA MAN TO GIVE KERRY THE HAT?  WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DOG?

This Washington Times story by John McCaslin raises a host of new question for John Kerry:

"VC surfaces

A new four-legged angle -- actually a dog named "VC" -- has suddenly materialized surrounding Sen. John Kerry 's swift boat service in Vietnam. In a 2004 presidential candidate questionnaire for Humane USA, Mr. Kerry was asked whether any pets have had an impact on his life.

"I have always had pets in my life, and there are a few that I remember very fondly," Mr. Kerry replied. "When I was serving on a Swift Boat in Vietnam, my crewmates and I had a dog we called VC.

"One day as our Swift Boat was heading up a river, a mine exploded hard under our boat," he continued. "After picking ourselves up, we discovered VC was MIA (missing in action). Several minutes of frantic search followed, after which we thought we'd lost him. We were relieved when another boat called asking if we were missing a dog."

Said Mr. Kerry: "It turns out VC was catapulted from the deck of our boat and landed, confused but unhurt, on the deck of another boat in our patrol." J.J. Scheele, program director of Humane USA, confirmed yesterday that her organization did, in fact, receive the above statement from the Kerry campaign.

No military records on Mr. Kerry's Web site, which aides say is a complete accounting, mention a mine exploding under his boat or any dog. The only report of a mine detonating "near" Mr. Kerry's PCF 94 was March 13, 1969, when Mr. Kerry says he was injured and a man knocked overboard."

Max Cleland's big trip to Crawford didn't go so well.  He came to deliver a letter to President Bush asking that Bush make the swift boat vets stop.  He was met by a letter back to John Kerry from Veterans for Bush which Cleland refused to accept. Heh.  Here's the text of the letter that Max Cleland wouldn't take:

August 25, 2004

Senator John Kerry
304 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Kerry,

We are pleased to welcome your campaign representatives to Texas today. We honor all our veterans, all whom have worn the uniform and served our country. We also honor the military and National Guard ( search ) troops serving in Iraq ( search ) and Afghanistan ( search ) today. We are very proud of all of them and believe they deserve our full support

That's why so many veterans are troubled by your vote AGAINST funding for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, after you voted FOR sending them into battle. And that's why we are so concerned about the comments you made AFTER you came home from Vietnam. You accused your fellow veterans of terrible atrocities - and, to this day, you have never apologized. Even last night, you claimed to be proud of your post-war condemnation of our actions.

We're proud of our service in Vietnam. We served honorably in Vietnam and we were deeply hurt and offended by your comments when you came home.

You can't have it both ways. You can't build your convention and much of your campaign around your service in Vietnam, and then try to say that only those veterans who agree with you have a right to speak up. There is no double standard for our right to free speech. We all earned it.

You said in 1992 "we do not need to divide America over who served and how." Yet you and your surrogates continue to criticize President Bush for his service as a fighter pilot in the National Guard.

We are veterans too - and proud to support President Bush . He's been a strong leader, with a record of outstanding support for our veterans and for our troops in combat. He's made sure that our troops in combat have the equipment and support they need to accomplish their mission.

He has increased the VA health care ( search ) budget more than 40% since 2001 - in fact, during his four years in office, President Bush has increased veterans funding twice as much as the previous administration did in eight years ($22 billion over 4 years compared to $10 billion over 8.) And he's praised the service of all who served our country, including your service in Vietnam.

We urge you to condemn the double standard that you and your campaign have enforced regarding a veteran's right to openly express their feelings about your activities on return from Vietnam.

Sincerely,

Texas State Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson
Rep. Duke Cunningham
Rep. Duncan Hunter
Rep. Sam Johnson
Lt. General David Palmer
Robert O'Malley, Medal of Honor Recipient
James Fleming, Medal of Honor Recipient
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Castle (Ret.)

Posted at  7:15 AM, Pacific

The Kerry Campaign brain trust has decided that stunts are better than a John Kerry press conference in recovering some momentum.

This Reuters story is almost beyond belief: Max Cleland and Jim Rassman are flying down to the president's ranch to "try and deliver a letter" to the president protesting the Swift Biat vets ads.  This is it?  This is how they stop Kerry's sinking numbers? 

Imagine a crowd waiting to see The Who who are instead greeted by Peter, Paul and Mary.  Sure, both groups are connected to music, and PPM even drew some crowds in their day, but that's not what the crowd came for.  Cleland and Rassman aren't what the crowd wants either. The questions that need answers can only be answered by John Kerry and, incredibly, he's taking the stonewall on another day.

The Washington Post is trying to help with a "blockbuster" front-pager which breaks the story that great lawyers have many clients.  This Dana Milbank and Tom Edsall piece unleashes the news a that Bush-Cheney lawyer is also the lawyer for the Swift Boat vets.  That's the headline. Look at the third paragraph:

"[Ginsburg] said two prominent Democratic lawyers are doing the same thing. He said Robert Bauer, the top legal counsel for the Kerry campaign, also is the attorney for an independent group, America Coming Together, that has been mobilizing voters in support of Kerry. In addition, Ginsberg said, Joseph Sandler is a lawyer for both the Democratic National Committee and for the independent group MoveOn.org, which has run advertisements attacking Bush."

How this can be a page one piece is mystifying, but when the news that the country's top campaign lawyers represent both candidates and 527s becomes news, you know the Kerry cheering section in the newsrooms have become desperate.  Especially when the report headlines that a Bush lawyer is doing something and doesn't note that Kerry lawyers are doing the very same thing.

To repeat: Only Kerry can stop the toll taken by the searing criticisms from the men he served with in Vietnam.  Kerry will eventually have to take all of the questions about his service --his Cambodian inventions, the first Purple Heart, the terrible things he said about his fellow vets, etc, etc-- and answer them on camera.  The fact that he doesn't want to doesn't matter at all.  He can brand the criticisms as "so petty as to be pathetic" and trot out his service as an aide to an admiral, but he refuses and refuses to meet with the press on camera and take questions.   The fact that he doesn't have answers is what has led to the stonewall, and so another day's news cycle begins, and stunts, personal attacks and sidebars won't change the focus one bit.

Of course terrorism could change the focus, but not in any way that works out well for Kerry, the Great Avoider is hardly the sort to inspire confidence in an electorate which sees planes dropping from the sky and reads stories of suspicious activities by Hamas-affiliated videotapers of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

How will Kerry's allies in big media spin this news, from the Wall Street Journal:

"A political group recently formed by backers of President Bush has amassed a treasure chest of $35 million and plans a barrage of commercials criticizing Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry, even though the president this week denounced such outside organizations for running negative campaign ads.

The Progress for America Voter Fund was launched in May after the Federal Election Commission refused to shut down a crop of well-funded liberal organizations that were going after the president. Those groups, known as 527s, had formed quickly and begun raising large sums in the wake of new campaign laws, gaining a substantial edge on Republicans. Now, in an election already steamrolling fund-raising records, the new Republican group's deep pockets -- matching those of some of the big Democratic groups -- seem sure to set up an intense, and highly partisan, big-money battle on airwaves this fall."

