Almost 4 years later, I still remain perplexed why the Swift Boat ads did that much damage since Kerry was running against a draft-dodger whose daddy got him kicked up the list for a cushy position in the Air National Guard and who still didn't meet the demands by helping with his father's friend's political campaign in Houston instead of consistently being in Alabama where he was stationed. (And let's not forget that to this day no one has snagged that $10,000 reward for being able to verify that they saw Bush in Alabama.) I mean, it's not like Kerry was running against someone like, say, John McCain.

But if I were Obama, I wouldn't sweat the Corsi book. I mean, so far, the biggest charge against him from McCain is that he's a "celebrity". Yes, you read that right -- a CELEBRITY!. Goodness gracious. Pretty much a vapid charge being that cineplexes in Republican-dominated counties are always filled to the gills on weekends just like in Democrat-dominated counties. Just boggles the mind.

"Pretty much a vapid charge ..."

That has been GOP SOP for many years now; it seems to me that this doesn't matter and will not change until they start to consistently lose elections.

There's no reason to be perplexed, kevin. The swiftboat adds DIDN'T "do that much damage". They merely provided a new excuse for the traditional Democrat excuse-making machine that cranks up after every electoral fiasco: "We didn't really lose, we wuz robbed because (pick one) the Repubs cheated; the Repubs played dirty; the voters are stupid; the voters were tricked; we didn't get our message out; all of the above."

Kerry lost because he was an appalling schmuck of a candidate in the McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, tradition who was utterly incoherent on the top issue of the election, if not the generation--Iraq. Moreover, party leaders are so out of touch on national security issues that they thought a few months in Vietnam combat as a junior officer, no matter how heroic, would trump the fact that the candidate clearly didn't know his own mind in terms of the war we were actually fighting at the time.

Actually, RP, given your assessment of Kerry, I'd have to agree with that "the voters are stupid;" schtick you so readily dismiss.

Its not that Kerry wasn't a schmuck, but its obvious that a lot of the population didn't actually prop up the other guy for fair consideration; on his face, Kerry sucks as a candidate. But when compared to Bush, he seems more like the second coming of George Washington to me. I mean, the sheer scale of Bush's cronyism and Plutocracy alone would have made the Kerry vote perfectly justified; don't even get me started about Bush's bastardization of Trickle Down Economics which actually requires that the money trickles down throughout the economy, as opposed to pooling at the top, and yet Bush still has no idea why he is continually issuing stimulus packages to Main St. America.

Let me guess, Mr. G--you haven't lived as an adult through a whole lot of Administrations. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Over time there is no more reliable mechanism on the planet for insuring the common welfare than voters in the US. I am ill disposed to Dubyah, but LBJ and Tricky Dick were a lot worse. Among others. Kerry gave every indication of joining Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in that category. But on the whole, given the choices they've had, the voters have done the best they could with what they've had to work with.

No party that calls itself "Democratic" should have a powerful tendency towards "the voters are stupid". The current Democrat Party does, and this is the tendency that costs them elections.

I'm in total agreement with Robert. Kerry was an awful choice, only chosen because everyone had second thoughts about Dean and decided to go with Kerry because he played the part of hero during the primary. Problem with Kerry was that he was a drip. And he was pegged as unprincipaled, which was enitrely true, and people knew it. Bush only needed to turn a small percentage of white female voters to win that election. Sure swiftboats and terror alerts - both based on erroneous information - didn't help, but Kerry lost that one all on his own.

Robert Powell says:

"on the whole, given the choices they've had, the voters have done the best they could with what they've had to work with."

And that's exactly the point. "What they've had to work with" is a media that devotes VAST amounts of air time regurgitating Republican talking points about Swift Boats, windsurfing, flag pins, secret Muslims, cocaine use, "whitey" tapes, "missing" birth certificates and dissing the Pledge of Allegiance. In a word, smears. (And I say this as a Republican who's ashamed of the way the party has conducted itself in the last several election cycles.)

