Guest columnist
Anti-Kerry smear campaign serves its devious purpose

By Floyd J. McKay
Special to The Times

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Political conventions in the post-9/11 era are a game of capture the flag.

We saw Democratic delegates applauding wildly as their candidate "reported for duty," surrounded by Vietnam veterans.

This week, Old Glory is draped on every available inch of space at the Republican National Convention, and the term "wartime commander" will be in every other sentence.

Thus have the strategists of the Bush administration succeeded in dominating the debate despite week after week of disastrous news from Iraq and from the economic front.

Democrats were virtually forced to nominate a war hero to counter the strutting self-assurance of the commander in chief. The war hero was then virtually forced to pledge more soldiers, more weapons, more security.

Then, as if to prove their mastery, Republican strategists unleashed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in one of the nastiest smear campaigns since the days of Richard Nixon.

Lost on the back pages of newspapers and generally missing from television news are serious issues such as health insurance, the widening gap between rich and poor, education and the environment.

It would seem that the election hinges on whether you believe John Kerry deserved his medals. Were his wounds close enough to the heart to qualify him for three Purple Hearts; how intense was the enemy fire when he pulled a Green Beret officer from the river? And on and on it goes.

The best investigative reporting on the issue thus far comes from The Washington Post, and it supports Kerry's version of events. So do the men who served on his boat, who certainly were closest to the action. The latest participant to step forward, a career military man from Oregon who will not vote for Kerry, says Kerry's account is truthful.

What this attack is really about is reopening the Vietnam scars, to call forth those who backed the war and hate Kerry because he returned from combat to lead an opposition veterans' group.

It's not about his heroism under fire at all. In my view, and I would think that of most Americans, anyone who volunteered to run those little boats up the most dangerous rivers in Vietnam is a hero. Period. With or without medals.

Despite the many American wars of the past 60 years, a relative few among us have had to engage in actual combat. Many more people in uniform handle clerical duties than carry rifles, although places like Iraq can be very nasty for support troops. Until very recently, no women faced hostile fire.

Huge numbers of Americans have never worn the uniform, through being born at the right time, for medical reasons, etc. And, of course, for 31 years we've had no draft. For the vast majority of us, then, anyone who put himself (or herself, today) in the line of fire should be a hero.

George W. Bush elected to avoid the line of fire, and so did Dick Cheney and most of the neoconservative leaders who promoted the Iraq invasion.

But the anti-Kerry smear campaign has served to obscure Bush's lack of service, in particular those missing months in Alabama. Bush used his dad's connections to get a premier National Guard slot and then got approval to go campaigning in Alabama. Yet, no one seems to have seen him show up for work. Unless I've missed it, no one has raised a hand and testified that he and Bush flew together in Alabama.

Well, if I had flown with a guy who's now president, I sure as heck would show up to defend him. Perhaps the rabbit will be pulled from the hat this week in New York.

Only a political genius like Karl Rove could pull this kind of politics and make it work. This is the same guy who tarred John McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries as being against veterans.

It is amazing to me that the nation is seemingly so polarized that this type of politics is accepted by huge numbers of people. The attacks are disgraceful.

It's one thing to drag out the old "tax and spend" label against any Democrat who runs for office. But it's quite another to attack the courage and honesty of Kerry, his boat crew, and the Green Beret whose life he saved.

If Rove and Bush want to re-debate Vietnam and Kerry's opposition to the war, that's legitimate. But the anti-Kerry swift-boaters mire in the mud when they go after the man's courage and honesty.

Floyd J. McKay, a journalism professor emeritus at Western Washington University, is a regular contributor to Times editorial pages. E-mail him at floydmckay@yahoo.com