Let old habit die, Dems: Dissing Kerry just cheap grace

[Mass]

I certainly do not agree with his assessment of Kerry (among the bunch that ran, he was clearly the best candidate ), but at least he understands the problem.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3219242

June 9, 2005, 10:54PM
Let old habit die, Dems: Dissing Kerry just cheap grace
By E.J. DIONNE JR.

Democrats have to end their addiction to the Kerry alibi.
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They may be publicly castigating their national chairman, Howard Dean. But wherever two or more Democrats are gathered privately, their instinct is to blame John Kerry first. I am fed up (to borrow Bill Safire's coinage) with the nattering nabobs of negativism who make themselves feel good by trashing Kerry.

This habit is dangerous because dissing Kerry is an easy way for Democrats to evade discussion of what the party needs to do to right itself. By focusing on the past, the Kerry alibi allows Democrats to avoid engaging the future. In 2008, the Democrats could nominate a candidate who combines Harry Truman's toughness, JFK's charm and FDR's gifts of leadership — and still face many of the problems Kerry confronted. Blaming everything on Kerry as the supposedly elitist, stiff and indecisive Massachusetts liberal is the Democrats' version of cheap grace.

Please understand: I didn't think Kerry was the ideal Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 and don't think he'd be ideal for 2008. I still cringe when the part of my brain prone to nightmares brings back his talk about voting for the $87 billion to finance the Iraq war before he voted against it. Kerry didn't find a clear voice on Iraq until too late and didn't respond quickly enough to the scurrilous attacks of the partisan Swift Boat veterans.

But saying Kerry was the Democrats' one and only problem is both an evasion and unfair. The three debates were the only moments in the campaign in which Kerry's fate was entirely in his own hands, and he used them well. Kerry trounced Bush the first time and, I'd argue, beat him in the other two encounters.

<snip>

Dionne is a columnist for the Washington Post.

[Mass]

1. Boston Globe editorial - Kerry's Vietnam

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2005/06/10/kerrys_vietnam/

GLOBE EDITORIAL
Kerry's Vietnam

June 10, 2005

DESPITE THE continuing gripes of his critics, records released this week show that Senator John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam. The documents should put to rest claims that Kerry misrepresented his military record in the presidential race. But Kerry's failure to respond to the smear campaign launched against him last summer lent credibility to its real objective: to impugn his equally honorable opposition to the war.
s

John O'Neill, a Houston lawyer and Kerry's adversary on the war since 1971, acknowledged as much in a telephone interview Wednesday. ''We produced seven commercials," he said of his anti-Kerry group, now called Swift Vets and POWs for Truth. ''Only one dealt with Vietnam activities." O'Neill was incensed by Kerry's memorable testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, in which the young veteran, clad in a combat shirt, criticized the war.

Kerry has said that he may have used a poor choice of words when he cited other veterans' reports of atrocities as being ''in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan." But his basic analysis was sound: Vietnamese and Americans were dying needlessly because the war was a mistake, and US policymakers allowed it to continue even though they were aware that their strategy for victory was failing.

The Swift Boat ads made much of the plight of US pilots captured by the North Vietnamese -- and most were horribly treated by their captors. But these men languished in prison for years in part because the US government failed to follow Kerry's advice to end an unwinnable war.

Still, the ads were successful because Kerry failed to fully rebut them. He needed to release those records during the campaign, when it counted. They would have underscored that there was no inconsistency between serving courageously in the war and drawing on that experience to argue that Americans and Vietnamese should no longer be put at risk.

Perhaps Kerry didn't adequately grasp the ambivalence many Americans still feel about the war, just as many did in the 1960s. George W. Bush, for instance, supported it at Yale, but after graduation he chose reserve duty that kept him out of combat.

O'Neill said he didn't think the election should have hinged on either candidate's war record, and he's right that Bush's choice was typical of many in his generation. It is Kerry's choice that was atypical.

The records Kerry allowed to be released this week show that his commanders in Vietnam called him ''one of the finest young officers with whom I have served," and ''the acknowledged leader of his peer group. " His stand against the war only confirmed these qualities.

[whometense]

2. Sorry, Mass!

I just saw that you'd posted this. Didn't mean to steal your thunder!!

[JohnKleeb]

3. I disagreed with Dionne on that part but hes one of my favorite columnists

to read in the post, along with Richard Cohen and Courtland Milloy. I read that op=ed before I went to class today, I agreed with most of the main points except his personal feelings that Kerry wasnt the best we could have nominated but thats ok, there are many among us who did not intially support Kerry.

[TayTay]

4. That part didn't bother me at all

There are no ideal candidates, after all. Just human ones.

[Dr Ron]

5. Nice take

I was just a little bothered.

John Kerry would be the ideal President.

Maybe Kerry wouldn't be the ideal candidate, but in this age the ideal candidate is a Ronald Reagan. I'll stick with Kerry.

[JohnKleeb]

6. I wasnt bothered

I was like I disagree but right on all the way through. There are no ideal candidates, I agree totally.

[sandnsea]

7. That's excellent

Thanks, gonna go post it at LUTD. Lots of good stuff in there.