Believe it or not, this stuff has had a devastating effect on the national debate and our country is much poorer for it. Not because it hurts the Democrats, but because it hurts democracy.

        I note that as always in these precincts when the charges against Kerry made by his fellow "Swift Boat" veterans come up the unquestioned assumption is that they were false. Those who are so sure of that should take advantage of T. Boone Pickens's offer of a million dollars to anyone who can prove that even one of the charges against Kerry was false. That no one has attempted to do so is, to the say the least, suggestive, as is the fact that so many of those who served with Kerry -- a clear majority -- were willing to speak out against a potential President whose vindictiveness is well known.

I was afraid it was too slow a response. The problem is not the actual charges or the actual ads, it is the meme. This comes out in July, and it appears on CNN, et. al. and its on the 'best seller list', and it shows up in book stores, and this guy corsi gets a bunch of interviews claiming it is a 'scholarly' research but easy read. And so some people at the margins get a negative about Obama in their heads.  This book won't affect thoughtful people who do research, but the election will be won or lost on the margins and unfortunately they don't all do reseach. Obama needs to publically challenge EVERY appearance of this book in the media and do all he can to push it down. The next one too, 'the case agains obama' needs similar treatment.

Eupatrides,

Hillarious, you think Pickens is going to pay anything? Kerry has already taken him up on the offer and offered to debate Pickens. So have several other veterans that served with Kerry and submitted a large file of information including naval documents, Kerry's personal journal and testimony. Pickens reneged.

Kerry was a decorated war hero and his medals are the proof. The official military records and testimony from men that were at the scene are all the evidence necessary. The fact that a handful of swiftboaters could be convinced, some after being paid, to engage in a political attack isn't proof of anything. A lot of these guys supported Kerry's story until the last minute and struggled to explain how their memories had changed.

www.nytimes.com/.../28kerry.html

Robert,

"No party that calls itself "Democratic" should have a powerful tendency towards "the voters are stupid". The current Democrat Party does, and this is the tendency that costs them elections."

Do you think the 15% of the American public who believe BHO is a Muslim are stupid?  I do.

We have a ton of stupid ignorant people in our country and the hope is that they fall on both sides of the aisle to not influence elections one way or the other.  To argue that the a decent % of voters are not stupid is stupid and arrogant on your part.  

Mr. Second, meet Ms. Guess; Michael Crowley and the Democratic handwringing punditoctracy officiating.

There is really no magic to "slow" or "fast" replies to the charge that, SHOCK HORROR RUN TO THE HILLS, Obama did not "dedicate" his book to his Mom and Sister on a special dedication page. (It was in the intro.)  Or that, WRING HANDS AND HIDE IN THE CAVES, he has *never* said when he stopped getting high (he has set it on a dozen occasions; at the age of twenty - at least he inhaled).  Or other crapdoodle like this.  

Frankly, IF Obama loses because of this book, he deserves to lose and I would not hold the American people responsible.  But of course, if he loses, it is not because he was a week slow or fast in responding to a book written by a known bigot and racist.  And if he wins, it will not vindicate his timing on responding to the "charges" in the book.

A campaign is won or lost on the basis of two things: the character of the candidate as it is conveyed and received by the public, and the character of the times.  In 2004, Kerry lost not because of the Swiftboat attack; the Swiftboat attack stuck because of who Kerry was and because of the times.  And, of course, it should always be noted, the interesting thing was not that Kerry lost, but that Bush won by so small a margin.  Remember: Iraq was not as unpopular as it is now; 9/11 was fresh; and John Ashcroft's color-coded election manipulation machine (aka Security Alerts) was still in full swing, if in its last throes.  Kerry was an awful candidate: from his appearance on the podium, to this "I was for it before I was against it" incoherence, here was a man bereft of a core, with a tin ear to the pulse of the nation - and he still came within a handful of electoral votes of winning ... Incidentally, anyone who talks about "experience" as a measure of a candidate's strength should look at Kerry's LONG experience as a Senator ...

