Misguided

Bob Kerrey writes a nice op-ed today in the Washington Post in which he lays out an excellent case for why Kerry will make a good commander in chief, regardless of his Vietnam service — his longstanding committment to veterans.

He opens with a point that is quite obvious and should be hammered home:

The former Navy personnel who are attempting to discredit Sen. John Kerry’s record of service in Vietnam are doing so to argue that he is unqualified to be commander in chief. Most appear to be angry with him on account of his opposition to the Vietnam War, not his service in it. They have done a better job of damaging the reputation of the U.S. Navy than they have of damaging John Kerry.

Yes indeed. Unfortunately, being Bob Kerrey, he is congenitally unable to keep himself from from pretending to be a “maverick,” even when it makes no sense, so he ends up with this:

I was going to end this by calling on President Bush to join McCain in calling for the cessation of this misguided effort to discredit Kerry’s service in Vietnam. But fair is fair. There are just as many misguided ads running against President Bush today by these “527” organizations. Unless our campaign finance laws are changed again, U.S. voters are just going to have to figure this one out on their own.

Oh, he must be talking about the misguided 527 ad in which a bunch of businesspeople who hate George W. Bush because of his politics imply that he personally bilked millions from small investors in one of his business ventures back in the 80’s. They say they worked with him, but actually they were just working in Texas at the same time. And even though they have no direct knowledge that he did it, and there is no record of it anywhere, they are sure he must have because he believes in tort reform and a couple of Democratic plaintiff’s lawyers who’ve had it in for him for years say it’s so. They’ve all come forward now for the first time because they believe in our system and they don’t think a fraud and a cheat should be trusted with the US treasury. Oh yes, and it’s financed by Barbra Streisand and Siegfried and Roy, who paid for similar ads calling Bush a pedophile back in 2000. The main spokeman is the man Bush beat for head cheerleader at Andover.

I haven’t actually seen that ad nor have I seen the accompanying media frenzy in which the mediawhores bring on the former cheerleader to claim repeatedly that “many people saw him taking the money right out of grandma Millies purse”, while Bush’s spokespeople struggle to get them to explain why there is not one shred of documentary evidence to back up the claims and not one person who said anything at the time. I’m sure I just missed it when I went out for groceries.

Yes, the Democrats also just make stuff up out of whole cloth. Both sides should be ashamed of themselves. Bob Kerrey is certainly right about that.