One of the primary, but utterly useless, arguments from the Bush campaign lately is that John Kerry, more than 30 years ago, told a college newspaper that troops should be sent around the world at the directive of the United Nations. Kerry had just returned from Vietnam and he was angry. He certainly doesn’t believe that anymore, and after 34 years, the comment has zero relevance to this year’s presidential campaign.
And yet, the Bush campaign keeps talking about it.
For example, during the VP debate this week, Dick Cheney noted that Kerry’s record “goes back to the 1970s when he ran for Congress the first time and said troops should not be deployed without U.N. approval.” And, as Matt Yglesias noted yesterday, Bush mentioned it in his “significant speech” this week:
“When my opponent first ran for Congress, he argued that American troops should be deployed only at the directive of the United Nations.”
Is this where the campaign should go? Kerry in ’72 vs. Bush in ’72? If so, I can think of a few additions that could be made to Kerry’s stump speech. While Kerry was wrong about empowering the U.N., it seems to me Bush was doing some things at the time that were even more interesting.
Let’s see, in 1972, Kerry was a decorated war hero running for Congress. Bush, meanwhile, was a poor student with a drinking problem and a criminal record who was failing to show up for his National Guard duty.
Is this directly relevant to the 2004 presidential campaign? No, but it’s as least as significant as some foolish comment Kerry made to a college newspaper in 1970.
Yglesias captured the problem with Bush’s criticism perfectly:
This is a bit rich coming from a candidate who brushed off allegations that he was a cocaine addict at the time with the argument that “when I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible.” Is that a flip-flop on the advisability of blow? Not to mention the whole fraught issue of what, exactly, Bush was up to during the early 1970s while thousands of American conscripts were dying in a war Lt. Bush supported but couldn’t be bothered to fight. He’s really a repugnant individual. He’s got a bit of a character problem, I would say.