Dirty Work
Now that the Swift Boat slander has found life beyond the right wing media echo chamber and Kerry's military heroism has been effectively if not honestly questioned, it's time to villify Kerry over his anti-war activities in the 1970s and cast aspersions on his patriotism.
If August was the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth month. September will be "Hanoi John" month.
And then, as the campaign rolls into its final, crucial month, there's a third step available to Rove and company...to question Kerry's fundamental loyalty and decency.
As respected journalist Sydney Schanberg pointed out in a series of investigative reports, Kerry's political coming of age in the Senate was his joint effort — with John McCain — to lay the Vietnam POW/MIA ghost to rest and pave the way for Clinton's normalization of relations with Vietnam.
In the process, Kerry and McCain may have willfully ignored or suppressed awkward, plausible evidence that a handful of American servicemen were still being held by the Vietnamese as bargaining chips, in an unsuccessful attempt to extract the American postwar aid that Nixon promised — but never delivered.
Schanberg thinks it's possible that Kerry and McCain did a whitewash of the POW/MIA issue.
So do some POW/MIA families.
And that's enough for another round of anti-Kerry smear commercials coming soon to your local swing state, hitting the Democratic candidate with the trifecta of escalating charges: duplicity, disloyalty, and treason.
The truth — what McCain and Kerry believed but suppressed while they sat on the commission — is not "out there", ready to be discovered and confirmed by objective investigators.
All we'll probably find is the intersection of wishful thinking, paranoia, and partisanship.
The Schanberg story is fast becoming a Freeper and Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry staple. How long before the 527 ads hit? And "Kerry abandoned American POWs" becomes Fox's flavor of the month? And before the "story about the story" slops over into the mainstream media?
One might hope that the American public will not allow itself to be duped by cheap slander and innuendo on behalf of George W. Bush, a cowardly, non-combatant president who has sent thousands of American soldiers to death and mutilation for the sake of a self-serving and destructive agenda.
But the thought of the American people rising in the defense of decent, dignified political discourse brings no more than a tired cynical smile to the lips.
In fact, the real August wake-up call for democracy-deluded progressive Americans was how a false charge concerning Kerry's wartime heroics 30 years ago managed to capture the curiosity and exploit the lazy credulity of a gullible, sensation-happy public, and overshadow mounting evidence of Bush's failures at home and abroad.
Guess what? The truth did not set us free. Instead, lies allowed Bush to creep up within the margin of error in the polls and turn what should be a blowout into an electoral nailbiter.
Also, it was interesting to see establishment media — the so-called guardians of the public's right to know the truth — reduced to the role of chasing and futilely rebutting an untrue right wing radio non-story, with Washington Post, LA Times, and New York Times investigative reporting and indignant editorials reduced to irrelevant footnotes in a textbook right-wing disinformation campaign.
A nadir of sorts was reached by Bob Dole, supposedly the representative of the avuncular, public-spirited old Republican wing, who showed himself willing to lend his voice to the attacks denigrating Kerry's war record, later defending himself with the excuse, not the explanation, that Bush is "my guy" and therefore presumably entitled to partisan slander on his behalf.
Why isn't Kerry leading the worst president in American history by double digits in the polls?
Well, it's a dirty business...American politics.
And it's a dirty business because every presidential candidate has to deal with the toxic legacy of the dozens of sordid wars our government has fought abroad — and at home.
The fact is, our democracy is poisoned by the quest for empire. Our nation is not filled chockablock with sober, patriotic democrats. It is packed with the accomplices and victims of empire, millions of people who either participated or suffered in, willfully ignored, or benefited from our non-stop war for empire: soldiers and their families, veterans, bureaucrats, businessmen, ideologues, idiots, and media figures, all of whom hunger for their demons to be fed.
Empire is what we're about. It's what we fight for, and it's what Bush and Kerry are fighting over.
Many voters are just avid voyeurs or disgusted spectators. They don't presume to be arbiters of the no-holds-barred battle ostensibly fought on their behalf.
So I don't think Kerry will get far with a campaign of decency and restraint. He will probably have no choice but to go negative, massively and, if he's smart, pre-emptively.
The charge that he knowingly, callously, abandoned fellow soldiers to lonely deaths in Vietnamese prison camps is easy to make and almost impossible to rebut.
It's time to reframe the debate and unveil our leading election-year asset...George Bush.
For the remainder of the race, the spotlight has to remain upon Bush. Any day that the focus is on Kerry is a bad day. Any time Kerry's candidacy is in the news it will be because it's fighting off right wing attacks.
The Democrats have to be ready to go as far as the right wing in setting the media agenda for the last two months. Big protest marches are nice, but what we need is a blizzard of anti-Bush ads, attacks on Bush by prominent Democrats, lawsuits, innuendo, and anger.
In descending order of importance, credibility, and respectability, we've got Iraq, the deficit, Abu-Ghraib, the Saudi link, the environment, Halliburton, Enron, Texas Air National Guard, Cheney and Ashcroft's serial deferments, Larry Flynt's story about Bush getting his girlfriend an abortion, Bush's alleged emotional instability and reliance on anti-depressants in office ...don't tell me there isn't enough out there.
Kerry is fighting for the crown of empire, not the laurel wreath of democracy. He needs to convince the American people that he has the determination and ruthlessness to tear power from the hands of an amoral, tenacious, but thankfully incompetent adversary.
People must decide to vote for that noble, strong Marcus Aurelius Kerry guy instead of that demented young George W. Caligula.
If Kery can't handle commercials with a sobbing woman claiming that he pushed her husband into a Vietnamese grave and buried him alive; if he can't take the battle to an inept, morally corrupt commander in chief...maybe by the debased standards of our modern republic, Kerry doesn't deserve to be president.
It's been said that Americans get the president we deserve.
Do we ever.
But perhaps it's more accurate to say that we create and applaud presidents who reflect the essence of the nation — or empire — we choose to inhabit.
Dirty work, indeed.
Copyright 2004 Peter Lee
Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.
