Chron: Wesley Clark lauds Kerry's military service

Sorry andy, but once a military man shows that he isn't a republican, his military service means squat. Therefore, the word of a decorated General like Clark won't fly with some people.

 

I personally think TJ is in a much better position to evaluate Kerry's service and the fact that he no longer considers Kerry a veteran is good enough for me.

 

Yawn... what a joke of a thread. Are you talking about the same Wesley Clark that jabbed at Forbes Kerry during the primary for having served at a 'junior' level? Guess what, I know a candidate that has served in an even higher rank that Clark in the Military! George W Bush. Bush has been Commander-in-Chief of the Military for 3 years, much of which has been during wartime. It is that leadership that the voters respect.

Maybe that's why he's up in the polls...

NEXT

 

Good morning, sunshine! Are we still on for happy hour tomorrow?

 

I truly think Kerry needs to stop taking the bait of these slimballs and be more forcefull in his stance! He served! He knows it, we know it and the repugs know it.

I’m starting to get a little nervous that Kerry is spending more time defending himself instead of going on the offensive and hammering this administration about their failed policies. He needs to start laying out an agenda for his presidency instead of pandering to the bushies. Kerry needs to start showing how he will be a different president than what we have now. He needs to start giving people choices!

Where is this year’s George Stephanopoulos? Where is Dick Morris?

The Washington Post says it much better than I…

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Taking the GOP Bait, Hook, Line and Stinker
By Tina Brown

Thursday, April 29, 2004; Page C01

There was a surreal moment at a serious Manhattan dinner party Tuesday night when 12 power players who had all been talking at once about the mess in Iraq suddenly fell silent to listen to the waiter. He dove in shortly after he had served the coconut cake with lemon dessert -- perhaps to give moral support to the only Republican present, who was beginning to flag. Or perhaps he just thought it might be helpful for the guests to hear from one of the Ordinary Americans whose unhappiness with the status quo they are in the habit of earnestly invoking.

"I'm from the suburbs," he announced, "and I'm voting for Bush."

All eyes turned to him. "It might seem odd that a savvy New Yorker like me is voting for a guy in a cowboy hat," he went on, as he recklessly doled out ice cream to a network anchor, "but what we want is stability. This Kerry guy -- he's all over the place."

Huh? Stability? What about all the mayhem in Iraq? His intervention immediately brought the table back from a troubled analysis of American options in Iraq to how the medals debacle is affecting perceptions of Kerry. It was as if the waiter was a plant from the Bush campaign, diverting attention at a critical moment, just as he was supposed to.

The Republican attack machine -- again -- has made the right calculation: Hit 'em with trivia. Bait the hook with the absurd "issue" of whether it was medals or ribbons that Kerry hurled over the wall when he was a 27-year-old hothead. Then watch the media bite -- they'll do it every time -- and let Kerry rise to it and blow it. Presto, a thrice-wounded, decorated war hero running against a president who went missing from the National Guard is suddenly muddying up his own record on the morning talk shows. Shades of 2000, when Bush jokily bowled oranges down the aisle of his campaign plane while Gore argued about whether he did or didn't say he invented the Internet.

The blueprint for what's happening now is all up there on the screen in the unapologetically partisan documentary "Bush's Brain," about the president's political strategist Karl Rove, which opens at the Tribeca Film Festival next week. It tracks the techniques of Rove from his earliest days running Republican campaigns in Texas, using interviews on camera and off by two Texas journalists, Wayne Slater, senior political writer for the Dallas Morning News, and James Moore, TV reporter and producer.

"When I watch Kerry trying to swat away the issue of ribbons and medals I see Karl as the Oz figure all over again," Slater told me on the phone. "Rove's technique is always to go for a candidate's strength, not his weakness. In Texas, when Bush was running against Governor Ann Richards, her strength was her tolerance, her inclusiveness. She had brought a lot of women and minorities into government. So suddenly in conservative East Texas there was a whispering campaign about why she had hired so many lesbians and homosexuals. It's the same with Kerry. The war record is his strength -- so instead of leaving it alone, Rove just goes right at it."