Hard to denounce a 527 that is anti-Kerry after anti-Bush 527s have spent more than $60 million against W.  The big difference, of course, is that MoveOn and The Media Fund haven't been very effective because the wild-eyed loons and Hollywood types are not very effective at grasping what moves a red state voter, or even a wobbly blue-state voter.  The "My Pet Goat" stuff is great for the sufferers of Moore's Disease, but ordinary Americans think it is childish.  I suspect the pro-Bush folks are going to be much, much more sophisticated in their appeals to voters:

"Progress for America plans to begin airing ads today in two battleground states, Wisconsin and Iowa, says Mr. McCabe. The ads question whether Sen. Kerry would have adequately handled the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

One of the commercials opens with the smoky ruins of the Twin Towers and moves to several pictures of Mr. Bush with New York firefighters and other rescue workers. A narrator praises Mr. Bush's leadership, and asks: "But what if Bush wasn't there? Could John Kerry have shown this leadership?" Then the ad ticks off votes by Sen. Kerry that it portrays as being against intelligence and Defense Department budgets."

That's going to leave a mark.  So will the ads targeting the very liberal Ken Salazar in Colorado.  Salazar, like Kerry, has responded to independent money expenditures by whining, but if the Colorado Attorney General went on record denouncing Soros and Ickes etc., I missed it.  Sometime in this cycle, we are likely to see powerful ads making the simple and accurate point that a vote for Tom Daschle, or Ken Salazar, or Erskine Bowles or any of a number of Democratic senators or candidates for senate, is a vote for gay marriage.  Those ads will be completely accurate because votes for any Democratic senator or would-be senator will increase the likelihood of continued filibusters against Bush nominees likely to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act and unlikely to follow the lead of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in cases that come before them similar to the one that led four justices of that court to decree the end of traditional marriage. We will then hear howls of protest that candidate A or Senator B actually opposes gay marriage.  Really, the American electorate is far too sophisticated for whining or dissembling in 2004.  It isn't working for Kerry, it won't work for Salazar or other Dem candidates, and as a campaign tactic it ought to be retired.

Speaking of leaving a mark, so will the incoherence emerging as the defining mark of the Kerry team.  The gang around Kerry is setting a record for incompetence.  Ted Kennedy sent Mary Beth Cahill to Kerry's rescue in the primaries, but that Kennedy magic doesn't seem to be working outside the fever swamps of those primaries. Could it be that the tactics and messages refined in Massachusetts just don't make much sense in Ohio, Minnesota, Missouri, Florida and even on the west coast?

August 24, 2004

Posted at 8:30 AM, Pacific

Slate's Fred Kaplan is trying to give Kerry's Kurtz Chronicles some cover.  Sorry, but it won't work.  Despite Kaplan's assertion that "[n]ot much paperwork exists for covert operations (officially, U.S. forces weren't in Cambodia)," there is quite a lot of material available on the Studies and Observations Group which ran the Cambodian cross-border operations in '68-'69, which I linked to and analyzed in my blog on August 15:

"Cross border missions were underway in early 1969, led by the "Studies and Observations Group" ("SOG") . Here is the best short history of SOG's operations in Cambodia, which were code-named "Salem House"

"Salem House Operations

Concurrent with the Prairie Fire operations were the SOG’s missions in northeastern Cambodia. These operations, originally named “Daniel Boone,” were later re designated“Salem House.” These missions provided intelligence on North Vietnamese and Viet Cong bases located in Cambodia. Another objective of the Salem House operations was to determine the level of Cambodian Government support for the NVA and Viet Cong. 13

The Salem House operations had a number of restrictions that affected their activities in Cambodia. Many of the restrictions were modified or withdrawn and new restrictions imposed; the pattern of change in the restrictions presents an interesting picture of the war’s development in Cambodia. In May 1967, the Salem House missions were subject to the following restrictions:

	Only reconnaissance teams were to be committed into Cambodia and the teams could not exceed an overall strength of 12 men, to include not more than three U.S. advisers.
	Teams were not to engage in combat except to avoid capture.
	They did have permission to have contact with civilians.
	No more than three reconnaissance teams could be committed on operations in Cambodia at any one time.
	The teams could conduct no more than ten missions in any 30-day period. 14

By October 1967, SOG’s teams had permission to infiltrate the entire Cambodian border area to a depth of 20 kilometers. However, their helicopters were only permitted ten kilometers inside Cambodia. In December, the DOD, with the Department of State’s concurrence, approved the use of Forward Air Controllers (FACs) to support SOG operations. The FACs had authorization to make two flights in support of each Salem House mission.

In October 1968, SOG teams received permission to emplace self-destructing land mines in Cambodia. The following December, the depth of penetration into northern Cambodia was extended to 30 kilometers; however, the 20-kilometer limit remained in effect for central and southern Cambodia. The final adjustment in Salem House operations made in 1970 during the incursion into Cambodia permitted reconnaissance teams to operate 200 meters west of the Mekong River (an average distance of 185 kilometers west of the South Vietnamese border). However, the SOG reconnaissance teams never ventured that far west, due to the lift and range limitations of their UH-1F helicopters. Thus from the initiation of SOG’s Cambodian operations in 1967 until 1970, there was a progressive expansion of the zones of operation and OPS-35 patrols within Cambodia. The enlargement of the areas of operation and the increasing number of Salem House missions, gives an indication of how seriously the Johnson and Nixon Administrations viewed the NVA’s use of Cambodian base areas. It was also indicative of the U.S. military’s growing awareness of the role of the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN) and its deleterious effect on the war in South Vietnam. 15

From 1967 through April 1972, OPS-35 conducted 1,398 reconnaissance missions, 38 platoon-sized patrols, and 12 multi-platoon operations in Cambodia. During the same period, it captured 24 prisoners of war. 16

This account, a pretty comprehensive one, does not seem to provide for the possibility swift boat transportation, indicating instead that helicopters were used for insertions of special forces, and that these flights were tightly controlled. (A couple of pictures of helicopter bases connected with these operations can be seen here .) First person accounts of participation in these cross-border operations are full of details about helicopter insertions and rescues but are silent on swift boat details.

My inability to locate any account of swift boat support for covert missions across the Cambodian border doesn't preclude such support having occurred, of course, but it raises many questions given the ease with which it is possible to verify helicopter support for these then-secret and now widely-discussed missions. Add to those questions the answers I got from John O'Neill to questions on this particular subject when I interviewed him Friday. O'Neill denied ever having been sent into Cambodia when he commanded a swift boat, and asserted that no swift boat commander other than John Kerry has ever claimed to participate in such missions."

