The Swiftboat Backlash

I hope we're all clear about the strategy for John McCain evidenced by his sustained outrage fit over Wesley Clark's perfectly legitimate comments. I don't even understand what they're outraged about in that press release, and they probably don't either - it's outrage for the sake of outrage. I think Chris Bowers nails this one:

Another lesson worth noting from the frothing attacks Republicans are now delivering on Wesley Clark is that the McCain campaign really, really wants a prominent Democrat to demean his service record. This is a prospect they are drooling over, right along with their hopes that a prominent Democrat will attack McCain in age-based terms.

Just as the McCain campaign is aiming to create an age based backlash against Obama and Democrats among seniors, they are desperate to create a "that anti-American Obama and those hippie Democrats hate the troops" backlash, too.

Why not, they've been playing that card for this long, and it's seemed to work. Now they're hopping forward and, in the most paranoid fashion possible, accusing Obama of coordinating with Jim Webb and goading Webb into making off-the-cuff comments. Webb had to clarify his remarks today.

Senator Jim Webb's staff issued a clarification late Tuesday over comments made by the Virginia Democrat in which he urged John McCain to "calm down" with the discussion of military service in the presidential campaign.

"Senator Webb's comments were not targeted at McCain's military service," said spokeswoman Kimberly Hunter. "He has consistently called for politicians not to insert politics into military service. This is the exact same argument that he used against Lindsay Graham in their Meet the Press interview last year."

With both Webb and Clark not backing down from their statements, I think it's important to note Bowers' other point - that just because the media is outraged, and the conservative noise machine is outraged, doesn't mean the public gives a fig. See the Terri Schiavo situation for an example. There's a great deal of truth-stretching and near-delusional claims of nefarious Democratic cabals coming from the McCain camp, and furthermore their surrogates are demeaning Wes Clark's military service while supposedly defending McCain's service.

"General Clark probably wouldn't get that much praise from this group. I can't speak for them, but we all know that General Clark, as high-ranking as he is, his record in his last command I think was somewhat less than stellar."

Given that one of McCain's biggest defenders here is Swift Boat Veterans for Truth star Bud Day, who was McCain's DIVORCE LAWYER by the way, there's a lot to untangle and sort out, and I don't think the blind expression of outrage is really going to impact people one way or the other. I wish Obama backed him up more strongly (though today he explicitly denied any analogy connecting Clark's remarks to the Swift Boaters, and insisted that his comments in his patriotism speech had nothing to do with Clark and were written two months ago), but I think Clark's going to be just fine, and he'll be in a future Democratic administration in a major role. Furthermore, the way the Swift Boaters acted in 2004 just gives the sense that Republicans have no problem lying and demeaning the service of leading Democratic vets (which they do), and McCain using an associate of that effort damages the credibility of this manufactured outrage. I think most people shrug their shoulders at the whole thing, and the election will be far more likely to be decided on things like this graphic:



UPDATE: Paul Waldman is absolutely right. John McCain has leveraged his POW status forever, despite media myths that he's reluctant to talk about it. POW footage has appeared in half his campaign commercials this cycle.

As I said, there's nothing wrong with that. But what happened with Gen. Clark reveals the McCain Rules, as he and the press would have us understand them. Here's how things are supposed to work: It's fine for the McCain campaign to run ads touting his time as a POW, create web videos touting his time as a POW, have him mention his time as a POW in speeches, and have him bring it up in debates (remember "I was tied up at the time"?). In other words, it's fine to have John McCain's entire presidential run be presented through the filter of his POW experience. Should, however, someone even ask the question of whether the fact that McCain was a POW really qualifies him to be president, that would be a deeply offensive affront to all that is right and good, and must not be tolerated. Talk about having it both ways.

Also, this is completely politically incorrect, but true.