Let’s get the meaning of ‘swiftboating’ clear

September 14, 2006

Yesterday, we talked about VoteVets.org’s new ad in Virginia on Sen. George Allen’s (R) vote against updated body armor for troops in Iraq. The New York Times’ new political blog, The Caucus, had a pretty good item about the commercial, but included an offhand reference that needs to be corrected.

A group known as VoteVets.org just put up a negative ad against Senator George Allen, Republican of Virginia, and it strikes right at the heart of the body armor issue that had confronted soldiers in Iraq. It shows Pete Granato, an Army reservist who served in Iraq, firing an AK-47 “the rifle of choice for terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan” into what he calls Vietnam-era body armor provided to some of the soldiers in Iraq.

The tough ad points to a Senate vote in 2003 by Mr. Allen, against a Democratic amendment aimed at providing $1 billion more for National Guard and Reserve equipment. Mr. Allen’s Democratic opponent, James Webb, is a Vietnam veteran who served as Navy Secretary under President Ronald Reagan. […]

[R]ight now flying around the Web, promises a new ad cycle during which soldiers on the Democrats’ side will swift-boat Republicans. (emphasis added)

I realize “swiftboat,” as a verb, has taken on a couple of different meanings, but this isn’t one of them.

Initially, “swiftboating” referred specifically to false and malicious attacks on a veteran’s military service (see Kerry, John and Cleland, Max). Slowly the word took on a more general meaning. It lost the military-specific connotation and started to refer to any bogus smear campaign, usually against a Democrat. If the right-wing went after someone with trumped up lies, he or she had been “swiftboated.”

But the NYT’s blog gets it wrong here by suggesting any criticism relating to the military somehow qualifies for the label. It doesn’t (or, at least, shouldn’t).

The fact of the matter is Allen did vote against the body-armor proposal. VoteVets.org didn’t make up some baseless charge the way the Swiftboat Vets did in 2004; VV created an ad based on an actual vote. Put another way, swiftboating is supposed to refer to lies; this ad is true.

The danger is that the word will lose its legitimate meaning if reporters and others start misusing it in this way. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ken Mehlman starting using the word, accusing Dems of swiftboating Bush for one reason or another.

And thus concludes the New York Times’ etymological lesson for the day.

Leave it to the New York Times to get it wrong to benefit the Republicans.

  • The problem for Ken is that Republican’ts already use Swiftboat as a verb to describe “telling a truth about an opponent”. They can hardly publicly plan to swiftboat Democrats this campaign season then turn around and complain that VV has swiftboated Allen.

    We like to think that swiftboating is lying. Republican’ts think swiftboating is telling the truth. So, logically, no Republican’t can complain about being swiftboated, while we can.

  • The problem here is that they both refer to something military. For a public with a 15 second attention span it is easy to get confused. Now if Allen had voted for the amendment and produced evidence to refute the ad and still VV.org went after him until the truth became irrelevent that would be swiftboating.

  • “VoteVets.org didn’t make up some baseless charge….”

    That’s because they’re behind the times. Ever since Rove arrived on the scene (see comments on Ann Richards’s death) there are no longer any rules, except, for now, those prohibiting bodily assassination of opponents.

    Big-lie swiftboating, torture … the Bush Crime Family is a wonder, isn’t it?

  • i’m doin’ alot of ‘splainin’ lately. this is the last one for today:

    swiftboating is when a republican drops a baby ruth candy bar in the pool, then sits back and watches as the crowd of democrats scratch and crawl over each others backs gettin’ out of the way.

    it doesn’t work the other way. a dem drops it in our pool we just scoop it out and throw it back. and it’s like they’ve never seen that play and commence to scratchin’ and clawin’ all over again.

    no, i don’t know how or why it works that way.

  • #4 Ed: what Rove comments re Richards? I must have missed them and don’t have time to look them up.

    Thanks!

  • HERE ED’S COMMENT ON ANN RICHARDS:

    Ann Richards was the first to experience the Karl Rove treatment (abuse), in 1988. Prior to that, creeps like Nixon’s Murray Chotiner may have been slimy, but they stuck pretty much to the truth, coupled with innuendo (e.g., “Is Voorhis pink?”). Rove has made an art of relentlessly practicing Goebbels’s “big lie” — concoct a way-below-the-belt” unimaginable lie, then blast that lie relentlessly throughout the campaign.

    Chotiner used to tell GOP campaign managers “You don’t enter a campaign in order to win. You enter it to so destroy your opponent that he will never raise his political head again.” That was hardly benign, but at least it stuck pretty much to world of reality. Rove, beginning with Ann Richards, has put us forever into the world of vicious make-believe and Goebbels’s “big lie”. God knows how many good people, like Ann, have been turned off by politics of Rove’s making. What a legacy.

    SPEAKING OF THE ISSUE OF TRUTH:
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/14/101924/679#c103

  • “Put another way, swiftboating is supposed to refer to lies; this ad is true”

    You’re forgetting that we are still part of the “reality-based community”. Republicans are not bound by the laws of what is true or false. Jeesh!

  • Hoisted by their own petard.

    I’m sorry I just have to laugh at them, they deserve to be mocked. I guess what is good for the goose is not good for the gander.

  • Isn’t this why the NYT’s is using the word in this way? To undermine a valid criticism by Democrats? It won’t, however, ever be used to describe any Republican attacks, because that would not only suggest that the current charges aren’t true, but the original Swift Boat Vet charges as well. You can only make that claim when shooting down accurate ads.

    Fiends, not fools. If they were this incompetent, they’d screw up in our favor every now and then.

  • Let’s not forget that the exact truth is somewhat irrelevant. Not that it doesn’t matter, but it’s irrelevant. Call attack ads whatever you want. They work, and Dems better use them and use them relentlessly. This one is a gem and everyone should send them $10 so they can hammer more Republicans with it.

    By the time the truth can be proven, the election is over. Kerry probably didn’t fight back because he thought “that’s a lie and everyone will figure that out for themselves”. Of course it stuck long enough to make him pay dearly.

    We need to keep pounding the crap out of the Republicrooks any way possible, and if someone takes exception to it just pound them some more. Want to talk about armor? Sit down, here’s a list of things we can talk about…

    The Times will always fear the bloggers, who are the only force that can make them look like crap whenever they screw up, and they probably hired people to blog who don’t “get” blogging. I expect them to get a lot more things wrong before they learn to live like bloggers, in a world that requires that you tell the truth, issue proper corrections, or get hammered.

  • Swiftboating, though it has several wrong definitions on the web, clearly refers to:

    1) Attacking a candidate’s military credentials

    2) Using counter-presentations by OTHER VETERANS

    3) Who claim to have firsthand knowledge,

    4) Which, after examination of long-before STATED facts (such as that provided by the military after its investigations for award decisions),

    5) Is WRONG.

    Fog of war attacks on veterans is a staple of American politics going back famously to the regular exposure of William Henry Harrison’s cowardice under fire, and before surely. ‘Swiftboating’ has nothing on those previous examples — the endless attacks on JFK’s PT109 heroics are another obvious example.

    That these attacks are being paid for by chickenhawks; that veterans would accept money to attack a brother in arms; that the media would foster such internecine destruction of esprit d’corps during war (and to prop up a traitor and warcriminal who is clearly the worst C-in-C the country has ever had) — these are just the absurdities, piled on top of the mass murder.

    They do not change the obvious definition.

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