Sunday, August 22, 2004
Phase Two
You were waiting for this, weren't you?0 comments
These guys are sooooo damned predictable, you can set your watch to them.
I know, You were already thinking the RNC would come out with this if the Not-Too-Swift Vets couldn't last a second cycle, or if—God forbid!—John Kerry actually fought back and scuttled this great ad campaign. Through four generations of rich political privilege, the Bush Team ALWAYS has had a fall-back plan. (Remember, Gov. Jeb Bush was about to call the Florida Legislature back into special session if the Florida Supreme Court actually pronounced Al Gore the winner, so that they could toss out all the Florida Electors and name an entirely different slate.)
And many people in and out of Kerry's campaign have anticipated that this would be the backup topic: Kerry's VVAW service and his testimony before Congress.
OK, boys and girls:
Welcome to Phase Two!
WP: Dole: Kerry Should Apologize / Former Senator Dole Suggests Kerry Should Apologize for Congressional Testimony About Vietnam War Atrocities
If we're about to start looking backwards, we suggest that Bob Dole apologize to the wife he walked out on and the daughter he abandoned along the way in his ambitious-but-failed quest for the White House, before he attempts to grab the moral high ground and begins distorting the truth about anyone else's actions.
The really striking aspect to the Bush/RNC's rolling out of Phase Two is that they're actually using historically loyal, but tired, old hatchet man Bob Dole to sound like the Voice of Combat Brotherhood Scorned. Unfortunately, Sen. Bob comes across merely sounding like an old scold.
The problem for the Republicans here is two-fold:
The first lies in the fact that Sen. Bob has awfully dirty hands: a gloriously spotty past of his own, filled with a long history of being a frontline RNC attack dog, a long reputation for foresaking his constituents' needs in favor of openly working corporate donors for campaign funds, a taker and broker of illegal campaign contributions while Chairman of the RNC, who has knowingly and willingly utilized smear campaigns to feed his own voracious political ambition.
As a funny sidelight to all this, it was Bob Dole who screamed at a reporter about Shrub's daddy, George H. W. Bush, "Tell him (Bush) to stop lying about my record!" during the 1976 Republican primaries. So he was an early target of the "Bush Touch" long before John McCain, Max Cleland and John Kerry felt it.
Now he's simply too old to be a main player. But it sure must feel great to Dole to be back in the game again, even as a role player.
Ironic, isn't it? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
The second problem for the Bush White House in using Dole in this role is the fact that he served in a real war with real enemies attacking, enslaving and killing millions of real people around the world. His war wounds were from enemy fire in Italy in 1943, as he attempted—like Kerry—to save a comrade who'd been wounded. Like Kerry, Dole served his country with distinction, as opposed to George W. Bush, who served out his hitch falling off bar stools, driving impaired and avoiding pissing in a cup.
But during the Sixties and Seventies, Sen. Bob may have spent a tad too much time sitting in the Senate, planning for having a failed, embarrassing shot at the White House of his own some day.
I think maybe he missed what was going on during those years when Robert McNamara talked Lyndon Johnson into creating "His Own Private Ia Drang".
You see, Sen. Bob never fought in a war which had no purpose—that had only a spiffy ad campaign and a ton of administration public relations sizzle and bad planning behind it. Rather like where we find ourselves today, in fact.
He never had to come back and explain to people how his conflict was tattering the very moral fiber of the men and women stuck having to "save" a citizenry who sided with the "enemy" (who wasn't really an enemy of the U.S., as we later found out) or who didn't feel all that committed to saving themselves—particularly as long as the U.S. continued to fight for the privileges of their side in what was essentially a civil war.
Now, the Democrats will have to think very hard and very seriously about how to answer this scurrilous attack by Sen. Bob.
How about rolling out Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI)? Also someone from "the Greatest Generation", but one who paid attention during the fight to end the Vietnam War.
posted by Gotham 8:49 PM
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