The biggest Kerry mystery has yet to be solved. Indeed, I’m not sure anyone has spent much time on it at all. What began as an amusing meme when John And By The Way I Served In Vietnam Kerry first began his bid for the Democratic nomination, his habit of referring to his Vietnam service was more an amusing sidebar than a central question. Who would have ever guessed he would have used it as a foundation for his presidential campaign?
Today, as his tales of bravery and travels in Cambodia are being disassembled across the blogosphere and by the men he served with, and his campaign tries to stop the implosion of his credibility with artless posturing, legal maneuvers and support from media co-conspirators…
There remains a fundamental problem with the absurd – even bizarre – decision to make his Vietnam experience the central underpinning of his qualifications for commander In chief – it simply makes no sense. Conventional wisdom holds that America failed in Vietnam. Jeez, John. Wouldn’t have it have been more logical to tie your commander in chief credentials to a war you helped win?
It’s not as though Kerry played a pivotal role in winning a serious engagement, storming a pillbox or fending off a seige. His military accomplishments seem to consist of little more than dispatching a fleeing Viet Cong and fishing a crewmate out of the drink.
I dislike conspiracy theories, but is everyone absolutely sure this guy’s not a Rove operative?
Wouldn’t have it have been more logical to tie your commander in chief credentials to a war you helped win?
But Vietnam *is* a war he helped win. Think about it.
I think that’s the genesis of the strategy: it’s two-edged. The (simple and simple-minded) folks of the heartland can identify with LTjg Kerry, brave boat skipper who served in Vietnam – thus he wins the trust of anyone he can peel away from Bush. But what he did after his active service and what effect it had, well, that’s the wink toward the NoWar contingent. Emphasize the first to conservatives, broadly speaking, and the second to liberals, ditto. Either way he gets points, or at least I believe that was the theory. But trying to have it both ways is dangerous, as the campaign is now realizing.
True enough and a strategy that is rather obvious – but also so incredibly stupid it’s amazing that someone in his campaign didn’t sit everyone down and point out where it was likely to lead – mainly, directly to his damning and false testimony against fellow veterans.
That should have been a deal breaker. It wasn’t. And there’s no sign they were prepared for it, based on the disorganization of his campaign in answering the charges of the swift boat vets.