today's waPo's columnist ej dionne jr has a remarkably decent piece regarding bush and the still unanswered questions that surround his (alleged) national guard service.
ej dionne jr's column 9/21/4
much to my (pleasant) surprise, dionne does not drone on about the cbs memos and the fall out from them, etc. instead he uses the cbs/bush analogy to open the discussion back up to where it should be -- on having the questions that are unanswered answered.
But what's good for Dan Rather, who is not running for president, ought to be good for George Bush, who is. "There are a lot of questions and they need to be answered." Surely that presidential sentiment applies as much to Bush's Guard service as to Rather's journalistic methods.
The New York Times put the relevant questions on the table yesterday in a lengthy review of Bush's life in 1972, "the year George W. Bush dropped off the radar screen," as the Times called it. The issues about Bush's National Guard service, the Times wrote, include "why he failed to take his pilot's physical and whether he fulfilled his commitment to the guard."
while i think dionne's clinton reference at the close of the piece is both insipid and the one weakness of the article itself, i think his point regarding the stupifying double-standard regarding vietnam when it comes to bush and kerry is well-stated:
Oh, I can hear the groaning: "But why are we still talking about Vietnam?" A fair question that has several compelling answers.
First, except for John McCain, Republicans were conspicuously happy to have a front group spread untruths about John Kerry's Vietnam service in August and watch as the misleading claims were amplified by the supposedly liberal media. The Vietnam era was relevant as long as it could be used to raise character questions about Kerry. But as soon as the questioning turned to Bush's character, we were supposed to call the whole thing off. Why? Because the media were supposed to question Kerry's character but not Bush's.
And, please, none of this nonsense about how Kerry "opened the door" to the assault on his Vietnam years by highlighting his service at the Democratic National Convention. Nothing any candidate does should ever be seen as "opening the door" to lies about his past. Besides, Vietnam veterans with Republican ties were going after Kerry's war record long before the Democratic convention.
there is no small amount of irony for a writer from the waPo to criticize the media for making mountains out of molehills, but that would go without saying regardless of the tone or content of any editorial/opinion piece from them. nevertheless, for what it's worth, i thought it a good piece.