It's spooky to see it working, both in the polls and anecdotally. In the past 10 days, Democrats in New York have been distracted for the first time from focusing their wrath on Bush to dumping it on Kerry. Even among heavy donors there has been a wave of buyer's remorse.

"You don't have to fall in love," Hillary Rodham Clinton reportedly reproved a top Democratic fundraiser who was recently moaning about Kerry's lackluster performance as a candidate. "You just have to fall in line."

New York Dems, having raised a staggering $9 million for Kerry on his last swing through town, now want to see their money in motion. They're vexed with the campaign's sluggish response to attack. They want Kerry to quit being his own surrogate on the talk shows. They want Max Cleland, John Glenn and Bob Kerrey to do the talking about the medals -- like how he earned them in the first place. Get his old Vietnam buddies to do a commando raid on the Bush-Cheney mud machine! Get those guys to travel with him all the time in a pack in sweaty old uniforms! Democrats long to bring on a new attack dog with unimpeachable Q ratings. Unleash the scimitar chin of Eliot Spitzer!

Insiders ask whether Kerry was right to turn down an invitation to meet with Tony Blair (a real foreign leader in a real New York restaurant) in favor of trolling for swing votes in Pennsylvania. By missing the Blair photo op, Kerry booted away a presidential moment with a global player.

Micropolitics vs. macroimagery: That's the Kerry dilemma. There's a terror among the macroschool that Kerry will choose a running mate for reasons of geography rather than imagery and wind up in dullsville. A veep groundswell is building again for John Edwards. So what if he doesn't deliver a state? He has charisma. He's a jury-pleaser. He'll stay cool under fire. Choose him right now to change the subject!

Most of all there is a sense in New York that what Democrats need is someone as dark and devilish as Karl Rove to go after Bush. It's a nostalgic experience for some to dip into George Stephanopoulos's 1999 memoir of his Clinton years, "All Too Human." There's not just a sentimental longing for George in the war room but for the villain of the book -- brilliant, conniving, unscrupulous Dick Morris.

" 'This is the moment to strike and watch the poll numbers go UP!' " Stephanopoulos quotes Morris. "On that last phrase, Morris threw his hands high above his head while wiggling his fingers and standing on the tips of his toes -- a political shaman casting a spell, enraptured by his own ecstatic dance." Bring back Morris?

 

i know that many of you will want to denigrate this post because the article originates on opinionjournal.com, but i think james taranto has some valid thoughts on how kerry's vietnam service became a political liability:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110005013

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His Vietnam record was supposed to be his greatest asset, but instead it has turned into a political liability. Why did that happen? Here's our explanation:

He talked about Vietnam entirely too much. We noticed this way back in December 2002, when in an interview with Tim Russert he even managed to work Vietnam into an answer about capital punishment. The incessant repetition makes him seem either opportunistic (trying to exploit his service to further his political ambitions) or obsessive (unable to view Vietnam from a healthy distance even after more than three decades). Either interpretation raises questions about his ability to lead the country effectively today.

The adversarial press being what it is, Kerry's single-minded emphasis on his Vietnam experience also invites scrutiny of such matters as the questionable circumstances surrounding his first purple heart--blemishes on an otherwise honorable record.

He became an antiwar activist. Sure, lots of Americans ended up opposing the Vietnam War, but Kerry did so by becoming the respectable face of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a group whose stock in trade was accusations that American servicemen had committed war crimes. These claims came in the form of "confessions" from men, some of whom turned out not even to be veterans--and Kerry repeated them in sworn testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971.

Kerry's involvement with VVAW has drawn attention to the group's most unsavory activities, such as a discussion of an assassination plot against pro-war senators that took place at a November 1971 meeting. Kerry played no part in that plot and might not even have attended the meeting, but inevitably a politician is judged by the company he keeps. By signing up with VVAW way back when, Kerry made it harder today to present himself as a war hero. Whereas veterans might ordinarily identify with one of their own, many are furious over what they see as his betrayal back in 1971.

