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Times Watch for
August 26, 2004
More "Unsubstantiated" Swift Boat Accusations
White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller files "Lawyer For Bush Quits Over Links To Kerry's Foes" for Thursday's front page, on lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg's abrupt resignation from the Bush campaign after revelations that he had given advice to the Swift Boat Veterans group.
A subhead enlists the media's favorite Republican to take on the Swift Boat Veterans anti-Kerry ad campaign: "McCain Expresses Dismay at TV Ads Attacking Democrat's Record."
Bumiller writes: "The national counsel for President Bush's re-election campaign resigned on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after he acknowledged that he had provided legal advice to a veterans group that has leveled unsubstantiated attacks on Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record in a book and on the air."
Then she gives McCain his say: "Mr. McCain said that he was taking the president at his word that he was not responsible for the ads, which were initially largely financed by Texas Republicans, but that he did not think Mr. Bush had gone far enough in condemning them. He also said he wanted the Kerry campaign to stop using images of his own 2000 primary fight against Mr. Bush in its advertising."
New polls notwithstanding, Bumiller argues the Swift Boat story could spell bad news for Bush: "Republicans, who only a few days ago were saying that the Swift boat controversy was a problem for Mr. Kerry's campaign because it raised questions about Mr. Kerry's war credentials, began to say Wednesday that the issue was not helpful for Mr. Bush. The Kerry campaign continued to try to keep the issue alive, using Mr. Ginsberg's resignation to push forward its charges that the president was using the veterans as a front for negative campaigning. Democrats put up a new 60-second ad on the issue, asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to open a criminal investigation into links between the Bush camp and the anti-Kerry veterans group and dispatched to Texas former Senator Max Cleland of Georgia, a triple amputee from wounds received in the Vietnam War."
Bumiller goes into detail on those "Republican ties," while allowing Republicans to make their case for deep Democratic ties between Kerry's campaign and the Democrat's own outside advertising groups like MoveOn.org: "Mr. Ginsberg's work for the veterans group was just the latest Republican tie to emerge, and the most politically significant. Records show that the veterans received most of their initial financing from prominent Texas Republicans close to the Bush family and to Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist. They have received strategic advice from consultants who have worked with national Republican groups. Bush campaign officials said they had been unaware that Mr. Ginsberg had been playing dual roles as a lawyer for them and for the veterans group. The Republicans, in an e-mail message to reporters, listed several Democrats who they said showed connections between Democratic 527 groups, Mr. Kerry's campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Among them were Zack Exley, the former organizing director for MoveOn.org's political action committee who now works for Mr. Kerry's campaign; Jim Jordan, the former campaign manager for Mr. Kerry who now works as a consultant for the liberal groups America Coming Together and the Media Fund; and Joe Sandler, who is a lawyer for both the Democratic National Committee and MoveOn.org. Democrats said all of their activities were legal and that the groups are not leveling similarly personal and unsubstantiated charges against the president."
Then Bumiller skates over an area in which Kerry's critics have truly "substantiated" their allegations: "The critics have also questioned his occasional statements that he was in Cambodia over Christmas 1968, which he made to argue that Vietnam had been in part a secret war."
She glosses over Kerry's false "Christmas in Cambodia," tale, one he's told in detail to reporters on at least four occasions. His campaign has now withdrawn the assertion that he was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve of 1968. Bumiller doesn't go into any of that.
Times Watch also notes that Bumiller's article, which includes reporting from Sheryl Gay Stolberg Jim Rutenberg and David Kirkpatrick, features two more appearances of the term "unsubstantiated" to describe the charges by the Swift Boat Vets, bringing the running count to five. That charged word was never used by the Times to characterize charges made by liberals against Bush's Vietnam service record.
For the rest of Bumiller, click here.
• Elisabeth Bumiller | Cambodia | 527's | Benjamin Ginsberg | Sen. John Kerry | Swift Boat Veterans
Did We Mention That They're Conservative?
In David Kirkpatrick's review of the Republican Party's platform committee's pre-convention meeting in Manhattan,
he again amusingly overdoses on the term "conservative," using it 13 times (not including the headline and in quoted or identifying material) in a 900-word story, including this dense thicket of C-words: "The potential effects of conservative discontent on the election remain to be seen. No conservative third-party candidate has gathered much momentum, and few conservatives are likely to pull a lever for Senator John Kerry on Election Day."
For the rest of Kirkpatrick on conservatives, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | David Kirkpatrick | Labeling Bias | Platform | Republican Convention
Swift Vets "Have Reopened Wounds" of Vietnam
Timothy Egan is lead author on a story featuring Vietnam veterans from all over the country, "Wounds Opened Anew As Vietnam Resurfaces." According to the Times, those reopened wounds are the fault of the Swift Boat Veterans.
Egan writes in Thursday's edition: "They profess to be brothers, and in veterans halls around the country the men who fought in Vietnam emphasized their common bonds and a view that most of the country may never understand them. But the advertisements by one group of veterans attacking the war record of Mr. Kerry, advertisements that are closely tied to supporters of President Bush, have reopened wounds about class and service and frayed some of the unifying threads…. The Swift boat advertisements have infuriated Mr. D'Arpino, who said the candidates should focus on the issues of the day. It is a sentiment expressed by many veterans. 'Kerry earned medals,' said Curtis Hamilton, an Army veteran from Maine who served in the mid-1980's. 'Bush didn't. Who cares?'"
(But isn't Kerry the one making Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign, rather than focusing on "the issues of the day?")
Later Egan writes: "But interviews with veterans across the country found a hard-edged cynicism about both Mr. Kerry's using his Vietnam service to advance his candidacy and Mr. Bush for his ties to a group that has renewed some of the divisions of a long-gone war. None of the veterans interviewed said the challenge by the anti-Kerry group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, had changed their minds on the election. But a handful said the attacks were making them rethink support for Mr. Bush."
(Some would say Kerry's extreme anti-war criticism from April 1971, in which he characterized fellow veterans as war criminals, contributed to those divisions as well.)
Egan does note: "While closing ranks against outside criticism, some veterans said Mr. Kerry's service record became fair game for attacks by other veterans because he played it up in the campaign. 'If Kerry brings it out, then he's got to face the consequences," said Charles E. Nichols, 57, who lives in Matteson, Ill.'"
For more war stories from Egan & Co., click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Timothy Egan | Sen. John Kerry | Swift Boat Veterans | Vietnam War
Wilgoren Pitches in for Balanced Campaign Coverage
Jodi Wilgoren makes up for her previous
credulous characterization of a Kerry campaign event by noting Kerry supporters can pitch softballs to their candidate as well: "At the Philadelphia event, Mr. Kerry poked fun at the president, whose campaign has been accused of only inviting volunteers to events and vetting their questions, by asking the audience whether anyone had to sign a loyalty oath or had been fed questions. The crowd hissed, 'No!' but the steady stream of softballs that followed could have come from a pitching machine. There was the woman laid off after 19 years because of outsourcing who inquired about importing drugs from Canada, a staple of the Kerry health-care plan. Then there was the man from Montgomery County who sounded as if he were parroting Mr. Kerry's stump speech and then asked, 'What can we do for you? 'Ninety-eight days,' said Mr. Kerry. 'Every day, every single one of you can win votes.' Reminded afterward that just 69 days remain until the election, an aide joked that Mr. Kerry was preparing for a possible recount."
For the rest of Wilgoren on the Kerry campaign trail, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Sen. John Kerry | Jodi Wilgoren
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org