Frank Rich: How Kerry Became a Girlie-Man

[Snellius]

ONLY in an election year ruled by fiction could a sissy who used Daddy's connections to escape Vietnam turn an actual war hero into a girlie-man.

As we leave the scripted conventions behind us, that is the uber-scenario that has locked into place, brilliantly engineered by the president of the United States, with more than a little unwitting assistance from his opponent. It's a marvel, really. Even a $10,000 reward offered this year by Garry Trudeau couldn't smoke out a credible eyewitness to support George W. Bush's contention that he showed up to defend Alabama against the Viet Cong in 1972. Yet John F. Kerry, who without doubt shed his own blood and others' in the vicinity of the Mekong, not the Mississippi, is now the deserter and the wimp.
...
But with the high stakes of an election at hand, it's not enough to stuff socks in the president's flight suit. Mr. Kerry must be turned into a girl. Such castration warfare has been a Republican staple ever since Michael Dukakis provided the opening by dressing up like Snoopy to ride a tank. We've had Bill Clinton vilified as the stooge of a harridan wife and Al Gore as the puppet of the makeover artist Naomi Wolf. But given his actual history on the field of battle, this year's Democratic standard bearer would, seemingly, be immune to such attacks, especially from the camp of a candidate whose most daring feat of physical courage was tearing down the Princeton goalposts.

No matter. Once Mr. Kerry usurped Howard Dean, whose wartime sojurn in Aspen made the president look like a Green Beret, the Bush campaign's principals and surrogates went into overdrive. Mr. Kerry was said to appear "French." (That's code for "faggy.") His alleged encounters with Botox and a Christophe hairdresser were dutifully clocked on Drudge. For Memorial Day weekend, the redoubtable New York Post published hypothetical barbecue memos for the two contenders, with Mr. Bush favoring sausage and beer (albeit nonalcoholic) and Mr. Kerry opting for frogs legs, chardonnay and crème brûlée. Ann Coulter, that great arbiter of the marriage bond, posted a column titled "Just a Gigolo" in which the presumptive Democratic candidate was portrayed as "a poodle to rich women." Eventually John Edwards would become "the Breck girl," and Dick Cheney would yank an adjective out of context to suggest that Mr. Kerry wanted to fight a "sensitive" war on terror. (For a translation of "sensitive" in this context, see "French" above.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/05/arts/05RICH.html?pagewanted=print&position=

[jackofhearts]

1. This article may be one if best I have read recently

on the state of the campaigns. Rich is right on several counts here. I do feel Kerry has been baited into a type of campaign that he never should have taken on. I deplore all the militarism on the republican side and now we have Kerry out there attempting to be more militaristic than bush. The repub nazis will stop at nothing to tear this down and are already successful to a degree. Kerry never should have gone down this road.

I believe people want peace. I believe he would ahead in the polls if he had come out on a campaign of peace. Of course the repubs would have derided him for this but eventually the idea of peace would have settled in and won out over militarism. Now the nazis are still deriding him and all he can do is claim to be more militaristic.

bush and the nazi party and people like Toby Keith have managed to turn Amerika into a war mongering society where everything is dealt with with bombs. We will expand our form of "liberty" around the world by bombing any nation who does not want our form of "liberty". Please Mr. Kerry talk about peace. Talk about how nothing will be solved thru the barrel of a gun or a smart bomb. Let the nazis point and laugh. In the end a vision of peace will win over a vision of dead children.

[paintgott]

2. If that's your solution

I think you missed the point.

[Tatiana]

3. Rich sums it up very well here:

The truth is that Mr. Kerry was a man's man not just when he volunteered to fight in a losing war but when he came home and forthrightly fought against it, on grounds that history has upheld. Unless he's man enough to stand up for that past, he's doomed to keep competing with Mr. Bush to see who can best play an action figure on TV. Mr. Kerry doesn't seem to understand that it takes a certain kind of talent to play dress-up and deliver lines like "Bring it on." In that race, it's not necessarily the best man but the best actor who will win.

