Still tainted by Vietnam

Will American politics ever put the Vietnam War in the past?

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is far from the first politician to be accused of shading his biography. But what speaks to a larger conundrum that has dogged an entire generation of male politicians is this: The chapter of his life questioned on the front page of Tuesday's New York Times involved decisions he made about military service during the Vietnam War era.

In having obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and taking what the Times described as "repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war," he was far from alone among privileged young men of his generation. Nor are there any doubts being raised about whether he actually served with the Marine Corps Reserve.

According to The Times, Blumenthal has been inconsistent in how he has presented that record to the public, and on at least one occasion, at a ceremony last year honoring veterans, has flatly stated he "served in Vietnam." The Times also contended the Democrat allowed misimpressions about it — including multiple media profiles that stated he actually served in Vietnam — to go uncorrected.

At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, where he surrounded himself with veterans, Blumenthal said he meant to say he served "during" Vietnam instead of "in" Vietnam. He said the statements were "totally unintentional" errors that occurred only a few times out of hundreds of public appearances.

"On a few occasions, I have misspoken about my service and I regret that. And I take full responsibility," said Blumenthal, a trim, square-jawed figure with the bearing of a military man. "But I will not allow anyone to take a few misplaced words and impugn my record of service to our country."

The newspaper also said Blumenthal intimated more than once that he was a victim of the abuse heaped on Vietnam veterans upon their return home.

At a veterans event in Shelton, Conn., for example, he said, "When we returned from Vietnam, I remember the taunts, the verbal and even physical abuse we encountered," according to a 2008 Connecticut Post story.

Blumenthal is widely known for his dedication to veterans issues, attending numerous funerals and military send-offs.

One of Blumenthal's Republican opponents, former WWE wrestling executive Linda McMahon, claimed to have been a source for The Times after more than two months of "deep, persistent" research.

The Times refused to comment on its sources.

The story may have put in jeopardy a career that has included five terms as Connecticut attorney general and set him on what appeared to be an inevitable path to replace Christopher Dodd in the U.S. Senate. But the larger issue is one that goes to the psychic scars that linger from that war, ones that run so deep in our politics that just about anyone's personal decisions at that time can be challenged.

It started at least as far back as Dan Quayle's disastrous debut as George H.W. Bush's running mate in 1988, which is remembered largely for the howling media mob that surrounded him in his hometown of Huntington, Ind., demanding to know how the hawkish senator had remained out of harm's way. This came after his acknowledgment that he had used his family connections to get a part-time assignment writing news releases for the Indiana National Guard, and the startlingly candid explanation in his first news conference as Bush's VP pick: "I did not know in 1969 that I would be in this room today, I'll confess."

Since then, there have been plenty of other controversies and questions: Whether George W. Bush actually showed up to fulfill his military commitment in the Texas Air National Guard, for instance, and whether it was callous for Dick Cheney to say that he sought and received five deferments between the ages of 18 and 26 because "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service." And Bill Clinton's explanation of why he didn't serve, written in a letter to the head of the University of Arkansas ROTC program when he was a Rhodes scholar, nearly derailed his 1992 presidential campaign.

But even politicians who did go to Vietnam have had to endure criticism — most famously, in the 2004 campaign, when "swiftboating" became a verb and weapon against John Kerry. Al Gore went to Vietnam, he said, "because the country was at war, and because if I didn't go, someone else would have to go in my place." Still, he could never escape questions about whether he made the decision more with preserving his father's Senate career in mind, or whether he got a relatively safe assignment as an Army journalist as a result of his last name.

Not even those with the most illustrious of records have been immune from scrutiny, sometimes decades after the fact. Medal of Honor winner Bob Kerrey, who lost a leg in Vietnam before going on to become Nebraska governor and a U.S. senator, saw that honor and his own questioned 32 years later, when it was revealed that his Navy SEAL unit had killed civilians in the isolated peasant village of Tranh Phong on a nightmarish night in 1969.

These kinds of issues have not arisen for politicians who have gone to war in subsequent conflicts, largely because there was no draft for Iraq and Afghanistan that separated the privileged and the connected from those who had no choice. But the Vietnam War generation will never escape them. What looked at the time to be the most personal decisions — ones bound in honor and survival and ambiguity — have become metaphors for the larger sins of a war whose history continues to be written.

Additional information from The Associated Press