(cross-posted from
Odd Hours) In the coming weeks and months, we're going to be hearing a lot of attacks by Bush proxies on Kerry's votes to cut intelligence spending. We've
already started hearing them. If we want to counter these attacks, democrats need to be armed with the real story.
To summarize (the original post at Odd Hours has more details), the real story is that Kerry's work exposing the Contra affair and the fraud at BCCI, both of which implicated the CIA, convinced Kerry that the agency had to be reformed. He wanted to reform the intelligence community, rather than just give it more money.
Recently, the WMD debacle has made it clear that the intelligence community is in need of serious reform. The great thing is, John Kerry reached that conclusion a long time ago! Kerry should use the recent attacks as an opportunity to tout his record, and to point out that he was a champion of intelligence reform long before it was in vogue.
Intelligence reform looks like a winning issue. It showcases Kerry's past accomplishments and allows him to respond effectively to Republican attacks, while at the same time making Bush look bad. Two quick examples. Former chief weapons inspector David Kay recently
accused Bush of "hampering intelligence reform." And here is an
article describing the view of Richard Steele, a former CIA spy (and registered Republican) on intelligence reform:
Before 9-11, there were 15 books published that detailed the serious deficiencies in U.S. intelligence, but the Bush administration in particular didn't pay attention, Steele said. "Nobody wanted to do intelligence reform."
Finally, let's remember, it's a piece of cake to attack someone with a 19-year record in the senate. Over the course of his career, Kerry has voted on thousands of bills, many of them hundreds or even thousands of pages long. Republicans will try to spin those votes into negative one-liners like "Kerry voted to raise taxes" or "Kerry opposes intelligence spending." Our job is never to let them forget the context of those votes.
Every time they attack, our response should be: context, context, context. A yes/no vote on a bill that's hundreds of pages long means nothing out of context. Kerry's challenge will be to explain this context in simple enough terms so that voters get it. Simple sound bites are not his forte, but he needs to try.