Republican meddlers tilt at Kerry and Obama

[BlackJack8324]

August 15, 2004

BY WILLIAM O'ROURKE


Alan Keyes and the swift boat vets supporting President Bush have a lot of things in common, but military service in Vietnam isn't one of them. Keyes was nowhere to be seen in Southeast Asia back then. Like Vice President Dick Cheney, he had other priorities and availed himself of student deferments. However, the anti-Kerry vets' TV ad that has garnered so much attention is a version of Keyes running for the U.S. Senate in Illinois.

How is that? This is how: John Kerry is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, and the only way Karl Rove and the Bush campaign apparatus could attack that service is through surrogates -- namely, other Vietnam veterans. So, they found them. That wasn't particularly hard, because John O'Neill, co-author of the ad's accompanying book, Unfit for Command, and lynchpin of the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, was recruited by the Nixon White House in 1971 to attack John Kerry when Kerry was associated with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

And, recent reports contend, the White House wasn't happy with a number of the potential Republican candidates offered to oppose Barack Obama, but smiled upon Alan Keyes. Keyes' candidacy allows for the same sort of spectacle: The Democrats have their swift boat veterans, and the Republicans have theirs. The Illinois Democrats have their black candidate for the U.S. Senate; now the state Republicans have theirs.

Of course, the White House claims it had nothing to do with the anti-Kerry swift boat ad, and Keyes claims that race has been ''taken off the table'' in the Illinois U.S. Senate contest.

Usually, the fantasies of political campaigns are confined to ad duels and media wars. This time, actual humans are involved, even though one had to be imported from Maryland to Illinois.


http://www.suntimes.com/output/orourke/cst-edt-rour15.html