Parsery
Thanks to Bill Clinton for providing the latest abuse of the so-called swiftboating concept. At a postal worker’s convention on Monday (emphasis mine):
“We listened to people make snide comments about whether Vice President Gore was too stiff,” Mr. Clinton said, “and when they made dishonest claims about the things that he said that he’d done in his life. When that scandalous Swift boat ad was run against Senator Kerry.”
“Why am I saying this?” he continued. “Because I had the feeling that at the end of that last debate we were about to get into cutesy land again.”
I don’t even want to talk about the Clinton Co-Presidency v.2.0 and all the finger-wagging bluster we’re fixing to go through again with him and the wife; I just want to point out, again, that the idea of swiftboating is bogus. It is, by dint of the liberal media’s efforts, becoming some sort of term used to describe unfair and unsubstantiated political attacks —presumably of only one kind: Rethuglikkkan on Democrat. But the term and the concept both are an abuse of common sense.
This is a political culture in which political criticisms of our leaders are a necessity. They are what happen in campaigns and in the constant struggle to oppose the other. The right to define and fight and politick are fundamental to our system. When Democrats demonize the Swift Boat Veterans for exercising their right to tell the public what kind of sailor John Kerry was —as they knew him to be— it is distasteful in the extreme. Where in their ads (and there were many ads, Mr. President) were the lies? The Kerrion never explained. Never have explained that —even though I note today that Kerry is again boasting that he has every letter of his absolute defense against their criticisms —criticisms, mind you— all laid out and ready to roll. And just a scant three years after the first time it was necessary but, as we knew even then, impossible.
They use the word swiftboat —but it doesn’t mean what they think it means.
I say it was the trauma of 2004. The Democrats were so crushed at Kerry’s loss that they’ve consoled themselves ever since on the lie that he was unfairly portrayed by some particular sort of politics. Some very shadowy and unknowable thing that exists outside of natural laws —like Karl Rove. But there was nothing diabolical about it, folks. And it is wrong to use a buzzword like swiftboating to suggest otherwise.
