It's hard to imagine, but the NYT saw fit to publish
this drivel:
Dr. Dean got the medical deferment, but in a recent interview he said he probably could have served.
"I guess that's probably true," he said. "I mean, I was in no hurry to get into the military."
But now that he is running for president, in a race when many Democrats believe they need a candidate with strong national security credentials to challenge President Bush, the choices Dr. Dean, a former Vermont governor, made 33 years ago are providing ammunition for critics.
This criticism may have a smidgen of relevance in the Democratic primaries, but will not at all be an issue in the presidential race.
The worst part of the NYT story is that there isn't a single comment from anyone besides Dean and his mother on Dean and the draft issue. That's right, not a single criticism from Clark or Kerry or a Bush apparatchik . The worst comment in the entire article comes from Dean's mom, who says about his choice to ski in Aspen after his deferment, "Yeah, that looks bad."
The only way this is an issue is because the NYT decided to sic a couple of reporters with nothing better to report on (like egregious, but apparently unimportant pieces of legislation on energy, Medicare and overtime pay, for example) and make this an issue.
No one will care about the draft issue after the primaries, unless Clark or Kerry win the nomination. Otherwise, Bush will avoid this issue like the plague (by the way, here's the entirety of NYT coverage on Bush's desertion of the Air National Guard: "In 2000, George W. Bush drew similar attacks and issued a similar denial for landing his spot in the Texas Air National Guard." -- uh huh.)
In the presidential race, I'll take Dean's ski bumming to Bush's desertion.