Soccer Dad

Not so swift boating

Richard Cohen argues that Sen. Obama is being Swift Boated:

What Obama does not understand is that he is being Swift-boated. The term does not apply to a mere smear. It is bolder, more outrageous than that. It means going straight at your opponent's strength and maligning it. This is what was done in 2004 to John Kerry, who had commanded a Swift boat in Vietnam. Kerry had won three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star and emerged from the war a certified hero. It was that record that his opponents attacked, a tactic Kerry thought so ludicrous that he at first ignored it. The record shows that he lost the election.

Let's see, a news organization faked documents to show President Bush pulled strings to be kept stateside during the Viet Nam War, but Sen. Kerry lost because of Swift Boating?

There were three aspects to what happened with Sen. Kerry.

1) A number of other soldiers who were witnessed the events, said that the awards did not match what they witnessed. Admittedly, this is the weakest part of the case, as a number of others said that the events occurred as described.

2) When Kerry came back to the States he, himself, denigrated his own heroism, claiming that he threw his medals away and testifying that his fellow soldiers committed atrocities.

3) Kerry himself made a claim that clearly wasn't true and said that it was "seared" into his memroy.

If 2 and 3 were not true, I suspect that Kerry would have been successful in fighting off 1. But he inflicted great harm on his own credibility.

Then Cohen complains:

Now Obama's opponents are going straight for his strength. At least twice at the GOP convention, speakers mocked Obama's service as a community organizer. "He worked as a community organizer," Rudy Giuliani said. "He immersed himself in Chicago machine politics."

And then Palin herself followed up with one of her aw-shucks low blows: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities."

It seems to me that Giuliani's characterization, if ungenerous, is accurate. And however upset Cohen is that Palin struck back at community organizing, remember it was a response to the Obama campaign's denigrating her service as governor. The first statement about Palin coming from the campaign referred to her only as a mayor of a small city. And though Sen. Obama later distanced himself from the remark, in a later interview he too left out any reference to the fact that she is currently Governor of Alaska.

I'd recommend that Cohen read yesterday's editorial in his own newspaper of how Sen. Palin took on "Big Oil" and got a better deal for the citizens of Alaska.
(h/t memeorandum)

And Cohen might want to compare that record to that of Sen. Obama as a community organizer as portrayed by James Taranto yesterday.

It is both funny and scary that one of America's major political parties would offer this record of sheer futility as its nominee's chief qualification to be president of the United States. Even more striking, though, is how alien the world in which Obama operated was by comparison with the world in which normal Americans live.

Reader, when your toilet breaks, do you wait around for some Ivy League hotshot to show up and organize a meeting so that you can use your collective strength to wring concessions from the powers that be?

Or do you call a plumber?

As a "community organizer," Obama toiled within a subculture of such abject dependency that even home repairs were "social services," provided by government (or, in Obama's Chicago, not provided). It was an utterly bizarre intersection between the cultural elite and the underclass. By Judis's account, Obama's Columbia degree was useless. He would have been more helpful if he'd gone to vocational school instead.

(Byron York doesn't portray Obama's efforts as being futile. Still he doesn't seem impressed either.)

Cohen may pretend that the Republicans are hitting low. Still I don't think it comes anywhere near the Democrats and their media allies have in dismissing Palin's accomplishments as governor.

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin writes (about the attitude betrayed by the Cohen op-ed):

All of this lays out fairly clearly what has gotten under the skin of the Democrats: Palin has stolen the excitement, McCain has escaped the damaged GOP brand, and Obama hasn't a clue how to respond. They are right about all of that. Perhaps the official Obama camp as opposed to its pundit supporters has a better grip on what's going on. Maybe it has a clever way to diffuse the Palin bubble and to scuff up McCain's newly refurbished image as a maverick reformer. Maybe Obama has come up with a formula for looking tough but not angry. But if they've figured all that out, when do you think they'll show us? They sure haven't give us any hint. And their fans sure are getting nervous.

Protein Wisdom agrees that Gov. Palin's record far outshines Sen. Obama's:

She's the reformist Governor of Alaska, and her legislative bona fides far outstrip anything your stripling Presidential candidate can point to. She has a record of going up against "entrenched interests," such as the corrupt GOP establishment and the eeeeeeeeeeevil oil companies. Baracky? He's never stood up to anything in his life, but, yeah, he's got that smug going for him.

(via memeorandum)

UPDATE II: more at Buzztracker including Rhymes with Right:

But somehow Cohen can't find it in him to comment on the scores of false attacks against Sarah Palin and her family.

It is almost as if he lives in an alternate reality.

Posted by SoccerDad at September 9, 2008 5:43 AM