http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16483
Wed, 2.25.04
Bush's slash-and-burn surrogates
Executive M.O.: stay above fray while GOP henchmen do dirty work
By E.J. Dionne, Jr.
Washington Post Writers Group
WASHINGTON --
"When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible."
That was George W. Bush's brilliant dodge throughout the 2000 campaign
whenever questions came up as to how he behaved during his 20s and
early 30s.
By poking fun at himself, Bush was winking at the press corps,
especially the baby boomers among them.
Bush's unspoken subtext:
You guys did a lot of irresponsible things then, too, so you're not in
an ideal position to ask me a lot of questions, are you?
Now comes John Kerry as the Democrats' front-runner.
When Kerry was young and serious, he was young and serious.
He put away childish things early on.
He served in combat in Vietnam and decided that the war was a terrible
mistake.
He helped organize Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
He testified before a congressional committee and went on "Meet the
Press."
He ran unsuccessfully as an antiwar candidate for Congress.
And, lo, because Kerry took life so seriously so young, his 20s are
getting a thorough going-over.
Right-wing Web sites post and even manufacture pictures of Kerry with
or near Jane Fonda at antiwar events.
Kerry's enemies are parsing every word he spoke in those days.
Which makes one ask:
If Kerry's 20s and early 30s are destined to be an issue in this
campaign, is it fair for the media to give the same years in Bush's
life a pass just because he's the incumbent?
To paraphrase John Edwards, will we have two standards, one for a
Democratic challenger and one for a Republican president?
The Bush campaign, of course, is leaving the brutal stuff to
surrogates.
Formally, Bush's apparatus is focusing on Kerry's record in the
Senate, especially his votes on intelligence and military spending.
Isn't that fair game?
What's forgotten is that Bush has a pattern throughout his political
career of staying above the fray while others tear his opponents to
shreds.
The Republicans are trying to weave a clear narrative about Kerry.
The above-the-surface part is about his voting record, which Kerry
will, indeed, have to defend.
The below-the-surface part will paint him as a
Vietnam-peacenik-Massachusetts-liberal weirdo.
The template has already been used by Bush's campaign, on Sen. John
McCain, another Vietnam hero, in South Carolina during the 2000
Republican primaries.
Here is how The Houston Chronicle reported one episode in its Feb. 4,
2000, edition.
A dispatch from Sumter, S.C., began:
"George W. Bush prompted an attack Thursday from military heroes,
activists and a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman on rival John
McCain's voting record on veterans and POW/MIA issues. Bush himself
refused to criticize McCain but stood alongside the veterans' activist
who made the attacks.
"'He came home. He forgot us,' J. Thomas Burch Jr., chairman of the
National Vietnam & Gulf War Veterans Coalition said of McCain, who
spent nearly six years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam before
his elections to the U.S. House and Senate from Arizona.
"McCain dismissed the attack as 'foolishness' brought on by Bush's
19-point loss to McCain on Tuesday in New Hampshire and a new poll
showing McCain with a five-point lead over Bush in South Carolina."
Note that Bush "stood alongside" while someone did the attacking for
him.
And so it was over the weekend, when the Republicans hauled out Sen.
Saxby Chambliss of Georgia to attack Kerry's voting record on military
issues.
This was the same Chambliss who received numerous student deferments
and a 1-Y medical deferment during Vietnam.
That did not stop him from going after then-incumbent Sen. Max Cleland
in the 2002 Georgia Senate race for allegedly being soft on national
security.
One Chambliss ad used pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden
to make its point.
Cleland, now a Kerry supporter, lost both of his legs and an arm in a
grenade explosion in Vietnam.
Nothing so ignites Democrats as memories of what Chambliss did to
Cleland.
"I don't know what ... these Republicans who didn't serve in any war
have against those of us who are Democrats who did," Kerry said on
Saturday.
And he issued a challenge to Bush:
"If you want to debate the Vietnam era, and the impact of our
experiences on our approaches to presidential leadership, I am
prepared to do so."
Maybe it's all a clever trap by the Bush campaign to move the
presidential debate to matters of national security.
But if the past is any guide, it's better to force Bush to take
responsibility for his whole campaign, overt and not-so-overt, than to
let him float above it all while his surrogates slash and burn.
Just ask John McCain.
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Georgie's got no place to hide.
Harry
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