He attacked his opponents for not serving. This didn't start with his response to Medalgate, in which for the first time he raised the tired old question of President Bush's National Guard attendance record. Here he is in Pittsburgh April 19: "I'm tired of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and a bunch of people who went out of their way to avoid their chance to serve when they had the chance. I'm not going to listen to them talk to me about patriotism." Such partisan demagoguery might have played well in the primaries, but it's unlikely to win over many wavering voters in the fall.

Is there anything Kerry can do to get himself out of this mess? Maybe. His war record ought to count to his credit, but he'd be better off talking much less about his own heroism in Vietnam and letting others make the case instead. Probably the best moment in his entire campaign came in Iowa, when Lt. James Rassmann thanked him for saving his life.

Kerry says Vietnam informs his views on foreign and military policy today. USA Today's Walter Shapiro "asked Kerry whether his dissenting view of the war, in contrast to Bush's seeming acceptance of the conflict, had larger implications for the 2004 campaign." The answer:

"I think it is very relevant," Kerry said, "because I think it says a lot of things about ._._. what your perceptions are about events that are different from the way that public officials are telling you that they are, and the way that military people tell you they are. I think it tells you something about your willingness to stand up and fight for the principles you believe in and the lessons you learn. And I think that it tells a lot about the kind of leadership we need now in respect to Iraq and the war on terror."

Well, OK, but what does it tell us? It might be worthwhile for Kerry to give a speech explaining what lessons he learned from Vietnam and, crucially, how he would apply these to today's war. If he has any regrets about his actions as a VVAW spokesman, this would be the time to tell the country.

If presidential races were decided on the basis of who has the more impressive war record, Kerry would beat Bush. But they are not, or else Bill Clinton never would have defeated a pair of World War II heroes. For that matter, George McGovern served with distinction in World War II, but he didn't have what the country wanted 30 years later. If Kerry does not learn to run a forward-looking campaign, he will surely go the way of McGovern.

 

WOW. I have lost even more respect for John Forbes Kerry after reading this.

 

That would be true if we were at war during the time that Clinton and McGovern ran for office. We were not. We are now. That's why if the Republicans want to make Kerry's service record an issue, as they seem to do, then 1) Kerry should step up to the plate and say "bring it on" and 2) Bush's service record should be an issue as well.

 

So who is it that doesn't respect the hard work and valiant service of our soldiers who did their duty, during a time of war? Who is it that doesn't respect the job that those soldiers did, and the sacrifices they made?

Who is it that doesn't support our troops?

 

andymoon, I find it interesting that you have a very predictable pattern of responding to my opinion statements regarding politics. For some odd reason, you respond to my opinions with personal insults directed at me. You do this over and over and over and over and over. And over. Is it because you are incapable of articulating your viewpoint? Is it because you are so severely frustrated that your brain has stopped functioning and this is all you can muster as a response? Is it because you have nothing better to say? I really don't know, all of these could be plausible answers. Whatever the case, I suggest you reconsider your posting style, and attempt to conform it to the guidelines set forth by Clutch.

Warm regards.

 

As long as the Bush team can keep Kerry on the defensive about his past, Kerry's ideas about the future will be overlooked. The public has largly accepted Bush's past.

There's a lot of truth to both articles. Hook, line and sinker may be accruate -- but there's still a lot of time left.

As a wise man once said:

 

we weren't at war in 1972?

and as to who has made kerry's record an issue, the point of the opj article is that it's kerry who has made it an issue by his incessant harping on his service, inviting the blowback we now see from the press and republicans.

 

so when someone servers their country proudly with nothing but valor , that is an invitation to attack him?

yeah John really deserved all this, how dare he try to speak about issues and how he relates personally

Bush can't do this, cuz he has no experiences