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I'm launching a major investigation into whether the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth organization is being secretly financed by the Kerry campaign. For today that organization begins airing ads drawing attention to John Kerry's 1971 testimony against the Vietnam War.
If voters see that testimony, they will see a young man arguing passionately for a cause. They will see a young man willing to take risks and boldly state his beliefs. Whether they agree or not, they will see in John Kerry a man of conviction. Many young people, who don't have an emotional investment in endlessly refighting the conflicts of the late 1960's, might take a look at that man and decide they like him. They might not realize that man no longer exists. |
Point A: Interesting thought that to young voters, the images of him standing up for what he believes might help, not hurt, his campaign. When put this way, it seems so obvious its hard to se ewhy I missed it. I guess its a case of knowing too much about history perhaps?
Point B: Brooks nails the one thing I don't like about Kerry. When he speaks, you just never get the sense that he deeply cares about anything. That's not a new observation, of course, I just like the way he describes it here.
Why then am I wholeheartedly supporting him? Simple. I'd rather vote for a man who supports the right ideas for the wrong reasons than someone who supports fatally flawed ideas for reasons I can only barely understand.
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"Authenticity" was such a big concept then. Nobody would accuse the current John Kerry of that. In fact, the Democratic convention dwelt obsessively on the period in his life when Kerry was authentic, so it could evade the last 20 years of rising inautheticity.
In short, he's not the flaming liberal the Republicans sometimes try to portray. He's not flaming anything. If today's Kerry had been called before that 1971 Senate committee, he would have prudently told the throngs that he was for the goals of the war but against the implementation, for the idea but against the timing, for the troops but against this nuance and that nuance and the other one. Nobody accomplishes much in politics without consuming ambitions, but sometimes they are changed along the way. |
Ouch.
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