Overplaying the military card: Can Kerry bite back?
I have said all along that Kerry should not overplay the military card. My feeling comes not from a strategic concern for the campaign, though that can be questioned, but from a feeling that military service is not the sine qua non of leadership, of the presidency.
Sure, maybe Kerry was laying a trap for Bush to fall into: attack Kerry, and Kerry pounces on Bush's record. But obviously Bush and Rove are ruthless strategists who think nothing about employing the big lie to thwart that trap, nay to go on the offensive. Kerry should have seen it coming instead of basing the substnce of his fitness to be commnader-in-chief on his military service, replete with VFW hats front and center at every appearance I saw.
The issue for me has less to do with anti-military than the paramount importance of bolstering the supremacy of civilian government. We are not a banana republic although, with the apparent rightward drift in politics these days, the darker side of military-cum-dictatorship inferences creeps uncomforatbly into my mind.
Neither, to me, is the issue the use of 527 ads, those soft money surrogates for the candidates. Both parties are using them. And though Bush self-righeously calls for Kerry to disavow their use (through his current press clone), in fact the Bushies use of 527 is crucial to the current attack on Kerry's Vietnam service. Can anyone doubt that Karl Rove has had some fingers in that pie?
No, not the 527's -- the procedural vehicle for getting the message de jour out -- is my concern, at least in this election, but the truth or falsity of the message. The whole 527 business is a smoke screen. Kerry has challenged the Bush campaign crossing the lines into active collaboration with a 527, but who will care two years from now what the FEC decides. Certainly these nuances are loss on Joe Public.
Its just amazing that with the hindsight of the smears of Bush sytle politics -- Willie Horton and Michael Dukakis, the rumor and slander campaigns against John McCain and Max Cleland, that the Kerry folks couldn't have seen this one coming. Putting oneself inside the head of a Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, or a Bush for that matter may be an unseemly and diffcult task for someone who doesn't live and breathe the worst sort of propaganda; its exactly what Kerry better hope some of his own strategists are able to do.
Sure, maybe Kerry was laying a trap for Bush to fall into: attack Kerry, and Kerry pounces on Bush's record. But obviously Bush and Rove are ruthless strategists who think nothing about employing the big lie to thwart that trap, nay to go on the offensive. Kerry should have seen it coming instead of basing the substnce of his fitness to be commnader-in-chief on his military service, replete with VFW hats front and center at every appearance I saw.
The issue for me has less to do with anti-military than the paramount importance of bolstering the supremacy of civilian government. We are not a banana republic although, with the apparent rightward drift in politics these days, the darker side of military-cum-dictatorship inferences creeps uncomforatbly into my mind.
Neither, to me, is the issue the use of 527 ads, those soft money surrogates for the candidates. Both parties are using them. And though Bush self-righeously calls for Kerry to disavow their use (through his current press clone), in fact the Bushies use of 527 is crucial to the current attack on Kerry's Vietnam service. Can anyone doubt that Karl Rove has had some fingers in that pie?
No, not the 527's -- the procedural vehicle for getting the message de jour out -- is my concern, at least in this election, but the truth or falsity of the message. The whole 527 business is a smoke screen. Kerry has challenged the Bush campaign crossing the lines into active collaboration with a 527, but who will care two years from now what the FEC decides. Certainly these nuances are loss on Joe Public.
Its just amazing that with the hindsight of the smears of Bush sytle politics -- Willie Horton and Michael Dukakis, the rumor and slander campaigns against John McCain and Max Cleland, that the Kerry folks couldn't have seen this one coming. Putting oneself inside the head of a Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, or a Bush for that matter may be an unseemly and diffcult task for someone who doesn't live and breathe the worst sort of propaganda; its exactly what Kerry better hope some of his own strategists are able to do.
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