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Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Borking or Swiftboating?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. Sen. John Kerry, determined to go down in history as a victim, cleverly slips his baggage from the 2004 presidential race into this year’s Democratic primary campaign.
In an e-mail to Barack Obama supporters, Kerry re-centers the universe back to his campaign and his conflict with Vietnam veterans who questioned his record there and his anti-war activism back in the states. Wrote Kerry:
“I support Barack Obama because he doesn’t seek to perfect the politics of Swiftboating — he seeks to end it.
“This is personal for me, and for a whole lot of Americans who lived through the 2004 election. As a veteran, it disgusts me that the Swift Boats we loved while we were in uniform on the Mekong Delta have been rendered, in Karl Rove’s twisted politics, an ugly verb meaning to lie about someone’s character just to win an election. But as someone who cares about winning this election and changing the country I love, I know it’s not enough to complain about a past we can’t change when our challenge is to win the future — which is why we must stop the Swiftboating, stop the push-polling, stop the front groups, and stop the email chain smears.
“The truth matters, but how you fight the lies matters even more. We must be determined never again to lose any election to a lie.
“This year, the attacks are already starting. Some of you may have heard about the disgusting lies about Barack Obama that are being circulated by email. These attacks smear Barack’s Christian faith and deep patriotism, and they distort his record of more than two decades of public service. They are nothing short of ‘Swiftboat’ style anonymous attacks.
“These are the same tactics the right has used again and again, and as we’ve learned, these attacks, no matter how bogus, can spread and take root if they go unchecked…”
Kerry is right on one point. Politics can get nasty. I’d trace the modern low not to Kerry’s campaign, but to the politics of abortion — a prime example of which was the 1987 nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. Within an hour of Bork’s nomination by President Ronald Reagan on July 1, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy was on the Senate floor denouncing him in a nationally-televised speech. “Robert Bork’s America,” he said, “is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, school children could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government.”
To “Bork” a nominee is to viciously attack and misrepresent. Bork was a first-rate judge with a brilliant legal mind who should be on the high court today.
It’s a certainty that between now and November, if Obama is the nominee, every campaign statement and charge will be seen through the prism of race. For that reason, free-lance political operatives should find another hobby — a suggestion, since it is free speech. An example is John Garst of Atlanta, co-founder of Rosetta Stone Communications, who launched an automated call network to criticize Atlanta Congressman John Lewis for supporting Hillary Clinton over Obama.
Because Garst is white and because his clients included Republicans (and Democrats, too) his actions were interpreted as fueling “the fight between the two Democratic candidates” and having a “provocative racial subtext.”
Garst, a former candidate for Atlanta City Council, apparently just dislikes the representation Lewis provides and launched the calls on his own.
A standard element of political campaigns now is to represent Republicans (or those who include Republicans as clients) as throwbacks who are trying to supress the black vote. Remember Voter ID?
Incidentally, it’s becoming a standard argument of those inclined to vote Democratic: If we don’t elect Obama President, it’s evidence that America has not moved beyond race. Might his liberalism have something to do with it? Or the policies he espouses? No. To the left, it’s a given that he’s properly positioned on all the issues so, as they see it, the only reason to object to his swearing in is his race. This could get ugly.
