This article has been posted to DoctorZin’s New News Blog!
Posted on 08/05/2004 12:44:11 PM PDT by truthandlife
I understand the touchiness of this issue, but I wish the President would point out these are all highly decorated veterans and as between them and Kerry, Bush is not going to criticize either one. I find it highly offensive that Kerry is sacrosanct because of a short controversial tour of duty, but this large group of decorated veterans is to be discredited. Are they not heroes?
The White House distanced itself from the anti-Kerry ad, but declined to condemn it.
I think McClellan would have been smarter to play it dumb, viz.:
Q Do you -- does the President repudiate this 527 ad that calls Kerry a liar on Vietnam?
MR. MCCLELLAN: I'm sorry, which ad was this, and where did you see it? What did it present exactly?
Q: It was played on TV in six key swing states. Several veterans who served with Kerry repudiated Kerry's relating of events during his Vietnam service. (Etc.)
MR. MCCLELLAN: I've been very busy. Is this important or relevant to the campaign? Why is it important?
Q: It is important because as I am sure you know, Kerry has made a great deal in his campaign about his military service in Vietnam.
MR. MCCLELLAN: You know, the President and his entire White House staff has been very busy this week dealing with the recently uncovered terrorist threats to selected financial targets. (etc.) I'm sorry but I do not have enough information at this point to be able to comment. Can you tell me more about what the veterans said, and what their background is? What gives their story enough credibility that you would bring it up now? Why is this important? Are you absolutely sure that they are Vietnam veterans and that they served with Kerry?
Q: Well, the veterans said they served with Kerry. So far we have been unable to find any evidence that they are not who they say they are. And the video uses an introductory line by Edwards that states that anyone can just spend 3 minutes with veterans who served with Kerry to verify Kerry's account... (etc.)
MR. MCCLELLAN: So let me get this straight... the problem is between Mr. Edwards and the Vietnam vets, and the White House and Bush were never mentioned? (etc.)
IOW-- (well, the strategy as illustrated above I think speaks for itself; I'm not arguing here for blanket "non-responsive responses" of the Nixon era. But if CBS and the rest of the MSM dishes it out, they should be required to eat it up as well. I agree with those calling for better handling by the WH on this. Those questions could have and should have been seen coming from a thousand yards away IMHO...)
Now, why did McCain intervene? According to CBS, it was because McCain had been slimed by Bush in 2000 and held a grudge:
In 2000, Mr. Bush's supporters sponsored a rumor campaign against McCain in the South Carolina primary, helping Mr. Bush win the primary and the nomination. McCain's supporters have never forgiven the Bush team.
(Notice how the bad feelings are not attributed to McCain himself. But he lashes out anyway against Republicans later in the CBS article...) Here's McCain's bona fides according to CBS:
McCain himself spent more than five years in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp. A bona fide war hero, McCain, like Kerry, used his war record as the foundation of his presidential campaign.
I wonder what gives CBS or any other "news" organization the right to declare any soldier a "bona fide war hero," much less someone like McCain [!?], whose full actual military record I believe has been questioned by many in public. (I notice the CBS article did not concern itself with *those* details, though...)
If one reads the rest of the the CBS article, it is covered with McCain statements either professing ignorance of certain aspects of the situation, or deploring that the White House would stoop to such a low (after professing his ignorance that they would do so). For a Republican, McCain seems to go very far out of his way to give CBS the sound bites they would have needed to maximize a negative spin on the event, and not just report on the event itself.
Also, by calling McCain and not any of the other veterans a "bona fide war hero," CBS seems to have attempted to cast aspersions on the veterans who put out the ads, as if their records were somehow questionable... without doing so explicitly.
This was the first article I could find on cbsnews.com which dealt with the Swift veterans "attack" on Kerry. IOW, CBS came out with a slanted piece against Bush right out of the front gate, with virtually no information or even hint of investigation into whether the actual allegations were true or false (what is the first rule of journalism these days? One imagines that it's changed somehow from who-what-where-when to spin-spin-spin-spin).
A political veteran such as (presumeably) McClellan should have realized the likelihood that MSM such as CBS would take his benign condemnation of all negative campaigning and weave it into an anti-Bush editorial masquerading as a news article.
And if the Republicans are serious about their cause, they should excommunicate McCain from the Republican party immediately for remarks such as these. By his actions, McCain doesn't even seem to be pretending to be a conservative (though it's also true he seems to have been acting this way for several years now). Still, having McCain serve as seemingly nothing more than a convenient and timely mouthpiece for whatever the MSM reporters can't come out and say directly on a topical political issue seems just a bit over the top... imho...