Add to that research of ten days ago, the express denunciations of the idea of Swifties taking SEALs into Cambodia by former SEALs, and pretty soon Kerry is up the creek without a magic hat.

"And why would he make such claims if he hadn't been [in Cambodia]?" Kaplan asks, arguing that such missions were not glamorous or admirable.  Obviously Kerry though they were glamorous, in Colonel Kurtz kind of way, and he's used the magic hat for big drama twice in recent years, and then there's his gun-running claims to the U.S. News & World report.  Kerry wanted to add exciting chapters to his four months, so he invented secret missions --how hard is that to understand?  Evidently, very, if you are rooting for him.

Posted at 8:00 AM, Pacific

The absolute center of conventional wisdom among political journalists is ABC News' The Note, which has some questions today:

"Did Kerry alone write the after-action reports for his medal citations?

How close was he to Cambodia on Christmas, 1968?

What will Doug Brinkley's article in the New York conclude?

Is Kerry reluctant to acknowledge performing a top-secret mission for the CIA because he doesn't want to be accused of revealing classified information?

Why doesn't Senator Kerry recall attending the Vietnam Veterans Against the War conference in Kansas City in November of 1971?

How much will his post Vietnam political activities be scrutinized by the media?

Is that fair game for the Bush campaign? (We get the sense that yes, it is, and yes, it will be.)."

With The Note asking questions like these, Kerry will have to meet the press or continue to see every attempt at changing the page fail.  Big media is fully engaged --finally-- and Kerry's in the quicksand unless and until he answers all the questions.

Compare Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Press and Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post.  (Hat tip to Captain's Quarters for the pointer to Kelly's column.)  Kelly gives credit where credit is due in the blogosphere for tackling the various Swift Vets' stories, but Howard is busy quoting the lefty bloggers Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum with their sad attempts to cheerlead the crestfallen among the Kerry supporters.  Josh ever so lamely proclaims that the damage that has been suffered "was always in the cards," and summons up a hilarious bit of drama directed at Kerry critics: "[P]lease allow your punches to the groin the purity of their cynicism, without sullying them with any claims that Kerry forced your hand."  Peter Principle blogger Kevin goes Jon Lovitz on us: "The Kerry camp, though damaged by all the allegations, has all but won on the merits." Yeah, yeah.  That's the ticket.  That'll work!

"There's what Kerry says, and there's what Kerry does" is the new tag line in a new Bush ad and it has perfect pitch for Mr. $87 billion and troops in-and-out of Korea. Of course Kerry long ago promised to release all of his medical and military records and hasn't done so, and the tag line works there as well.  The panic among the lefty blogs has to be related to the growing recognition that you simply cannot sell a candidate like this to the American public.

But the Los Angeles Times will try.  You have got to read the paper's editorial this morning.  Not only does it officially bestow "victim" status on John Kerry --which is the highest honor the Times' ever bestows-- it also creates its own factual world and its own legal reality, stating of Kerry and MoveOn and Bush and the Swift Boat Vets for Truth that "either man could shut down the groups working on his behalf if he wanted to," an objectively and manifestly absurd claim.  But because the editors at the Times, upset at the rapid dissolution of the Kerry campaign, want to believe it, they choose to believe it.  No wonder this paper has fallen on the hardest of times: It isn't bound by even elementary facts.

Then there's this stunner of a paragraph:

"No informed person can seriously believe that Kerry fabricated evidence to win his military medals in Vietnam. His main accuser has been exposed as having said the opposite at the time, 35 years ago. Kerry is backed by almost all those who witnessed the events in question, as well as by documentation. His accusers have no evidence except their own dubious word."

Put aside that the editorial does not include the word Cambodia, about which Kerry has been fabricating evidence for years, does not mention Kerry's refusal to release his records, or that Kerry won't meet with the press.  Even with those exclusions, this is an amazing level of ignorance on display.  Or deceit.  But either way the Los Angeles Times should acquaint itself with the work of the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs, whose Sunday account, while it does not side either with Kerry or his accusers, contains enough in its third paragraph to embarrass the editorial writers at Los Angeles Times, if indeed these ideologues are capable of embarrassment:

"For the Massachusetts senator's critics, who include three of the five Swift boat skippers who were present that day, the incident demonstrates why Kerry does not deserve to be commander in chief. They accuse him of cowardice, hogging the limelight and lying. Far from displaying coolness under fire, they say, Kerry was never fired upon and fled the scene at the moment of maximum danger."

Note the Los Angeles Times asserted that "Kerry is backed by almost all those who witnessed the events in question," but the reporting in the Post easily shows that statement to be false: "three of five" commanders blasting Kerry cannot be squared with the Los Angeles Times' assertion that "Kerry is backed by almost all those who witnessed the events in question."  Is it stupidity or deceit?  Whichever, it sure isn't journalism.

The Times is back in its anti-Arnold mode, where any frenzied, breathless charge against the Republican will do.  It was once a newspaper, and we can only hope the Tribune Company does indeed sell this loser so that a wholesale change can begin its renewal process.

The Washington Times, meanwhile, looks at the brave new tactic of the Kerry counter-attack: The "My Pet Goat" strategy.  I wrote about the inanity of this approach on Saturday evening, when I first read Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter's childish attempt  to strike out at President Bush from Friday night: "John Kerry is not the type of leader who will sit and read 'My Pet Goat' to a group of second-graders while America is under attack."  This rhetoric marks an advanced stage of Moore's Disease, where effective rebuttal to devastating factual attacks is impossible, and the sufferer lapses into jeering of the sort that satisfies other unbalanced observers but repels the mainstream.  Someone may have gagged her, as I haven't seen any subsequent quotes to that effect, but she's sure to erupt again as the ongoing meltdown accelerates.

Posted at 1:40 AM, EST

Why is Camp Kerry panicked?  The Wall Street Journal's state-by-state Zogby numbers show Bush gaining an "outside-the-margin-of-error" advantage in Ohio in polling concluded on August 21, that's why.  I view Zogby as weighted "D," so having the rest of the toss-up states inside the margin-of-error before the GOP convo doesn't bother me in the least, but it causes the Kerry people to shake in their boots.  They needed a big lead at this point in the race, and instead they have a dead-heat and the Swift Boat vets are chewing them up --because Kerry won't "meet the press."

Here's a small portion of the lead editorial from the Wall Street Journal this early morning:

"A good rule in politics is that anyone who picks a fight ought to be prepared to finish it. But having first questioned Mr. Bush's war service, and then made Vietnam the core of his own campaign for President, Mr. Kerry now cries No mas! because other Vietnam vets are assailing his behavior before and after that war. And, by the way, Mr. Bush is supposedly honor bound to repudiate them.

We've tried to avoid the medals-and-ribbons fight ourselves, except to warn Mr. Kerry that he was courting precisely such scrutiny (" Kerry's Medals Strategy ," February 9). But now that the Senator is demanding that the Federal Election Commission stifle his opponents' free speech, this one is too rich to ignore.

