There's a Piece on Spinsanity about which I metablogged the other day. Today Atrios posted a little rant about it, and most other mention of the piece I've seen in the blogosphere has criticized it for being too harsh on the Kerry people.
I disagree. Look, no matter which way you slice it, Kerry's team has implied that Kerry signed up for the river-patrolling swiftboat mission, when in fact the mission was considerably less dangerous than that when he asked to captain one of the boats. What pisses me off here is that the unvarnished truth is impressive enough!
Read the rest and take the poll...
There is absolutely no reason to make the story juicier by implying that Kerry specifically wanted the most dangerous job in the war. It's an amazing show of courage and bravery that he was a good commander of his boat when the mission was going on. He's a bona fide war hero. Et cetera.
The problem isn't the exaggeration itself. The problem is that when we Dems exaggerate things like this, WE GIVE THE REPUBLICANS AMMO AGAINST US!!!
I don't understand why people on our side have such a hard time grasping this. It's the main issue I have with Michael Moore's films, too: he gets an excellent story, which is highly damning of the Bush folks, and then he searches for that one little extra punch of juiciness, which results in him overstating things. When I saw F9/11, I had to agree that the film made it sound like we'd flown a bunch of Saudis overseas while our airspace was still closed, even though it didn't come right out and say it. There was no need for that!! It's still shady and disturbing that so many of them were flown out right afterward, many with little or no questioning. But Moore goes for the juicier implication, thus opening himself up for attack from the Right.
It's a bad, bad strategy. The biggest thing we Democrats have going for us is that we tell the truth. If we let the republicans attack us on even one major point -- like this one -- where we can't easily defend ourselves with a simple statement of fact, then we not only "lose" that argument as far as the pundits are concerned, but we lend credence to every other damned attack they levy on us. We can win with the truth, and for every inch we shy away from it, the bad guys are going to cut us back ten feet.
This Is Not My .COM.