It sounded like the White House was bringing a resolution to a controversy. Releasing payroll records from 1972 and 1973, which up until recently Bush aides said didn’t exist, press secretary Scott McClellan explained that the documents “clearly show that the president fulfilled his duties.”
Apparently, he’s the only one who thinks so.
As the Post’s Dan Froomkin noted:
* Charlie Gibson said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” today, the subject “seems to be consuming Washington.”
* Terry Moran of ABC News says the release “did not quiet the controversy.”
* Anchor Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News said: “The White House hoped to settle it all today, but instead it may have reignited.”
* This morning on CBS’s “Early Show,” Bill Plante said: “The problem for the White House is that these documents don’t actually prove Mr. Bush showed up on the dates for which he was paid, and so far no one has come forward to say that they have served with him, leaving the president on the defensive.”
In any case, McClellan’s spin certainly isn’t true. As Eric Boehlert explained, “[T]he records, rather than providing definitive answers, only highlight clear, unexplained gaps in Bush’s service.”
And as for whether or not Bush is fulfilling his pledge to release all of his service records to prove that he met his responsibilities to the National Guard, Josh Marshall explained that Bush clearly is not keeping his word.
The idea here is that the president waives his rights under the Privacy Act and tells the relevant authorities, ‘Release all my service records to whichever reporters or organizations want to see them.’
But he just refuses to do it.
The payment records out today do give some evidence of what the president was doing during the year in question. But to say they raise further questions is something of an understatement.
It’s long been known, for instance, that in the late spring of 1973, Bush’s commanding officers in Texas reported that they couldn’t write an evaluation of him because “he has not been observed” at the base in Houston. That didn’t raise any red flags because, though, because they believed he was then serving in Alabama.
Yet these new records seem to say that Bush actually was doing drills in Houston.
In fact, as the Washington Post notes, on the very day that his commanding officers were writing that he hadn’t been seen on base — May 2, 1973 — these new payment records say he was actually on base logging in hours.
Go figure.
The president could clear this up by just authorizing the release of all his service records like he said he would. Now we’re on to day three. But he still won’t do it.
In the meantime, Kevin Drum noted that Bush still can make this whole mess go away fairly easily, assuming the president served as he claims.
There are at least two good reasons to be skeptical about Bush’s story: (1) some of it simply doesn’t add up and (2) he has refused to release his entire military record. Considering the trouble it’s causing, why would he do that unless there were something awfully embarrassing in there?
Bottom line: if Bush’s story is really true, he can put a stop to all this speculation instantly by simply ordering all the relevant archives to release his entire record, warts and all. Why won’t he?
Even the paper of record — the New York Times — seems to be tiring of the White House’s evasions.
If President Bush thought that his release of selected payroll and service records would quell the growing controversy over whether he ducked some of his required service in the Air National Guard three decades ago, he is clearly mistaken. The payroll records released yesterday document that he performed no guard duties at all for more than half a year in 1972 and raise questions about how he could be credited with at least 14 days of duty during subsequent periods when his superior officers in two units said they had not seen him….
The issue is not whether Mr. Bush, like many sons of the elite in his generation, sought refuge in the Guard to avoid combat in Vietnam. The public knew about that during the 2000 campaign. Whether Mr. Bush actually performed his Guard service to the full is a different matter. It bears on presidential character because the president has continually rejected claims that there was anything amiss about his Guard performance during the Alabama period. Mr. Bush himself also made the issue of military service fair game by posturing as a swashbuckling pilot when welcoming a carrier home from Iraq. Now, the president needs to make a fuller explanation of how he spent his last two years in the Guard.
I’m glad the Times put it this way, because it demonstrates why this entire controversy still matters.
I’ve received a few emails from people wondering why I’d care so much about events that occurred 30 years ago, especially since many political leaders I support (i.e., Clinton) also avoided service in Vietnam, just as Bush did.
It should be painfully obvious, but since the White House and its allies have done everything possible to twist this mess into something it’s not, I guess it warrants explanation.
I don’t care if Bush served in Vietnam, the National Guard, the Boy Scouts, or none of the above. None of that matters, especially decades after the fact. Even if Bush used family connections to get into the Guard, it’s irritating, but it’s hardly worth serious attention (though I would expect intellectually honest people to criticize Bush for this as much as they criticized Clinton for pulling as many strings as possible to avoid the war himself).
The reason this matters to me is it reflects Bush’s honesty and sense of responsibility, or as the Times editorial put it, “character.”
Bush claims to have served in the National Guard and done his duty. His “autobiography” explains that this service taught him valuable life lessons that he’s applied ever since. Indeed, Bush has made his “military background” a campaign issue when he got in the cockpit of that jet and used the USS Lincoln for a photo-op last year.
If Bush’s claims about his service, stemming years, are false, then he’s lying about a critically significant part of his career and the public has a right to consider its significance. If there’s reason to believe Bush failed to meet his responsibilities to the government and the military — and there is — the president should be asked to explain why he’s deceived so many people for so long.
The White House is treating this as pesky trivia, a manufactured controversy that should be ignored. And yet, Bush and his aides refuse to take simple steps to release the information that would exonerate the president and silence his critics. Which, in turn, makes me even more curious about why Bush refuses to keep his word about releasing “all” of the relevant records.
These are reasonable questions that deserve answers. Until the White House decides to come clean and tell the truth, the controversy won’t, and shouldn’t, go away.