What did Mr. Kerry expect, anyway? That claiming to be a hero himself while accusing other veterans of "war crimes"--as he did back in 1971 and has refused to take back ever since--would somehow go unanswered? That when he raised the subject of one of America's most contentious modern events, no one would meet him at the barricades? Mr. Kerry brought the whole thing up; why is it Mr. Bush's obligation now to shut it down?"

As it is said: Read the whole thing. 

August 22, 2004

Posted at 4:10 PM, Pacific

I will be on Scarborough Country tonight.  If you made your way here after watching that program, welcome.  If you want to buy my book, you have excellent judgment, and may do so by clicking here.  If you want a primer on John Kerry's Kurtz Chronicles, read on, clicking on the links as you go.  It should take you about a half hour to read all the links, and you will then be light years ahead of every major newspaper in America.  Begin with:

Michael Barone's new column in U.S. News & World Report;

this column which originally appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune;

this column from the New York Post;

this column from the Wall Street Journal;

and this article and this article from The Weekly Standard.

My previous posts on the subject that add information not easily available elsewhere are here, here, and here.  For comprehensive coverage of the whoppers Kerry told about Vietnam and continues to refuse to either defend or recant, keep returning here, and to Instapundit, KerrySpot, Powerline, Captain's Quarters, JustOneMinute, OneHandClapping, RogerLSimon, The American Thinker, Beldar, and Polipundit.  If you want a baker's dozen of blogs that are fairly and thoroughly examining Kerry's record, add Mickey, though he is slow to push to the obvious conclusion: Kerry lied --often-- about his excellent adventures in Cambodia, and to avoid focus on that fact, Kerry is trying to smear his Vietnam-era critics and divert attention to a nonexistent connection between the vets and Bush-Cheney '04. all the while refusing to answer questions about his fabrications because the impact of widespread public understanding of the level of his deceptions and manipulations will be a dramatic fall in voter approval from which Kerry could not recover.  Character does matter, and Kerry's fables about running guns, hatless CIA men and SEAL drop-offs in Cambodia point to a fabricator of the first order. 

And for fun, read Swimming through the Spin from today.  People have been dogging Kerry about his ruthless opportunism for thirty five years.  It is about time he was obliged to answer the questions.

UPDATE at 9:15 PM, Pacific

Thanks to all of you who have sent along compliments on the Scarborough Country dust-up tonight.  The debate went on for nearly 45 minutes, and Deroy Murdock and I had a field day with the Demo talking heads, who were out of ammunition, as the entire Kerry campaign seems to be.  Joe S. runs a fair show, so in a situation where Kerry is in a meltdown and reduced to making wild charges about collusion between the Swift Vets and Bush-Cheney while trying to avoid discussing Cambodia, well, it isn't that hard to look and sound pretty good. 

I would love to teach talking heads how to make the most of their few minutes.  The key is "multiplier effect."  I managed to plug Michael Barone's column in the new U.S. News & World Report, Instapundit and Powerline, and of course "a dozen other blogs linked at HughHewitt.com." (See above.)  My goals tonight were to alert viewers to Kerry's many falsehoods about his Vietnam service, and to the score of sources focused on those falsehoods.  When the Demo guests tried to divert the conversation onto W's air national guard service --talk about worn-out tactics-- I kept returning to Barone's column and to his huge reputation for accuracy and fairness, to the key blogs, and to the fact that Kerry hasn't released his records as he promised to, and refuses to meet with the press and take questions.  Deroy joined in on this last point: Why won't Kerry answer questions?  It is a powerful question, and should be repeated often.

If Kerry does summon the courage to meet with the press, John Hawkins has one great set of questions to go with another set I posted last week.  Bloggers should start a running total of days since Kerry met with reporters with cameras rolling.  I think the last time was with Fox News' Chris Wallace on the Sunday after the Demo convention.  Kerry can't hide forever, especially with his numbers plummeting.

I won't be blogging much tomorrow as I am participating in an all-day Habitat for Humanity golf tourney way north, which has me on the road very early.  Read Lileks instead, and then check the blogs listed above, along with Little Green Footballs, Betsy's Page, Ipse Dixit, Outside the Beltway, and Slings & Arrows for the latest in campaign news (and of course with RealClearPolitics and FreeRepublic.).  I am convinced that the new internet delivery system of news and analysis is now firmly in place, and growing in readership every day. The blogs I have linked to today are the core of that system, assisted by talk radio and the web-friendly news and politics weeklies like the Standard, National Review, and TNR. (To be sure, some other blogs like Evangelical Outpost, MarkDRoberts, the milblogs and others matter in different way;, but for daily political news, the twenty linked above are the core.)  The daily papers are faltering because of their ideological handicap, and they will not recover their hemorrhaging of credibility for years to come, if ever.  It is as though Jayson Blair is back at the New York Times, telling everyone that Cambodia doesn't matter, that there really are ties between the Swift Boat vets and Bush-Cheney '04, that Kerry's anti-war slanders from '71 have no impact on vets, and that Mr. Rood is Oz who cannot be questioned.  It is all so lame as to be funny, and the rote intoning by my opponents on Scarborough Country tonight underscored again that Moore's Disease has ravaged the Democrats.  They believe that majorities believe the nutty stuff, that "My Pet Goat" matters, and that John Kerry's 20 years of hard-left votes in the U.S. Senate don't.  They think their rhetoric about the economy somehow can disguise a 4.8% GDP surge, or a 5.5% unemployment rate.  Some of them are still choking out "Bush lied about the WMDs." 

I think the info monopoly that buoyed the Dems for thirty years is shattered, and that may be the biggest story of '04, even bigger than the re-election of W.

Enough for tonight.  Add every link above to your "favorite places," and you won't get fooled again.

Posted at 9:15 AM, Pacific

Michael Barone is among America's most respected political journalists.  His new column in U.S.News & World Review is a nightmare for the Kerry campaign: A major figure in American journalism writing in one of the big weeklies about the most outlandish aspect of Kerry's exaggerations of his Vietnam service --Kerry's Cambodian Kurtz Chronicles.  Be sure to circulate the Barone column far and wide.  (Hat tip: RealClearPolitics.) Barone brings big media attention to Kerry's gun-running claim as well as his other tales of cross-border derring-do.  And so another week begins of Kerry press-avoidance as the story spreads of Kerry's undeniable record of lying about his Vietnam service.

August 21, 2004

Posted at 9:30 PM, Pacific

Instapundit expands on the analysis of the WaPo story.

