The one thing that frustrated me most about the media’s coverage of the 2000 election was the absolute disinterest about Bush’s record of military service, or in this case, lack thereof. Paul Begala once said he did a search comparing how many stories focused on Bill Clinton’s Vietnam draft record vs. Bush’s. I can’t personally vouch for the results, but Begala claims to have found 13,641 stories about Clinton’s alleged draft dodging versus 49 about George W. Bush’s military record. Not exactly a feeding frenzy against the Republican from the “liberal media.”
I realize that in the last election, military service was not at the top of the national political agenda, but Bush was insisting that he offered the nation unique leadership for the armed forces, all the while, condemning Clinton’s military record. The fact remains that Al Gore served in Vietnam, while Bush and Cheney had “other priorities.” It was one of many examples of Bush presenting himself as something he was not.
And yet, the media seemed oddly unconcerned, even as Bush boasted about having “been to war.” Indeed, Bush told the Houston Chronicle that the military trained him because “they could sense I would be one of the great pilots of all time.”
After the scrutiny reporters gave Clinton, I thought Bush deserved equal treatment. Well, it’s about three years too late, but it appears the political journalists are finally recognizing the significance of the story.
Oddly enough, we have Michael Moore to thank.
At a rally in New Hampshire last month, Moore was endorsing Wesley Clark’s presidential campaign. Dreaming of the election match-up in November, Moore said he welcomed the fight between “the general vs. the deserter.”
In the subsequent weeks, the press had a fit over this, repeatedly asking Clark to repudiate Moore’s description. It took its toll on Clark’s momentum in New Hampshire. Suddenly, most of Clark’s media interviews focused on his lack of response to Moore, instead of his campaign message.
The Moore “controversy” seems to have faded, but the media’s reaction has brought a renewed interest in scrutinizing exactly what Bush did or didn’t do while claiming to serve in the National Guard. After years of neglecting the story, all of a sudden, the press is fascinated and coming to realize that Bush may not have been a deserter, but he was definitely AWOL. Better late than never.
The Washington Post, for example, ran an item (on page A8, but I won’t be picky) explaining that Bush’s National Guard service is now “in question.” While the article is entirely too polite and forgiving, it does report accurately that there’s a significant gap in Bush’s record.
A review of Bush’s military records shows that Bush enjoyed preferential treatment as the son of a then-congressman, when he walked into a Texas Guard unit in Houston two weeks before his 1968 graduation from Yale and was moved to the top of a long waiting list.
It was an era when service in the Guard was a coveted assignment, often associated with efforts to avoid active duty in Vietnam. Bush was accepted for pilot training after having scored only 25 percent on the pilot’s aptitude test, the lowest acceptable grade.
In 2000, the Boston Globe examined a period from May 1972 to May 1973 and found no record that Bush performed any Guard duties, either in Alabama or Houston, although he was still enlisted.
According to military records obtained by The Washington Post, Bush first requested and received permission in May 1972 to be transferred to the Alabama National Guard so he could work on a U.S. Senate campaign. After he was in Alabama, he received notice from the Guard personnel center that he was “ineligible” for the Air Reserve Squadron he requested.
In August 1972, Bush was suspended from flying because he failed to complete an annual medical exam. A month later, Bush requested to be assigned to a different unit in Alabama and was approved. Although he was required to attend periodic drills in Alabama, there is no official record in his file that he did.
The Boston Globe, the only paper that researched this at all during the last election, discovered in May 2000 that Bush’s military records show that in his final 18 months of military service in 1972 and 1973, Bush did not fly at all. And for much of that time, Bush was all but unaccounted for: For a full year, there is no record that he showed up for the periodic drills required of part-time guardsmen.
And now, thanks to the attention generated from the Michael Moore flap, the Democrats are going on the offensive.
DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe said over the weekend that he planned to make this a campaign issue this year.
“I look forward to that debate, when John Kerry, a war hero with a chest full of medals, is standing next to George Bush, a man who was AWOL” in the National Guard, McAuliffe said. “George Bush never served in our military in our country,” he said. “He didn’t show up when he should have showed up.”
This has obviously touched a GOP nerve. Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the comments “slanderous” and “despicable.” Terry Holt, spokesman for the Bush campaign, accused McAuliffe of trying to “perpetuate a completely false and bogus assertion.” Holt said, “The president was never AWOL.”
Actually, all indications are the opposite. Bush was AWOL. As an objective matter, he didn’t show up for the Guard duty he won by manipulating family connections to avoid serving in a war. There are no records from anyone, including those Bush allegedly served with, showing that Bush actually did what he claims he did.
And journalists are finally starting to care. In addition to the Post article, there have been items, just in the past week, in the New York Times, USA Today, and the LA Times. The controversy has also generated items about Bush going AWOL in The New Republic, the American Prospect, and from Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift.
And my favorite, of course, was a Newsday column from Eric Alterman, who details exactly how Bush lied, repeatedly, about his military record during the 2000 campaign.
The point isn’t that Bush chose National Guard duty to avoid serving in Vietnam. That, for the most part, is understandable. The problem is Bush chose Guard duty, didn’t show up, then bragged about his non-existent service — and reporters let him get away with it by largely ignoring the matter.
It’s a story that captures almost all of Bush’s biggest flaws all at once: dishonesty, misplaced arrogance, failure to take responsibility, and hypocrisy. The press dropped the ball on this one in 2000. Hopefully, reporters will start making up for lost time.