MILWAUKEE — Departing from his usual stump speech, John Edwards opens his remarks at a “block party” by addressing the growing controversy over John Kerry’s service in Vietnam. The Democratic campaign is apparently no longer able to ignore the potent rhetoric of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that takes issue with the Massachusetts senator’s recollections about his four-month tour of duty.
Sen. Edwards begins to say, “These honest,” pauses in embarrassment and then continues, “dishonest ads” as he discusses the campaign against his running mate. And while few seem to have taken note of the great Freudian slip on the vice-presidential candidate’s part, it is tremendously revealing of the conundrum the Kerry/Edwards campaign is now facing: two liberals must seek to silence the free speech for which they normally fight, because the truth is apparently too damning to be heard by voters.
Of course, John Kerry’s service in Vietnam should never have become a campaign issue. Resurrecting something otherwise relegated to history more than 30 years ago seems incredibly nonsensical in a presidential race that ought to be fought over current controversies. But when the senator took the stage at his party’s convention in Boston and proceeded to give a lengthy speech that did not so much as mention his term of service as Michael Dukakis’ lieutenant governor, barely noted his lengthy (and oftentimes contradictory) record in the Senate, and instead focused almost entirely on his war service, the Democratic nominee forced the issue.
Kerry probably thought his tour of duty to be the safest of topics for him to discuss. After all, very few people were actually there to witness his actions, he has a chest full of medals (well, at least he did before he threw them away), and President Bush, who joined the National Guard and stayed in the United States, can’t present himself as a better war hero than Sen. Kerry.
Yet the Democratic nominee overlooked one critical issue: A number of the men who served with him in Vietnam don’t quite remember his actions being as heroic as he portrays them. In fact, some of veterans who actually kept their medals take issue with several of Kerry’s claims.
One of their first points was to note that although the Massachusetts senator testified about spending Christmas Day in Cambodia, he was nowhere near Cambodia on Dec. 25. The Kerry campaign has already had to admit that they were lying about this issue.
But the charges run deeper. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth allege that two of Sen. Kerry’s Purple Hearts don’t derive from enemy fire but, rather, self-inflicted wounds. Should this be true, it would tend to suggest that the Democratic nominee was actually looking for a quick way out of the jungle. And, as Bob Dole, a veteran of World War II, noted on CNN’s “Late Edition,” “… three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they’re all superficial wounds. Three Purple Hearts and you’re out.”
But even if Sen. Kerry is not definitely to blame for embellishing his war record, he most certainly is to be condemned for the disgusting manner in which he has handled his newfound opposition.
The Kerry/Edwards campaign has asked bookstores to not carry the bestseller written by several leading members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, “Unfit for Command,” because the campaign alleges the book to contain untruths. Even if there is any merit to this complaint — and there certainly seems to be no proof of such — one must take note of the hypocrisy. Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote a book taking several potshots at President Bush. A bipartisan Senate committee has revealed Mr. Wilson to be an unquestionable liar who penned a work of doubtless fiction. And yet not only has Sen. Kerry’s campaign not asked that the former ambassador’s book be pulled from the shelves; they gave him a job on the campaign.
Moreover, the Kerry/Edwards ticket cries foul over the fact that a former member of the Bush/Cheney team is also connected to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a 527 organization that is supposed to operate independent of the political parties and campaigns. Yet the Democratic nominee sees no problem in having Bill Richardson, a former Clinton cabinet member, run the Democratic National Convention despite being the head of one such 527 group.
The message is devastatingly clear: Sen. Kerry feels as though he should be allowed to play by a different set of rules than everyone else. And this is a remarkable reality considering that the Democratic nominee has focused much of his campaign on criticizing President Bush for his supposed arrogance.
Mac VerStandig ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in rhetoric.