And Powerline's Hindrocket asks the "Emperor's New Clothes" question about old media:

" But what qualifications, exactly, does it take to be a journalist? What can they do that we can't? Nothing. Generally speaking, they don't know any more about primary data and raw sources of information than we do--often less. Their general knowledge is often inadequate. Their superior resources should allow them to carry out investigations far beyond what we amateurs can do. But the reality is that the mainstream media rarely use those resources. Too many journalists are bored, biased and lazy. And we bloggers are not dependent on our own resources or those of a few amateurs. We can get information from tens of thousands of individuals, many of whom have exactly the knowledge that journalists could (but usually don't) expend great effort to track down--to take just one recent example, the passability of the Mekong River at the Vietnam/Cambodian border during the late 1960s."

I have been both a lawyer/law professor for two decades and a television/radio/print journalist for 15 years of those 20.  It takes a great deal more intelligence and discipline to be the former than to be the latter, which is why the former usually pays a lot more than the latter.  It is no surprise to me, then, when lawyers/law professors like those at Powerline and Instapundit prove to be far more adept at exposing the "Christmas-in-Cambodia" lie and other Kerry absurdities than old-school journalists. The big advantage is in research skills, of course, and in an eye for inconsistencies which make or break cases and arguments.  Lawyers turned amateur journalists are going to be much better at it than time-serving scribblers, and even non-lawyer bloggers with superior research skills --think Captain Ed, Tom McGuire and Polipundit-- are going to run rings around "pros" who aren't in a hurry to bring down their favored candidate.  They will be assisted in their effort by the full-time labors of "new media" pros like Jim Geraghty and John McIntyre.  The only difference between professional and amateur journalists is that the former get paid to practice their trade.  As with athletes, the purer effort comes with the amateurs, though some of the pros keep their ideals front and center.

The late Michael Kelly, who would appear on my radio program every Wednesday before he left on his last assignment to Iraq, rejected the idea of journalism as a profession, as there was no licensing body.  The child of journalists and among the most respected journalists of our age, Kelly often described journalism a "craft" to me, one in which there were both excellent and terrible practioners.  The bloggers of the center-right who have exposed the Kerry Kurtz Chronicles over the past three weeks are much better craftsmen than their paid counterparts at the big papers.  They found they key lie --Kerry's many and self-contradicting tales of derring-do across the Cambodian border and his use of those lies for political advancement-- and researched it and exposed it while their paid brethren ignored the big story because it was inconvenient for their candidate's chances.  The willingness to push the story forward regardless of whom it injured used to be the mark of journalists at the big papers.  It isn't any more.  And for a long time to come, the complicity of the old media "reporters" in not reporting Kerry's lies will be an exhibit in the history of the collapse of credibility of America's media elite.

Posted at 5:00 PM, Pacific

The Washington Post has thrown an enormous amount of effort at truthing one of Kerry's citations, and comes away with conflicting stories.  No surprise there.  But has the paper begun a similar investigation into Kerry's extravagant claims about his cross-border derring-do in Cambodia?  To remind you:

*Kerry often and emphatically claimed to have been five miles into Cambodian waters on Christmas Eve, 1968, --most recently in a detailed account used in June 13, 2003 Boston Globe-- a claim his campaign recently recanted, but is now recycling as a "he was close to the border that night" story.  One of Kerry's crew, Stephen Gardner, stated emphatically to me in an on air interview on August 10 (transcript in the archives of this blog) they were nowhere near Cambodia that night, and never went into Cambodia in all the time hew was on Kerry's boat, which was into January.

*Kerry told U.S.News and World Report --May 8, 2000 edition-- that he had run weapons to anticommunist forces in Cambodia.  I verified that this is "exactly" what Kerry told the reporter.

*Kerry told the Washington Post in June of 2003 and the Los Angeles Times in June of 2004 that he took a CIA man into Cambodia on a secret mission, and kept his hat.

*Douglas Brinkley has said Kerry made three or four missions into Cambodia as a "ferry-man" for SEALs, Green Berets, and CIA men in January and February, 1969.

*Kerry's campaign has said he took commandos into Cambodia.

Against this backdrop of outlandish claims for which there is not one bit of public evidence in support, but for which there are many accounts and analyses that seem to rule out such cross-border adventures, the Post notes the unusual agreements that Kerry and Brinkley are using to keep the crucial documents away from the public:

"In 'Tour of Duty,' these thoughts are attributed to a 'diary' kept by Kerry. But the endnotes to Brinkley's book say that Kerry 'did not keep diaries in these weeks in February and March 1969 when the fighting was most intense.' In the acknowledgments to his book, Brinkley suggests that he took at least some of the passages from an unfinished book proposal Kerry prepared some time after November 1971, more than two years after he had returned home from Vietnam..."

"Brinkley, who is director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans, did not reply to messages left with his office, publisher and cell phone. The Kerry campaign has refused to make available Kerry's journals and other writings to The Washington Post, saying the senator remains bound by an exclusivity agreement with Brinkley. A Kerry spokesman, Michael Meehan, said he did not know when Kerry wrote down his reminiscences."

First question for Brinkley when he surfaces: On what did you base your assertion of "three or four" Kerry "ferryman" trips with SEALs, Green Berets and CIA men into Cambodia?  (Note: Brinkley's been dodging everyone.  Wonder why?)

The Post also blows the whistle on Kerry's refusal to release all of his records --even after he made a promise to Tim Russert months ago to do so:

"Some of the mystery surrounding exactly what happened on the Bay Hap River in March 1969 could be resolved by the full release of all relevant records and personal diaries. Much information is available from the Web sites of the Kerry campaign and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and the Navy archives. But both the Kerry and anti-Kerry camps continue to deny or ignore requests for other relevant documents, including Kerry's personal reminiscences (shared only with biographer Brinkley), the boat log of PCF-94 compiled by Medeiros (shared only with Brinkley) and the Chenoweth diary.

Although Kerry campaign officials insist that they have published Kerry's full military records on their Web site (with the exception of medical records shown briefly to reporters earlier this year), they have not permitted independent access to his original Navy records. A Freedom of Information Act request by The Post for Kerry's records produced six pages of information. A spokesman for the Navy Personnel Command, Mike McClellan, said he was not authorized to release the full file, which consists of at least a hundred pages."

Perhaps the Post is preparing a follow-up story on this absurd series of claims and explanations. If the papers devotes half the time to Kerry's Kurtz Chronicles as it did to the Bronze Star investigation, John Kerry's in for a very bad expose.

Which might begin tomorrow, if Tim Russert asks Tad Devine, Kerry's spokesman set to appear on Meet the Press, about the pledge Kerry made of full disclosure of his military records, for details on the CIA man's hat, on the gun-running etc.  It is a flimsy and wholly ineffective defense that has been mounted thus far by the Kerry campaign, and they don't seem to have the talent to mount any kind of counter-attack, or the courage to urge their boss to meet the press and answer all the questions.

The staff weakness is most evident in the person of Stephanie Cutter, whose shrill response to the statement from the White House that Kerry had lost his cool in blaming Bush-Cheney for the deep resentments felt by the Swift Boat vets against Kerry may be the worst single comeback in the history of campaign spokespeople:

"White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday that Kerry's comments showed he had lost his cool."

