None Too Swift

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None Too Swift

 

Everyone has a right to free speech. But they don't

have a right to lie, and it's up to editorialists to

call them on it.

 

By Michael Tomasky

Web Exclusive: 08.09.04

 

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Back when Bill Clinton was first running for

president, it was obvious early on that Arkansas would

prove to be a vulnerability. The propagandists of the

right intuited -- correctly and rather ingeniously, it

must be admitted -- that New York and Washington

sophisticates would easily believe that in a hick

state like Arkansas, any sleazy thing could happen and

probably did. Shady land deals, biracial children

fathered out of wedlock, a governor indebted to a

savings & loan huckster -- the national media proved

willing to follow every (false) lead, because, well,

in a backwoods place like that, how could they not be

true? Turned out they weren't, but by the time anyone

knew that, it was too late. The right wing identified

a Clinton weakness -- the fact that he came from a

distant, rural state about which any rumor of

influence-peddling could be easily spread -- and took

full advantage of it.

 

With that in mind, I approached this campaign season

wondering: What can they do to John Kerry? What's his

Arkansas?

 

The answer is, he doesn't have one (or maybe, if he

does, it's his lack of legislative achievement as

senator, but that's not a shortcoming around which the

usual panting conspiracy theories can be spun).

 

But no one ever accused the hitpersons of the right of

not being nimble on their feet, and so, rather than

exploit a perceived Kerry weakness, they're going

straight after his greatest strength. So far, the

mainstream media in general -- and our leading

editorial pages in particular -- are letting them get

away with it. And more importantly, they're letting

the president and his campaign get away with

pretending as if they're distancing themselves from

this smear while in fact they are happily letting it

go on.

 

A lot of the crucial reporting about Swift Boat

Veterans for Truth (SBVT), the group trying to dirty

up John Kerry's Vietnam record in order to neutralize

a great and obvious advantage he has over the

incumbent, has already been done -- by Wayne Slater of

the Dallas Morning News, UPI's Thom J. Rose, Salon's

Joe Conason, and David Brock's Media Matters For

America. So the reporters and editorialists at our

major papers should know, for example, that Pat

Runyon, who was on Kerry's swift boat, says (to

Slater) that an SBVT investigator named Tom Rupprath

interviewed him and then distorted what Runyon said to

presenting a less flattering portrait of Kerry. They

should know also that of the $158,750 the group

declared in its latest IRS filing, fully $150,000 came

from three men -- two Bush and Republican Party

backers in Texas, and longtime Kerry antagonist John

O'Neill. Finally, they should know that virtually none

of the SBVT members actually served with Kerry on his

boat, while 10 of 11 men who did serve with Kerry

fully support the record that has been in existence

for more than 30 years -- the official Defense

Department record that supports Kerry's version of

events and claims to heroism.

 

The story heated up in the middle of last week when

the group started running an ad in three swing states

questioning Kerry’s war record. Shortly thereafter,

John McCain denounced the ads (he was the target of a

similar smear campaign in 2000, which was partly

orchestrated by at least one of the same people --

Merrie Spaeth, who is advising the swift boat group).

McCain called on Bush to denounce the ads. But when

White House spokesman Scott McClellan was asked to do

so, he refused. He said the campaign would not

question Kerry's service, and he deplored the activity

of soft-money backed groups (no surprise, since the

ones with the most money are tied to the other side).

But he pointedly did not denounce the ad, as the AP's

Ron Fournier noted (although one correspondent for one

media outlet did take McClellan's words and, on August

5, interpreted them to their audience as a

condemnation -- Brian Wilson of FOX News).

 

I was not, of course, on the Mekong River, so I don't

personally know the truth of the matter. But we do

know this much. Kerry's record is official and has

been for decades. When it has been challenged in

previous campaigns, the challenges have been

discredited. Now the challenges arise again -- the

seed money to do so put up by big GOP donors from

Texas. And one swift boat mate of Kerry's says an

investigator twisted his words. There may be no gun

here yet, but there's an awful lot of smoke to suggest

that SBVT is lying.

 

And this is where the leading editorial pages come in.

It's the duty of editorial pages to at once

participate in and referee the dogfight that is a

presidential campaign. There are rules here, even in

the realm of electoral politics; and one of them

should be that a group of people can't knowingly

inject outright lies into the dialogue. Whether Bush

did enough to fight terror before September 11, or

whether Kerry could deliver democracy to Iraq, are

matters of interpretation. Kerry's record in Vietnam

is a matter of fact. If people are lying about those

facts, they need to be called on that and sent away.

It is not a matter of these veterans, as The New York

Sun wrote in a mendacious editorial last week,

deserving " the right we all have to speak. " They

obviously have a right to speak. They don't have a

right to lie (and they, not Kerry, have the burden of

proving that what they say is true).

 

Only the leading editorial pages have the power to

enunciate this standard. And so far, neither The New

York Times nor The Washington Post has chosen to use

that power. Only the Los Angeles Times has

editorialized that Kerry's " war record " is not " fair

game. " The country's two most important papers should

follow suit. They should demand that Bush denounce the

ad and declare that the standard has to be higher than

this. They're not strangers to such practices; on

February 5, The Washington Post's editorial page

criticized Wesley Clark for not having criticized

Michael Moore's use of the word " deserter " to describe

President Bush while Moore was speaking at a Clark

event.

 

Early next week, Unfit for Command, a book by John

O'Neill, will hit the stores. It's already #1 on

Amazon as a result of a Matt Drudge plug and the

attendant media flurry. The ads running in the three

swing states will no doubt spread to more battleground

states. A lie can get halfway around the world before

the truth puts its pants on, as the old saying goes.

It's time for our civic referees to suit up.

 

Michael Tomasky is executive editor of The American

Prospect.

2004 by The American Prospect, Inc.

Preferred Citation: Michael Tomasky, " None Too Swift " ,

The American Prospect Online, Aug 9, 2004. This

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