In this morning's Washington Post, E.J. Dionne, Jr., suggests that President Bush could get this election back to real issues if he would do as Dan Rather has now done and come clean about the facts surrounding his National Guard service. Here's how he closes:
But a guy who is supposed to be so frank and direct turns remarkably Clintonian where the National Guard issue is concerned. "I met my requirements and was honorably discharged" is Bush's stock answer, which does old Bill proud. And am I the only person exasperated by a double standard that treated everything Bill Clinton ever did in his life ("I didn't inhale") as fair game but now insists that we shouldn't sully ourselves with any inconvenient questions about Bush's past?Unless he doesn't want to talk about real issues, in which case, I suppose, he should keep doing what he's doing. Bet on it.
I'm as weary as you are that our politics veer away from what matters--Iraq, terrorism, health care, jobs--and get sidetracked into personal issues manufactured by political consultants and ideological zealots. But the Bush campaign has made clear it wants this election to focus on character and leadership. If character is the issue, the president's life, past and present, matters just as much as John Kerry's.
Dan Rather has answered his critics. Now it is Bush's turn.
Meanwhile, David Brooks damns John Kerry with faint praise in a column that puts Robert Novak to shame in its willingness to distort reality. I guess this is what we get from a man whose career is based more on being cutesy than on anything of substance.
In any case, it appears that Kerry has been successful in shifting the focus to Iraq, at least for now. And with the foreign policy debate only nine days away, he has a real chance to hammer his message home. Which raises an important question: How will Bush/Cheney '04 distract the nation from this one? I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.
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