"'I do think that Senator Kerry losing his cool should not be an excuse for him to lash out at the president with false and baseless attacks,' the spokesman told reporters in Crawford, Texas."

"'We've already said we weren't involved in any way in these ads,' he said. 'We've made that clear.'"

"Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter fired back, 'John Kerry is a fighter and he doesn't tolerate lies from others.'"

"Cutter sought to turn the argument over presidential readiness back on the White House. 'Mr. McClellan needs to understand that John Kerry is not the type of leader who will sit and read `My Pet Goat' to a group of second graders while America is under attack,' she said."

"That was a reference to Sept. 11, 2001, when Mr. Bush remained in an elementary school classroom for several minutes after being informed by an aide that the World Trade Center had been hit."

I have to think that the childishness of that response isn't lost on most Americans, and it is a reflection of a staff struggling to cope with a candidate who will not answer any questions.  Stephanie Cutter cannot enjoy having to reprise Ron Zeigler's role as stonewaller, but parroting Michael Moore isn't going to halt the meltdown. Only a long press conference in which Kerry answers all of the questions about his long list of lies will accomplish that task, but I don't expect the senator has the stomach for that.

August 20, 2004

Posted at 8:00 PM, Pacific

So Mickey tells us a big save-Senator-Sybil Sunday paper piece is on the way.

Two things.

First, if you need such a piece, you are in very, very big trouble, and if your heart leapt with hope when you read Mickey's alert, then you know in that same heart how bad the damage is that has been done to Kerry.

Second, and read this very slowly: No matter how favorable the story turns out to be, it cannot help Senator Kerry, because the controversy isn't about his Silver Star, his Purple Hearts, or his saving a man who was flung from the boat.

Senator Kerry exaggerated his wartime exploits, and he has admitted that.  That recanting brought attention to the fact that he was trading on those exaggerated exploits, which in turn brought attention to the fact that 30 years ago the service he now so proudly proclaims (and exaggerates) he scorned, and not only scorned his own service, but slandered the service and conduct of hundreds of thousands of others.

Kerry had attempted to get the nation to focus on his version of the truth --a selective, distorted and mediated version of what happened to him both in and after Vietnam.  When he was in control of the editing, as with the film that showed at his convention, it was a powerful story, and made for a wonderful film.

Big media was willing to help him peddle that version, but the Swift Boat Veterans against Kerry broke into the narrative and created enough noise and generated enough attention on things like the disturbingly false "Christmas Eve in Cambodia" searing that, suddenly, Kerry no longer had a monopoly on the account of what happened in the years 1968 through 1972.  The Rashomon reality returned, and Kerry's point of view wasn't only disfavored, it was discredited.

And a newspaper story is supposed to put everyone back in their seat calmly watching the Kerry movie?  Even if old media had its old monopoly, that wouldn't work, and it certainly won't work in 2004.  The blogs aren't going to shrug their shoulders and agree that they were wrong because someone agrees that Kerry deserved his Silver Star.  I for one have never doubted it, and I doubt most people do.  But that's not what talk radio, the blogs, and various cable shows have been debating these past three weeks.

As a result of the past three weeks, most voters now have a fixed understanding of Kerry as a climber and a conniver, and the dramatic orations about being far behind enemy lines on Christmas Eve 1968, being fired on by his drunk allies, and then the derring-do with the gun-running and the CIA men and the SEALs, all of it weighs on them.  They have got Kerry's number, and that off-putting ambition that led him to brand his fellow vets as war criminals and child murderers, burners of villages and torturers, it is deeply embedded in the public understanding of the guy who swears at Secret Service agents, who doesn't fall down, who is for the 87 billion before he's against it.  The Christmas-Eve-in-Cambodia capitulation was the Humpty-Dumpty moment, and unless the big Sunday paper puts Kerry in Cambodia on 12/24/68, and verifies the CIA man and carbon dates the hat and locates the guns and maybe even the anticommunists Kerry ran them to, all of Schrum's horses and all of Schrum's men aren't putting John Kerry together again.

Look. Here is Matthew Continetti's new summary piece on the Cambodia deception.  Here's my review, with the key links, of the meltdown.  Here's one of the most devastating short posts by a new blogger I have ever read.  All across America people have been spending three weeks discussing the lies of John Kerry, both those he told to pump himself up and those he told to tear others down.  Do you think Blackfive is alone on this? These people weren't talking about the Silver Star.  They were talking about the man they don't like at all; the man for whom they now feel contempt.

Americans don't tolerate posers, especially posers who keep changing the pose.  The many lives of John Kerry came into focus this week, and we haven't even begun to see the "nuclear freeze" Kerry of 1984, or the Sandinista-supporting Kerry of the following years.  We have had a glimpse of the "cut-the-intelligence-budget-by-50%" Kerry, and we have seen both the reduce the forces on the Korean peninsula Kerry and the Kerry outraged by such cuts.

John Kerry will say any damn thing he thinks will get him ahead. And it began in Vietnam in 1968, and you suspect it made it into his citations, and you know for sure it made it onto the floor of the Senate in 1986.  He'll be whomever he needs to be to move on up, taking whatever position needs to be taken to get there.

Show me the Sunday paper story that can turn a known liar into a trustworthy spokesman.  It doesn't exist.

For the percentage of America that so hates George W. Bush that they'd vote again even for the know widely-recognized-to-be-out-of-control Al Gore, none of this matters.  Sure they are out there, and perhaps number even 10% of the electorate judging by ticket sales to F911.  And then there are the folks who just pull the D lever, no matter how weird the nominee.

But I think there are millions of 9/11 Democrats, represented by RogerLSimon and others  I suspect most of these people have kids or grandkids and understand we are in the fight of our lives --and their lives.  And they aren't interesting in putting into the White House a man without a core, as Morton Kondracke put it to me today, or a fraud, as I have come to understand him.

John Kerry had his big moment --a brief period in which the control of the setting and the editing allowed him to project the life as he wishes it were seen by all people and at all times.  Even at that moment he didn't carry a majority, and now that moment is gone --smashed in fact. And ten Sunday paper scoops won't put it back.

An aside: Slings and Arrows is a very, very good blog.  Now go and read it.

Posted at 5:00 PM, Pacific

Blackfive tells you what he thinks about John Kerry and the Swift Vets.

So does RogerLSimon.

And FroggyRuminations has promised to do so later in the weekend froma SEALs reunion in San Diego.  Check that space.

This is too funny.  (Hat tip Way Off Bass.)  When that joke gets laughs in connection with your campaign, it is real trouble time.  And when this graphic gets laughs, the same problem is obvious. 

It is going to be a fun weekend around the Kerry HQ.  Who's going to tell Senator Sybil that one of him has to go out and meet the press before there is any hope of putting an end to this controversy about his Christmas-Eve-not-spent-in-Cambodia, his not-dropping-off-the-hatless-CIA-man, his not-running-guns to the anti-communists in Cambodia, and his made up slanders against hundreds of thousands of fine soldiers and Marines who served honorably in Vietnam?

