I'm a bit dumbstruck by how the whole Vietnam issue has played out. George W. Bush sat out the war. John Kerry killed and bled in the jungles of Vietnam. Yet it is Bush who benefits from the issue his opponent introduced. Avoidance of the war didn't kill the electoral chances of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, or Dan Quayle. Ironically, the one candidate for national office who actually spent time fighting in Vietnam has suffered from the issue.
Why?
First, John Kerry has crassly played the hero card. Bob Dole downplayed his World War II heroism in 1996. When candidate John F. Kennedy was asked in 1959 how he became a war hero, that junior senator from Massachusetts quipped: "It was easy--they sank my boat." Former Navy man Kerry, on the other hand, arrives at the Democratic convention via boat from Boston Harbor, smartly salutes, and announces that he's "reporting for duty." No one likes a braggart, particularly one who seems to have embellished his record.
Second, we know George W. Bush got out of military service in Vietnam. Invoking this issue more than four years after it was first raised won't change a single vote. One month ago, America knew John Kerry as a war hero. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have exposed a side of Kerry that has tarnished that image. Kerry didn't tell the truth about being in Cambodia on Christmas, and there are serious allegations that Kerry exaggerated wounds and distorted events to leave Vietnam early. The John Kerry we know in August isn't the John Kerry we met in July.
Third, Kerry's conduct after the war is more damning than anything he did or didn't do in Vietnam. He accused his fellow swift boat veterans of "butchering a lot of innocent people," repeated hearsay regarding rapes, beheadings, mutilations, and other atrocities as if they were commonplace, and penned a radical book with an upside down American flag on its cover.
Finally, Vietnam is a loser for liberals. It always has been. In 1968, three candidates--Humphrey, Nixon, and Wallace--ran for president. All three supported the war. Four years later, the voters were given a real choice between a hawk (Richard Nixon) and a dove (George McGovern). Nixon won every state save Massachusetts. Liberals mistake their own certitude in the war's immorality for a similar certainty in the public at large. This parochial mindset that projects one's own opinions on the majority of society afflicts liberals on many issues, but on none more than the Vietnam War.
That a war concluding roughly thirty years ago would play such a central role in presidential politics is almost unprecedented. What's occuring now would be the equivalent of the Civil War dominating the 1896 election between William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley, or the Korean War looming large over Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter's 1980 contest. With the possible exception of the Revolution--a hero of that war occupied the Oval Office an astounding 54 years after it ended--no war has cast so long a shadow on presidential politics as the Vietnam War has.
Bush was not AWOL. He was flying missions for the CIA in latin america.
Bob Dole downplayed his ww2 heroism because he damn well had better. He got a purple heart for a gernade wound from a fellow soilder under his command. I actually can't remember the whole story, but it wasn't heroic.
Db. You are just plain wrong on this one. Start remembering.
Actually I am right. The fact is there are more questions about the legitamcy of Bob Dole's war record than John Kerry's. But only George Bush has the balls to attack a war veteran. Say what you will about Clinton, but he didn't have the gall to attack Bob Dole, even though he could have.
To all you so called conservatives, there's only one elected official in this country who represents true conservative principles: Republican Representive Ron Paul of Houston Texas.
DB, you're right. Ron Paul is the most conservative elected federal office holder. But how is that relevant here? And why do you act like you are educating us by saying this to us? Why don't you try commenting on Flynn's post rather than throwing in the kitchen sink? It's called an attention span.
It's not that Ron Paul is the "most" conservative. He is the only true conservative. I bring it up because many of the people debating me seem to have forgotten the true conservative values. If they recalled them, then they would see how unconservative it was to go to Vietnam in the first place, and how unconservative it is to spend time debating what happened there in stead of focusing on getting us out of our new "Vietnam", Iraq.
Great post Dan, very well stated. Particularly the liberal problem of parochialism. I literally have never been in a smaller more cloistered and provincial minded town than Manhattan as a graduate student. The elites (and I mean only the elites) here are shockingly ignorant of the world around them despite (or rather enforced by) reading the NYT and New Yorker and other snooty liberal media.
The blank stares they give people who are actually Christian is the most personally satisfying facet of their parochialism. And the irony of such a "cosmopolitan" city being so closed-off and provincial does not escape me.
I guess then the only true liberal is Bernie Sanders. Consequently, he is the only one rounded up when the president comes to town.
That's a good point DB about Vietnam. I've always seen conservative support for Vietnam as a tragic circumstance of the Old Rightist leaders having all died in the 50s. Justin Raimando has a book on them called "Reclaiming the American Right." Just imagine how different American Foreign policy would have been had Robert Taft beat out Ike.
It was JFK (one of the most sane Democrats that lived) who insured our foothold in Viet Nam.
Everybody wants to blame Nixon (that nasty old Republican) but it was the JFK/LBJ combination that was principally responsible the escalation of that fiasco.
JFK was sane? He almost started WW3!
No, the Soviet Union almost started WW3.
Anonymous....is DB replying to his own posts now?
No actually.
