Roundup: Media's Take

August 27, 2004

Howell Raines: Bush's Brain ... How Does It Work?

Howell Raines, in the Wash Post (Aug. 27, 2004)We can all recite the lists of ostentatiously brilliant presidents who faltered (Wilson, Hoover, etc.) and apparent plodders who triumphed (Truman). When I was covering the Reagan White House in 1981, all his top aides were wholesaling Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous comment about Franklin Roosevelt's possessing "a second-rat

August 27, 2004

This Is the First Campaign Kerry Has Run on His Military Record

Maria L. La Ganga and Matea Gold, in the LAT (Aug. 22, 2004):... This is the first time in his lengthy political career that the Massachusetts senator has made his military record a central theme. Kerry "learned that the use of his military service was a double-edged sword. Most of the time he tempered it," said University of Massachusetts political scientist Lou DiNatale. "I don't think Kerry's record as a veteran would in any way be at

August 27, 2004

Kerry's Stepped on a Vietnam Time Bomb

Brad Knickerbocker, staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor (Aug. 26, 2004):... Many of Kerry's critics today still burn with resentment over his testimony, which they took to have been an indictment of all Americans who fought in Vietnam. "Kerry's remarks to Fulbright's committee were devastating to everybody who served in Vietnam," says former POW Paul Galanti, who was forced to listen to "Hanoi Hannah" broadcast North Viet

August 27, 2004

The Right of Return? Then There Won't Be a Jewish State

Asaf Romirowsky, at campus watch (Aug. 27, 2004)Middle East specialists in U.S. universities often call for a Palestinian “right of return.” It sounds good, but it has deeply ominous implications. Here’s what those scholars have to say. · Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said professor, Columbia University New York: “a fair, negotiated settlement … must lead to the establi

August 27, 2004

Daniel Henninger: Kerry Should Have Found a Way to Make Peace with His Vietnam Critics Long Ago

Daniel Henninger, in the WSJ (Aug. 27, 2004):... Vietnam may live largely as a textbook abstraction for voters born during or after the years of that war. But for Mr. Kerry's generation--the baby boomers who came of age then--and for their parents, "Vietnam" is a cauldron of memory. The Swift-boat fight is raising the temperature beneath the old cauldron, turning it in

August 27, 2004

Book Review: Unfit for Command

Frank Wilson, book editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer (Aug. 25, 2004):Unfit for CommandSwift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John KerryBy John O'Neill and Jerome E. CorsiRegnery. 216 pp. $27.95Nemesis was the Greek goddess of retribution. Her name has come to be used to designate anyone relentless in the pursuit of vengeance.John O'Neill is John Kerry's nemesis.O'Neill is

August 27, 2004

National Review: The Vets Became Upset When They Read Brinkley's Book

Editorial, in the National Review (Aug. 26, 2004):Speaking on behalf of Vietnam veterans in his Senate testimony on April 22, 1971, John Kerry said, "We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service..." Thirty-three years later, it's clear that his plea fell on deaf ears. Kerry recalls his Vietnam service in virtually every campaign speech he makes. At the Bo

August 25, 2004

Bob Dole's Hypocrisy ... He Got a Purple Heart for Minor Wounds, too

From the Chris Matthews show, "Hardball" (Aug. 23, 2004): MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. We‘re back with Doug Brinkley, Pat Buchanan and Stanley Karnow. Former Republican presidential candidate and World War II veteran Bob Dole today attacked Kerry—yesterday attacked John Kerry on two fronts. Yesterday, he said Kerry was trying to have it both ways on the Vietnam issue. He said, quote, “I mean, one day he‘s saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting o

August 25, 2004

Colonel: Bush Was Never AWOL

U.S. Air Force/Air National Guard Col. William Campenni (retired), in the Wash Times (Aug. 25, 2004): George Bush and I were lieutenants and pilots in the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS), Texas Air National Guard (ANG) from 1970 to 1971. We had the same flight an

August 24, 2004

Kerry's Cambodia Whopper

Joshua Muravchik, in the Wash Post (Aug. 24, 2004): [The writer is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. ] Most of the debate between the former shipmates who swear by John Kerry and the group of other Swift boat veterans who are attacking his military record focuses on matters that few of us have the experience or the moral standing to judge. But one issu