Posted at 4:00 PM, Pacific

CAN YOU SAY "LAME?"

Here's the response from Kerry-Edwards to Swift Boat Vets Ad #2:

To: National Desk, Political Reporter

Contact: Chad Clanton or Phil Singer, both of Kerry-Edwards 2004, 202-464-2800; Web: http://www.johnkerry.com

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Kerry-Edwards campaign spokesman Chad Clanton released the following statement today about the new Swift Boat Veterans for Bush ad:

"This is another ad from a front group funded by Bush allies that is trying to smear John Kerry. The newest ad takes Kerry's testimony out of context, editing what he said to distort the facts. He testified as a 27 year-old Vietnam veteran. He opposed a war that, at that point, cost over 44,000 lives of the 58,245 names that are on the Vietnam Memorial wall. It says a lot that the President refuses to condemn this smear. The American people want to hear how we're going to cut health care costs and strengthen the economy, not smears."

Yeah, that'll work.  People want to talk about health care, eh?  People around Kerry maybe.

Morton Kondracke thinks the vets made an error by releasing this ad, and termed it a retreat to their original complaint about Kerry --his antiwar activities and slanders of fellow vets.  Mort thinks by changing subjects they are admitted their first ad couldn't stand scrutiny.

I think Mort is way wrong on that take. The vets changed up once they had the attention of the media and saturation on the charges of puffery, including the big win of  Kerry's recanting of Christmas Eve in Cambodia.  With media attention firmly fixed, they moved the spotlight to John Kerry's sliming of all who wore the uniform. The vets played it masterfully, as Kerry's crumbling polls attest.  Not only did they hurt Kerry badly, they also succeeded in exposing masive media bias to boot.  Pretty good work for amateurs.

Posted at 3:40 PM, Pacific

Lost in the crossfire over Swift Boat vets' ad #2 is the lame attempt by the Kerry campaign to hang on to the idea that Kerry was ever in Cambodia.  From the Globe story this morning:

"Separately, according to Meehan's statement, Kerry crossed into Cambodia on a covert mission to drop off special operations forces. In an interview, Meehan said there was no paperwork for such missions and he could not supply a date. That makes it hard to ascertain or confirm what happened. Kerry served on two swift boats, the No. 44 in December 1968 and January 1969, and the No. 94, from February to March 1969.

Michael Medeiros, who served aboard the No. 94 with Kerry and appeared with him at the Democratic National Convention, vividly recalled an occasion on which Kerry and the crew chased an enemy to the Cambodian border but did not go beyond the border. Yet Medeiros said he could not recall dropping off special forces in Cambodia or going inside Cambodia with Kerry."

The reason it is "hard to ascertain or confirm what happened" is because it didn't happen!  Reporters refusing to confront this lie aren't reporters at all.  Keep in mind that Douglas Brinkley said the journals Kerry provided him laid out "three or four" cross-border missions, and that Kerry told a detailed story about the CIA man and the magic hat to the Washington Post reporter.  Missions like this one don't "vanish."  The only reasonable explanation is that Kerry made it all up.

Mickey Kaus and I just finished a conversation on how Kerry can stop the bleeding.  We agreed that he needs to meet with the press and answer every question, a "Geraldine Ferraro press conference" Mickey called it, referring to another famous campaign meltdown from 20 years ago. Unless and until Kerry summons the courage to meet the press and deal with the charges, he will bleed more and more credibility. 

Mickey's colleagues at Slate believe the Swift Boat vets have been discredited, he told me, but that he disagreed.  Mickey's correct.  The only people who think the vets have been discredited are those who didn't want to pay any attention to them in the first place.  Kerry lost this week, and the two weeks prior, by arrogantly refusing to answer legitimate questions even as he conceded he'd been lying about his record.  Now the story and the controversy has mushroomed and obscures everything else. The story's domination of the media will continue until George W. Bush arrives in New York and reminds everyone what real leadership in a crisis means.

John Kerry's hiding from the press. That's not what voters want in a president.

Posted at 3:00 PM, Pacific

Mudville Gazette has a must-read post on the disgust that met John Kerry when he appeared before the VFW in Cinncy. Surprised that you didn't read about this in your daily paper?  Do you suppose the Kerry campaign will be filing a complaint with the FEC about illegal coordination between the VFW and Bush-Cheney '04?

The Bush campaign has responded to Senator Sybil's absurd FEC complaint: "This is a frivolous complaint that even John Kerry's chief strategist has said they have no evidence to support. Real coordination is what John Kerry's campaign has been egaged in with the Media Fund, America Coming Together, and MoveOn.org.  The revolving door of personnel, coordinated strategies and overlapping fundraising between the Democrat 527s and the Kerry campaign is a flagrant disregard of the spirit and the letter of the campaign finance reform law."

Posted at 2:20 PM, Pacific

CNN has been reporting that the Kerry campaign is scampering off to the Federal Election Commission with a complaint of illegal coordination between the Swift Boat Vets against Kerry and Bush-Cheney '04.  Of course it is a nonsense complaint, but it will give the Kerry surrogates something to change the subject to when the new ad gets discussed this weekend, and provide friendly editors at the big papers something else to write about other than the new ad itself, which to repeat from this morning's post, is simply devastating to Kerry.

The Kerry campaign seems to be headed by incompetents, moving at every turn to draw more attention to the worst aspects of their man's flawed character. Now they are resorting to absurd charges as a means of trying to do anything but confront Kerry's lies about his own service and his slanders about the service of others.  Look for more backward movement for Kerry in the polls through the end of next week as the flailing of the Kerry folks attracts the attention of those who hadn't been paying much notice to the campaign.

The White House spokesman today noted that Kerry had blown his cool yesterday.  Heh. A nice shot that.  True as a description, and worrying as a character trait.

Calling Senator Sybil. Perhaps you need yet another vacation.

Posted at 12:45 PM, Pacific

Here's an e-mail that captures Kerry's problem with vets:

Hugh,

Another impact of Kerry’s testimony in April 1971, and one I am sure thousands of your listeners can relate to. I went into the Marine Corps in February, 1971. Kerry’s statement before Congress occurred just a couple weeks before my graduation from boot camp. Just prior to graduation we were told NOT to wear our uniforms in public due to the anti-military fervor stirred up by the recent Congressional hearings.  And this was in San Diego …a generally very military town. I can tell you that the reaction from all of us who had just endured 12 weeks of very tough training and conditions was outrage. Of course, being Marines, we wore them anyway and pretty much dared anyone with a problem to express it. But we never forgot or forgave those who smeared the uniform…especially John Kerry.

Semper Fi

[name withheld]

And here is an illustration of Kerry's problem with trying to discredit the swift boat vets because "they haven't served with him."

