FLASH! Bush never flew a plane; Kerry never piloted a boat

Big controversy now about documents purporting to show that Bush's service record was not good. Some say they were forged...maybe they were. And those swift boat dudes have changed their stories, too, in the face of leadership from people affiliated with the Republican party.

My buddy was really digging into the Bush document fraud, and I got testy with him...in hindsight, I overreacted (not the first time, but for maybe the 20th time) but I do mean what I say...

I was not all that stirred up about what the documents said about W anyway, even if presumed true. But since you seem interested…

My opinion: getting all squirrelly about W’s actual service or AWOL status here in the lower 48 states is just as idiotic as focusing on Kerry’s merits in getting decorated with “real medals.” What the hell difference does it make either way?? (Kerry went overseas for us and W didn’t. Will we see those facts revised some time soon?)

But, as Frank Zappa says in “Watermelon on Easter Hay,” who gives a f--k anyway?

We’re into this pissing contest because we’ve swallowed a great big placebo pill: that any proposed leader’s character is defined by the nature and quality of his past military service. Who started it – Democrats or Republicans? I don’t really care. Our vote should be cast based on our assessment of “the whole man” (since no women are running that I know of): his policies, his stated positions, his prior record and…the character thing. The “Character Thing” as defined solely by “decorated foreign military service” would have nuked the majority of twentieth-century presidents. By this definition, if I’m not wrong our best presidents in the last 100 years were Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, George H.W., and…

Jimmy Carter?

Nondecorated active duty foreign service? Now we get, let’s see, FDR, Reagan, Nixon, Truman, Harding, Coolidge (?), but we lose Clinton and Woodrow Wilson. Don’t even ask me about William Howard Taft. Before the 80s or Dan Quayle, would national guard service even make the cut??

Sounds like a great way to vote, yes? Think about how many presidential races were between veterans of some stripe or another – wouldn’t it be the majority of them? Do you remember a recent presidential race where the loser lost solely because he was not in the military? Was not overseas? Was not decorated? Was decorated but with fake Purple Hearts?

I try to look at my own assumptions before debating the facts. Personally, I don’t assume that military service predicts presidential success at any event.

So I guess what’s left is the relative quality of the mud slung: Perhaps we’re to evaluate the candidate based on bulls--t campaigning tactics. Hell, I reckon they’re both about even on that now: swift boats veterans changing their stories versus presumably forged documents. Which is the greater evil? Most importantly, does this influence who we should vote for?

Not for me.

It’s all horses--t to me, done by campaign strategists who apparently believe that dirty tactics call for dirty responses. A plague on both their houses…and I wish this was the first time in our history where campaign stuff like this has happened, but it is not. Remember what H.L. Mencken said:

“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”