August 24, 2004

David Broder: The Never-Ending Sixties

David Broder, in the Wash Post (Aug. 24, 2004): ...The United States is at war. It is threatened with terrorist attacks. The economy is under stress. And the presidential campaign has been usurped -- by what? An argument among aging boomers about who did what in Vietnam and in the protests against that war. The ferocity of the dispute over John Kerry's Vietnam wounds and dec

August 23, 2004

Walden's Lessons for the News Media

Adam Cohen, in the NYT (Aug. 22, 2004):In his time at Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau periodically returned to Concord, Mass., and when he did, the village seemed to him like a "great news room." After days alone, he found himself surrounded by gossip on all sides, from the idle talk of his neighbors to the frivolous reports in the newspapers. Thoreau was not immune to the appeal

August 22, 2004

Thomas Oliphant: Swift Smears Are Easier Today

Thomas Oliphant, in the Boston Globe (August 22, 2004): I HAVE VIVID memories of John E. O'Neill's first incarnation as an attack dog trained to go after John Kerry more than 33 years ago, using techniques that are quite familiar as he goes about the same task today. Like Kerry, he was a lot younger then, fresh from the war that still raged in Vietnam and still

August 20, 2004

Do Americans Love Dirty Politics?

Lance Gay, in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times (Aug. 18, 2004): Here's a dirty little secret about dirty politics: Americans love it. American voters and TV pundits might talk about high-minded campaigns, but political scientists and historians say it's the political buzz and the horse race that get the blood going. That's why such tactics have been used in campaigns here for two centuries

August 20, 2004

Russia Needs to Apologize for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939

Mart Laar, former prime minister of Estonia, in the WSJ (Aug. 20, 2004):Aug. 23, 1939, sealed the fate of my family. On that day, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, whose secret protocols divided up Central and Eastern Europe between them. Within five years, my grandfather was shot by the Nazis. Two of my great-uncles were sent to Siberian death camps by t

August 19, 2004

Olympics: They Used to Compete in the Nude

Ann Beveridge, in the Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Australia) (Aug. 16, 2004):If the modern Olympic Games ran true to the strict customs of ancient Greece they might well today have been called the "Naked Games". From the early 8th century BC, Olympic athletes competed in the nude.There are indisputable records going back to Athenian philosopher Plato in the 5th century BC and even Homer's Iliad, as well as many explicit drawings that confirm it w

August 19, 2004

First Ladies ... Can They Make the Difference in an Election?

An interview with Professor Myra Gutin, author of The President's Partner: The First Lady in the 20th Century. Her biography of Barbara Bush is scheduled for 2006. Published in the Omaha World-Herald (Aug. 17, 2004):Q. Have there ever been any wives who have blown the chance for their husbands to become president? A. No. It really wasn't until Lady Bird Johnson in 1964 that presidential spouses or candidates for first lady really were seen actively camp

August 19, 2004

It's Time to Junk the Electoral College

Steve Chapman, in the Balt Sun (Aug. 17, 2004):[Steve Chapman is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune Publishing newspaper. His column appears Tuesdays and Fridays in The Sun.]... "If we selected presidents like we select governors, senators, representatives, and virtually every elected official in the United States, Al Gore would have been elected president -- no matter which chads were counted in Florida," notes George C. Edwards I

August 19, 2004

Alan Keyes Plays the Race Card ... Demands Reparations

An editorial by frontpagemag.com (Aug. 19, 2004):The movement to legislate reparations for slavery has a new face: Alan Keyes. In a craven attempt to boost his faltering (read: hopeless) Senate campaign, Keyes said Monday that he would support exempting blacks from all taxation in order to repay the debt America owed them for enslaving their ancestors. Blacks would pay only Social Security taxes under his plan. The Chicago Tribune reported that Keyes j

August 18, 2004

Both Bush and Kerry Share One Thing: Both Lost Their First Race

Maria L. La Ganga, in the LAT (Aug. 16, 2004): They lost at politics at an early age. Since then, they've rarely made the same campaign mistakes twice. Sen. John F. Kerry takes nothing for granted. He doesn't underestimate the power of the media. And he is ready for a fierce fight as an election nears, because he knows that politics generally saves the very worst for the very last. President George W. Bush hasn't let a rival beat him at being a man o