Posted at 7:50 AM, Pacific

The new Swift Boat vets' ad switches from attacking John Kerry for exaggerating his own record to an attack on John Kerry's slander on the records of other vets.  This is devastating.  The day after John Kerry complains about having his war service questioned, the new ad underscores how Kerry did far worse to thousands of vets.  Kerry built himself up over the years into a brave captain traveling deep into Cambodian waters to run guns, drop off SEALs and CIA men (hatless) etc.  He did so after condemning a generation of soldiers and Marines as war criminals.  He wanted to be praised for his own bravery even after he torched the reputations of hundreds of thousands of Vietnam-era vets.  A second free chapter of Unfit for Command has been made available.  Big media didn't bother to read the first free chapter and were surprised when it birthed the investigations that forced Kerry to admit his Christmas-Eve-in-Cambodia-1968 lie.  I wonder if they will bother to read this one.

Posted at 7:35 AM, Pacific

Five paragraphs from this morning's Washington Post explains the panic in the Kerry camp:

"During the week ending Aug. 8, 966,000 people visited the anti-Kerry group's Web site, 34,000 fewer than those who visited Kerry's official site, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. The new CBS poll found Kerry winning 37 percent of veterans' votes to Bush's 55 percent. (The two were tied at 46 percent after last month's Democratic National Convention, where Kerry highlighted his service.)

"'They have been very effective at using the August lull to drive a story' in news outlets, said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.). Kerry, who planned to conserve resources by not buying television ads this month, will spend at least $180,000 to respond, his aides said.

"Several Democrats said Kerry waited too long to condemn an ad designed to undermine the cornerstone of his political career and the overriding theme of the convention that nominated him for president: his heroics in war."

"'If it were me, I would have come out a lot earlier,' said Steve Jarding, a Democratic strategist. 'Attack ads on people's character work. It's a sad fact of American politics.' Jarding, who advised Sen. Bob Graham (Fla.) during the presidential primaries, said Kerry is especially vulnerable to misleading attacks because most voters still do not know much about him. 'When someone levels a negative attack, particularly when it goes to your character, you have to respond' immediately, he said.

"Cutter said the campaign relied on the news media, surrogates and 700 letters to the editor to discredit the charges. 'But every time one of these guys [from the Swift boat group] shows up on Fox, we get calls from veterans,' she said."

Let's be clear: The Kerry numbers among vets are falling because Kerry has been conclusively demonstrated to have been lying about at least a part of his record in Vietnam.  Evidence that he's been lying about other parts of his record is also accumulating.  Despite indifference from the major media --with some key exceptions like Deborah Orin who, in today's New York Post both recounts the Christmas-Eve-in-Cambodia fraud and credits the blogosphere, including this site, with keeping the pressure on-- the story of Kerry's fables has gotten to the voters, and the truth about Kerry is hurting him.

Kerry is trying to find the weakest part of the vets' attack on him and to focus his counter-attack on it, but that won't do anything except draw more media attention.  It is a lose-lose situation for him because, at bottom, Kerry lied about his Vietnam experience, which he had made his central claim on the presidency.

Even as the New York Times rushed to help John Kerry by attacking the vets' group in a dozen different, and ineffective, ways, the "paper of record" has now recorded Kerry's lie about Cambodia:

"As serious questions about its claims have arisen, the group has remained steadfast and adaptable.

This week, as its leaders spoke with reporters, they have focused primarily on the one allegation in the book that Mr. Kerry's campaign has not been able to put to rest: that he was not in Cambodia at Christmas in 1968, as he declared in a statement to the Senate in 1986. Even Mr. Brinkley, who has emerged as a defender of Mr. Kerry, said in an interview that it was unlikely that Mr. Kerry's Swift boat ventured into Cambodia at Christmas, though he said he believed that Mr. Kerry was probably there shortly afterward."

The news of the Kerry lie was buried deep in a long piece, but it is still there, forced out of the paper that serves as Kerry's blocking tackle.  The acknowledgement of that one lie consumes all the flak thrown at the vets.  They forced the record on Kerry to be corrected, and on a central Kerry claim.

Now Democratic web-surfers are finding entries like this one:

"Kf Pushes Back

I was nowhere near Cambodia!
By Mickey Kaus Updated Friday, Aug. 20, 2004, at 4:24 AM PT"

Heh.  Sinking, sinking, sinking, and not because of the medals controversy, but because Kerry lied --repeatedly-- about the extent of his Vietnam service.  There's still no evidence whatsoever that Kerry went into Cambodia, so if the Kerry brain-trust is saving it up, they are as incompetent a bunch as ever directed a campaign.

The Boston Globe's Michael Kranish obliges Kerry with a breathless, behind-the-scenes account of how Kerry decided to fight the ad, without mentioning Cambodia or the fact that Kerry won't meet with the press to answer questions about it.  Here's a sample of the "reporting" Kranish delivers:

"As Kerry stepped from his car Wednesday night outside his Beacon Hill home, the senator turned to a group of aides in the motorcade and asked them to come upstairs. He had some new language for his firefighters' speech that he wanted to talk over.

Inside, Kerry informed his traveling communications team that he wanted to make his first attack on the Swift Boat critics. After two weeks of listening to them question his Vietnam War record, Kerry was sick of it -- 'not angry, but disgusted,' said communications director Stephanie Cutter, who was at the Wednesday meeting."

An angry or disgusted man who had the facts on his side would call a press conference and answer questions until there were no more questions. A desperate, sly fellow who know's his lies are beginning to unravel shouts out a condemnation and runs for the door.  Kerry chose the latter course.

Kerry's threatening to attack Bush's Air National Guard record, which even the Los Angeles Times is obliged to report as a flip-flop:

"[Kerry spokesperson] Cutter said that if charges about Kerry's service continued, the candidate would 'talk comparatively' about his military record and that of Bush, who has been shadowed by questions about whether he fulfilled his service while in the Texas Air National Guard.

Kerry has reversed himself several times on whether he thinks it's appropriate to go after Bush's military service record."

Such an attack will strike many as desperation disguising an inability to respond to the vets' on target salvos about Kerry's serial exaggerations.  Another bad move from a campaign team that seems to invent new ways of hurting their candidate.

There's more to come, of course, including a new Swift Boat Vets' ad today, and a Sunday full of talk show chat, none of which can help Kerry because he hasn't and won't come clean.  The August that ruined his long-shot campaign will be debated for years, but the honest accounts won't focus on the day-by-day developments.  They will instead ask what led this man to exaggerate his record for 30 years, to invent CIA men without hats and gun-running across the border.  That's the bigger, and thus far unreported, story.

Captain'sQuarters, Powerline, Instapundit, RogerLSimon, and Patterico have more, as do many other sites.  The Kerry campaign bet on a story dying down due to the indifference of the big papers.  That just won't happen again.  Not if a story is bottomed on truth, and this one is.