Rich totally gets it. Kerry is allowing Bush to define the terms of this campaign and define Kerry himself. Kerry was strong when he stood up and said the Vietnam war was wrong. He seems to want to trumpet his service, but becomes shy when the topic of his anti-war stance comes up. Let's face it, Kerry is an anti-war candidate at heart. He spoke out against the Vietnam war. He votes AGAINST the first Gulf War. Because he voted for the IWR, he's forced to defend a position I believe he truly doesn't hold. That makes him come off as either no different from the warmongering Bush or disingenuous.

He should not be afraid to truly embrace and articulate his position on this war as well as his anti-Vietnam war stance as well. As someone who has served with honor and distinction, he has the credibility to do so, no matter what the Bush junta would have America believe.

[question everything]

13. Right. And the saddest part is that none of this would have surprised

anyone. All through the primaries many here wanted Kerry to explain his stand on Iraq. voted YES - which is fine - and is now objecting to it.

All through the primaries it was clear that his past was going to be searched with a fine tooth comb. So why the surprise?

Kerry needs to mention Vietnam with only one or two sentences, as a reference point for his character - remember how in 2000 character was a n issue? - leadership and courage. The courage to point out the atrocities that happen in every war.

And then he needs to clearly explain his stand on Iraq. Not in the form of "I voted for it before I voted against it."

And he needs to pre-empt any attacks. Look at Crazy Zell - he did have a list of Senate votes by Kerry. The campaign has to be ready with an immediate response - and to turn the issue.

It is not enough just to react. He has to be proactive. And I am not sure that having someone from the Dukakis campaign is the answer, unless he knows what went wrong, the way Estrich wrote recently.

[librechik]

4. devastating--are you listening, Kerry Campaign?

"It's Mr. Kerry's behavior now, not what he did 35 years ago, that has prevented his manliness from trumping the president's. Posing against a macho landscape like the Grand Canyon, he says that he would have given Mr. Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq even if he knew then what we know now. The setting may be the Old West, but the words do sound as if they've been translated from the French. His attempt to do nuance, as Mr. Bush would put it, makes him sound as if he buys the message the Republicans hammered in last week: the road from 9/11 led inevitably into Iraq.

The truth is that Mr. Kerry was a man's man not just when he volunteered to fight in a losing war but when he came home and forthrightly fought against it, on grounds that history has upheld. Unless he's man enough to stand up for that past, he's doomed to keep competing with Mr. Bush to see who can best play an action figure on TV. Mr. Kerry doesn't seem to understand that it takes a certain kind of talent to play dress-up and deliver lines like "Bring it on." In that race, it's not necessarily the best man but the best actor who will win. "

* * *


By cleaving to the "Iraq war is still just" line, Kerry is in essence lying. He should be saying loudly, as I'm sure he REALLY believes that the Iraq war was wrong, we were all wrong, and we must reverse our policy right now.

We are trying to defeat a morally dishonest opponent. How can we be righteous ourselves if we agree and support the whole enterprise to any degree. Kerry must take the opportunity of the NEXT Abu Ghraib revelation to DENOUNCE THE BUSH ADMIN FOR PUTTING OUR PRECIOUS SOLDIERS IN THAT POSITION!

Don't we all agree that the Viet Nam war was wrong and based on lies?
Kerry was right to denounce Nixon at the time, they must not use his erxcercising of the 1st amendment into a scandal!

[dand]

5. The people running the Kerry campaign should hire this guy,

The Rove machine is playing Kerry like a fiddle. It is the most frustrating thing in the world to see surprised reactions whenever these vile little war criminals land a haymaker, but they have been doing it for years. They keep getting better at it, and we keep acting amazed, as though it was the first time it ever happened. I am starting to have grave doubts about the leadership in the Democratic Party.

