RECENT COLUMNS
Posted on 10/20/2002 1:25:39 PM PDT by RobFromGa
Cleland should run on record, not Vietnam
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RECENT COLUMNS
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Dutifully on the Friday before presidential elections in 2000, U.S. Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.) assembled reporters for a conference call with the Democrats' military heroes in the U.S. Senate. Their purpose was to use the status accorded them to defeat George W. Bush -- just as Cleland had used his military service to absolve candidate Bill Clinton of culpability in evading military service.
The Democrats spoke by phone to a veterans rally in Nashville, attempting to generate last-minute stories that would question Bush's National Guard service during the Vietnam War. It partially worked, prompting Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer to declare the attacks "the final throes of a campaign that has now lost any semblance of decency. The governor of course was honorably discharged and these are inventions and fabrications."
It was a cheap campaign tactic that might have been less transparent had Cleland not eight years earlier found no fault with Clinton's evasion of wartime military service -- after Clinton won the party's nomination. Before, as Georgia's secretary of state, he embraced the presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Medal of Honor winner in Vietnam -- and sat silently at Kerrey's side as he predicted while campaigning for the Democratic nomination that Clinton could be opened like a "soft peanut" for evading military service.
On this issue, though, whenever the party has called, Cleland has responded obediently, providing cover or condemnation as it served the party's interest. In the U.S. Senate, he has been voting reliably with party elders. Throw a dart, hit the voting record of most any national Senate Democrat, and the odds are overwhelming that Cleland voted accordingly.
On homeland security, Cleland again takes the party line, which is essentially the position of organized labor, one of its key constituencies. The Washington Times reported last week that government employee unions have given $230,000 to Cleland and two other Senate Democrats in close races, all of whom have opposed the president's desire to waive collective bargaining rules to hire, fire and assign workers in the proposed new Department of Homeland Security.
The problem with tit-for-tat campaign commercials is that most everything said can be literally true and massively misleading. Cleland did vote the party line on 11 amendments on homeland security in committee, but in campaign commercials he is "working with President Bush" on security and supported him on Iraq.
Whenever opponent Saxby Chambliss challenged those votes in a television commercial, Cleland brought out fellow veteran John Kerry, the U.S. senator from Massachusetts, to react indignantly. "Garbage," declared Kerry. "Character assassination," declared Cleland.
It's fantasyland. Cleland chose to present himself as having the "courage to lead" in the U.S. Senate, but when his voting record is legitimately challenged, the response is to return voters to Vietnam. When the president came to town last week to take issue with Cleland's voting record on homeland security, the reporter wrote:
"A spokesman for Cleland's campaign said the senator, who lost three limbs in a grenade accident in Vietnam, has long pushed for a homeland security bill."
The connection Cleland strategists insist on making between Vietnam and his voting record in the U.S. Senate, and their attempt to frame every question as an assault on his patriotism, is disingenuous. This ain't about Vi etnam and whether the country should be grateful or whether the Veterans of Foreign Wars should feel kinship. This is about how he votes today.
The afternoon sun is beating against the windshield. Cleland twists around in the front passenger seat and recounts, second by second, the sequence of events that changed his life.
The grenade fell off his web gear as he jumped from the chopper. One thousand-one.
He ran, head down, out from under the helicopter blades. One thousand-two.
He turned around and saw the grenade. One thousand-three.
He started back and reached for the grenade. One thousand-four.
``Boom,'' he says.
The killing radius of a grenade is 15 to 18 feet. Cleland was within 5 to 6 inches of the grenade when it exploded. ``Theoretically, I shouldn't be alive under any circumstances,'' he says in a matter-of-fact tone.
Indeed, in his 20s, Cleland seemed to be courting danger. His family had been dismayed by the zeal with which he sought out a place in the war. He was, he says, motivated by a mixture of idealism and naiveté. He volunteered to serve in the Army, he volunteered for paratrooper training, and he volunteered to join the 1st Air Cavalry Division. When a brigadier general tapped him to become his aide, a chance to serve his country stateside, Cleland resisted. The general offered him a deal: one year in the United States, and then he could ask to be transferred to Vietnam. Cleland agreed. A year later, in May 1967, he found himself in Vietnam.
The tragic events there brought him some glory, marred though it was. After the explosion, the Army gave Cleland the Soldier's Medal, for shielding his men from the grenade blast (no one was nearby, he says), and the Silver Star, for coming to the aid of wounded troops the night of the Khe Sanh rocket attack (something he says his men did, but he did not do).
Draw your own conclusions. I have, and it makes me sick.
Thanks for posting it.
If you do figure it out, let me know. LOL!
I think that there are several dynamics at work:
2. The Georgia Republican Party is terribly stupid and they pick stupid causes. (e.g. Flag) They also tend to eat one another in the primaries whereas the Dem machine anoints the chosen front-runner.
3. The Georgia Democrat machine at the state level has elevated racial and political gerrymandering to an art form, ensuring a tough job to develop GOP candidates appealing to a state-wide constituency.
4. The Georgia Democrats have historically often voted in GOP primaries to eliminate the stronger GOP candidates from the general election.
5. Even though Atlanta is the #1 city in the country BY A LONG shot for Affluent Blacks, they still vote Democrat by habit (or a sense of racial duty).
6. South Georgia people and North Georgia people tend to distrust Atlanta politicians whom they see at citified types. These rural people tend to vote Dem as it has been the party of the farmer types.
These are probably not all accurate but they are my observations.
. . . neglecting to add that he was drunk and horsing around at the time.
It is time for him to go.
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