Chrissy Matt is sure to be running interference for Kerry tonight on his show. He's likely to be outraged.
| MR. McCLELLAN: The President deplores all the unregulated soft money activity. We have been very clear in stating that, you know, we will not -- and we have not and we will not question Senator Kerry's service in Vietnam. I think that this is another example of the problem with the unregulated soft money activity that is going on. The President thought he put an end -- or the President thought he got rid of this kind of unregulated soft money when he signed the bipartisan campaign finance reforms into law. And, you know, the President has been on the receiving end of more than $62 million in negative attacks from shadowy groups. The President is calling for an immediate cessation to all the unregulated soft money activity. He believes that it should all be stopped. The unregulated soft money activity that is going on does nothing to elevate the discourse. We hope the Kerry campaign will join us in calling for an end to all the unregulated soft money ads and activity. MR. McCLELLAN: We hope the Kerry campaign will join us in calling for an end to all the unregulated soft money ads and activity that are going on. Again, the President has been on the receiving end of more than $62 million in negative attacks from shadowy groups. And the President thought he got rid of this kind of activity when he signed the bipartisan campaign finance reforms into law. This campaign should be about the issues and it should be about the records. MR. McCLELLAN: We're calling for a cessation to all the unregulated soft money activity, and we hope that the Kerry campaign will join us. MR. McCLELLAN: The President supported the bipartisan campaign finance reforms that were passed, and he felt that they improved the system. And that's why he signed them into law. We should have a level playing field for candidates and parties. You have, right now, a problem with these unregulated soft money groups. These were loopholes that we thought were closed when the President signed the campaign finance reforms into law. And so the President believes that all the unregulated soft money activity should stop. We hope the Kerry campaign will join us in calling for an end to all this kind of activity. The President knows what it's like to be on the receiving end of more than $62 million in negative attacks from these kinds of shadowy groups.
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They were roping the dopes again. The statement is a shot across the bow to the rats that if they don't knock it off with their 527 ads,then the GOP will pull out all the stops. They are being very clever ,not slamming the vets but the 527's.
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Exactly!! Well stated!!
And .. WE didn't even call them Un-American!!
Media Schadenfreude and Media Shenanigans PING
Brian Wilson on Fox just did a report on this group/ad. I am extremely disappointed for many reasons including his statement that the WH "repudiated" the ad.
I am VERY dismayed but not too surprised as Fox has been trying to be so fair they've decided lately that the MSM spin is the way to go unless and until the facts are so beaten over their heads they must concede them.
News Corp. owns Fox News Channel.
Fred and Mort on the roundtable doing a great job and Mort said discrediting would have to go beyond who financed the ad. (He did not say that like he thought they weren't credible, but pointing out the Kerry camp's "refutation" was weak so far)
Fred said it should be easy enough to find out if the man who said he treated Kerry is telling the truth. Fred pointed out that Kerry has trotted out his veteran supporters and boasted of credentials in the area.
Krauthammer says it's all the fog of war and different recollections. He does say they should have a right to say what they want but it's a stupid Republican strategy, so Brit plays McClellan soundbite to show that Republicans are distancing. I wish Krauthammer would quit with the "Republicans" making an issue of this-he just said it again.
Brit clarifies the group is supposed to operating separately and can't they speak out? Mort yes, Fred sounds like he wants some answers to the charges made and thinks they can be looked into and verified or not. Fred wasn't "so sure" of the contention the ads would hurt Republicans as Charles and even Mort seemed to think.
It was a better airing of the subject than the earlier report.
I wrote up a summary of the Fox roundtable discussion of the Swift Vets. Does that sound about right?
Thanks
Well yes, but we already knew that.
Except, of course, that they'd be lying after having signed CFR.
A very good write-up. I agree with your impressions.
I wish Bush were on fire about this. It' not enough for his press spokesman to repeat his comments 4 times, the media still only uses what they want. And he wasn't "on fire about this" himself. Why cant't this guy say what Rush said??
The best graphic I saw was on another thread where Kerry's photo with the 19 (or so) vets who served with him. Turns out only one (1, yes 1) actually supports him. There are 12 in the swift boat ad who condemn Kerry. Of the rest maybe 2-4 have passed away, and 2-4 were not available to respond.
I fear that the President's campaign staff will try to force these guys off the air in the hopes that the libs will so the same thing with their 527's. Fat chance of that ever happening. Besides they can't be all that illegal if they have their own classification number.
This whole ruckus just emphasizes to me why Bush should never have signed McCain/Feingold. It just emphasizes his "kindler/gentler naivete. And "cheshire cat grins" are lost on most people.
The real downside is that the 527's are just the tip of the iceberg. What happens when the liberal media really bores in the last couple of the weeks of the campaign with their own slur/lie/bias/unsubstantiated rumor messages? That is when "nice" candidates get left in the dust.
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