[Bozvotros]

6. Absolutely agree

I have gnashed my teeth for a month while Kerry and Co. tried to stay above the fray, taking it in the teeth and looking like weenies. Cable media did saturation bombing of the swiftboat ads giving them probably a hundred million or more in free advertising, while we made nice so we wouldn't look negative. It even looked for a while to me like Kerry was taking a dive and the whole Skull and Bone paranoia was rekindled in me. I wrote the Kerry campaign about their gentleman's war. And I also never bought the rope a dope theory.

This is total war and Kerry needs to gird his loins and go after Bushco because there is nothing left to lose.

[SeveneightyWhoa]

7. Great line:

"But having brought Vietnam up against the backdrop of our 2004 war, Mr. Kerry has nothing to say about it except that his service proves he's more manly than Mr. Bush. Well, nearly anyone is more manly than a president who didn't have the guts to visit with the 9/11 commission unaccompanied by a chaperone."

:thumbsup:

[tenpinjohn]

8. Vietnam Girlie-men

Shouldn't all Chicken-Hawks be called Vietnam Girlie-Men :evilgrin:

[vademocrat]

9. "just a fraud with a manly bearing" - LTTE/NYT

I've sent this to the NYT today (after spending days trying to respond to his entire column)

"After reading David Brooks' op-ed column(8/31/04)and I've got to say it's one of the greatest pieces of subtle sarcasm I've ever read. I really thought he was writing a positive piece about the Republicans until I reached the last sentence:

"...the essential contest -- will be over who really has courage, who really has resolve, and who is just a fraud with a manly bearing."

"...just a fraud with a manly bearing" is the best description of George Bush I have ever seen. It evokes images of him strutting around playing fighter pilot under a "mission accomplished" banner and playing Hollywood movie cowboy as he looks into the camera and dares the Iraqi rebels to "bring it on". On the other hand, John Kerry actually has been under enemy fire, has proven his courage, has demonstrated his resolve so there really is no contest. Thank you, Mr. Brooks, for summing it up so well.

[vademocrat]

10. "just a fraud with a manly bearing" - LTTE/NYT

I've sent this to the NYT today (after spending days trying to respond to his entire column)

"After reading David Brooks' op-ed column(8/31/04)I've got to say it's one of the greatest pieces of subtle sarcasm I've ever read. I really thought he was writing a positive piece about the Republicans until I reached the last sentence:

"...the essential contest -- will be over who really has courage, who really has resolve, and who is just a fraud with a manly bearing."

"...just a fraud with a manly bearing" is the best description of George Bush I have ever seen. It evokes images of him strutting around playing fighter pilot under a "mission accomplished" banner and playing Hollywood movie cowboy as he looks into the camera and dares the Iraqi rebels to "bring it on". On the other hand, John Kerry actually has been under enemy fire, has proven his courage, has demonstrated his resolve so there really is no contest. Thank you, Mr. Brooks, for summing it up so well.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cmkramer]

12. Wrong!

First of all, Kerry's mother was a Forbes -- yes, from that Forbes family. In fact, that's what the "F" stands for in his initials. While it's true that Theresa Heinz Kerry brought a lot of money into the marriage, Kerry was hardly a pauper. Back when William Weld ran against him for the Senate, it was pointed out that both were rich men who married even richer women.

Second, Kerry didn't slander anyone. He merely spoke about what other Viet Nam vets had said they had done.

Third, the reason why his tour of duty in Viet Nam was so short was because he had been wounded three times and you could opt to go stateside if that happened. So he did. You know, I think if I had been wounded three times in four months -- and no, none of his wounds came close to being life-threatening (not that he's ever claimed that)-- I'd probably decide to quit while I was ahead too. Your luck can only go so far.

Fourth, the "doctor" who claims he treated him is not listed as ever having treated him and only one of the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" actually served with him and he apparently resents Kerry for disciplining him back in the day. The other liars only served with him in the sense that they were in the military at the same time.

I'll quit now since I assume that others will be correcting your lies soon enough.

[glitch]

14. "others will be correcting you lies' - we've stopped bothering - anyone

still believing the bush lies at this point are write-offs.

W stands for Write-off