[A]ny day in which Bush’s National Guard service is the dominant news story is a lost day for the Kerry campaign, since it’s a day Kerry can’t talk about the things that can improve his chances of winning, like Bush’s atrocious record in office. (Which, for whatever reason, voters still don’t know nearly enough about.)<\/p>\n
[…]<\/p>\n
The media can only handle so many stories at once, and Kerry’s message is the one likely to be lost. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I think this is largely right. And it’s surprisingly problematic.
\n
\nI understand the current media dynamic. Journalists know they spent way<\/i> too much time broadcasting the Swiftboat Hacks’ lies all over the news, lending credence to attacks that had no basis in reality. Now, the press seems to believe it’s only fair to have the pendulum swing back the other way and give Bush’s service record another look in light of the attacks on Kerry.<\/p>\n
But as Scheiber points out, this is a distraction Kerry can’t afford. Consider the news the last three days: the 1,000th death in Iraq, the largest deficit in the history of the world, terrorism in Jakarta, Dick Cheney’s politics of fear, etc. All of these developments make Bush look horrible, just a week after his convention. The daily news should be a bounce-killer in the polls, as reality highlights what a failure Bush’s presidency is.<\/p>\n
And then there’s the AWOL story about Bush 32 years ago. It’s not Kerry’s message, and more importantly, it takes away attention from Kerry’s message.<\/p>\n
I believe, however, that there may be a way to make this story work. <\/p>\n
The AWOL scandal has two facets — one is Bush’s Guard service (or lack thereof), the other is Bush’s defense of his service. The first part is devastating but largely irrelevant to the public. In the early 1970s, George W. Bush was a lost man with a substance abuse problem and a criminal record. He abused family connections to avoid Vietnam, joined the National Guard, and didn’t show up. Does it reflect well on a commander-in-chief that he dodged his military responsibilities in a time of war? Of course not. Are voters really concerned about it? Apparently not.<\/p>\n
The second part, however, may be the key. Bush didn’t do his duty during in Vietnam, but he’s lied a lot about it since<\/i>. Over the last four years, Bush has said he fulfilled his Guard responsibilities (he didn’t), that he “saw war” (he didn’t), that he served in Air Force (he didn’t), that he earned his way into the Guard (he didn’t), that he showed up for duty in Alabama (he didn’t), that he continued to fly after transferring out of Texas (he didn’t), that he made up his missed drills (he didn’t), that he reported for duty at a Massachusetts Guard unit as required (he didn’t), and that he’s already released his full military service record to the media (he didn’t). <\/p>\n
In other words, young<\/i> Bush shirked his duties in 1972, but President<\/i> Bush lied about having shirked his duties in 2004.<\/p>\n
It doesn’t do much good to ask, as Terry McAuliffe did yesterday, when Bush will “come clean” about his military service. Bush won’t and it’s off-message anyway. It’s more important to tie Bush’s deceptions into a broader pattern — Bush didn’t tell the truth about the Iraqi threat, he didn’t tell the truth about creating jobs, he didn’t tell the truth about balancing the budget, he didn’t tell the truth about having a criminal record, he didn’t tell the truth about serving his country, and so on.<\/p>\n
Voters may not care about what young Bush did in 1972. Fine. But voters may care that their president is still lying to this day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For years, all I wanted was the mainstream media to show the same scrutiny towards Bush’s military service record that it showed towards Bill Clinton’s (and later, John Kerry’s). It seemed painfully obvious that Bush hadn’t met his responsibilities — indeed, it appears he never even showed up for part of his duties — and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}