Obama will win or lose not because of these passing and inconsequential attacks, but on the basis of 1) his character, and 2) the character of the times.  We know he is a meticulous planner; that he keeps his cool in the fact of the most withering personal attacks; that he learns quickly; that he has not the stamina of a Clinton; that he can be cynical and can manipulate machines; that he understands the importance of ceding ground for strategic gains ... And we know that the times are uncertain; that foreign policy challenges exist and that McCain, for better or for worse, can capitalise on these because of his white mane and his broken arms; that economic challenges exist for which neither candidate has any real answers but that one, at least, tries to understand; that social challenges exist that one candidate seeks to address and the other does his best to deny; a million homes in foreclosure, fifty million people without health insurance, unemployment rising, infrastructure in tatters ...

There, in a nutshell, the lay of the land (as I see it, for what it's worth); a book this ship cannot sink.

The Swift Boat accusations against Kerry could be reduced to one sentence:  Kerry's claims of heroism in combat (as testified by his medals) were false.  It was a smear, but once you could reduce one of the principle attractions of the candidate to a debatable point, the damage was done.

So far, I have yet to hear Corsi's latest "scholarship" against Obama similarly reduced to one sentence, unless it's the vague "Obama is unAmerican," which we've been hearing for months already.  I imagine it will do some damage, but not much.  On the one hand, it is hard to defend yourelf against a blizzard of charges, but on the other, a blizzard of charges do not make for a scandal the voter can get a handle on.

The war in Georgia has far more potential to damage Obama, but so far it seems to be making little difference to the minds of voters (see latest Rasmussen).  McCain's recent gains seem to come from shoring up his base, not from any fall off of support for Obama.  Obama needs to a) sound tough on Georgia (hence the imminent choice of Biden for VP) while constantly pointing out that our leverage there has been significantly diminished by or actions in Iraq, actions enthusiastically supported by John McCain.

It sounds like the book has actual deliberate falsehoods and Obama should sue for libel.

Carol Burnett successfully sued the National Enquirer for libel, and I think it tampened them - and everyone else - down quite a bit as a result. It's a hard standard to meet for a public figure, because the laws protect them less, but it's doable, and should be done if the standard is met.

I think Obama's response has been smartly calibrated.  Don't respond until it grows in mass media.  Then respond appropriately.  Statements from his campaign and the release s of a 47 page pdf are appropriate.  (You are not going to see Obama respond directly.) Not because of the book per se, but the booklet responds to every single charge ever made against Obama.  I think the purpose is to 'vaccinate' against smears in the fall.  The book neutralizes the charges, so conservative smear mongers will think twice about replaying the primaries in the general election.  

And that is precisely where the response should be aimed.  Not to the 'masses' to keep it replaying and replaying, but to the 'opinion-makers' and media.  The campaign has narrowed the target and not taken the  Corsi bait buy displayed that it will fight to the end if it has to.

The 'otherness' , 'exotic' charge is more troubling, because Republicans go straight for the id. They project an image that plays on those 'hard to name' feelings people have against that type.  It was deadly for Kerry.  But it still doesn't seem to stick with Obama.

I canvassed in Iowa and noticed a decisive 'every mother's son' attitude among the voters especially womem, all of whom happened to be white.  One lady voted for him and the first thing out of her mouth was 'he seems like such a nice young man.'  Any candidate would die to start his or her campaign with such a resevoir of good will.   Maybe that image still plays in people's minds through all the trash.  Let's hope so.

greg--I think believing that some random polls of undetermined methodology can be used as the equivalent of a public IQ test is stupid and arrogant. One of my favorites that's frequently used to "prove" how stupid the public is the the one that showed lots of people "believe" Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. This joke didn't really specify what it meant by "behind"--most folks did know that we had been at war more-or-less continuously with Iraq since 1991, a fact that has been completely buried in an avalanche of propaganda and revisionism. No one has satisfactorily explained why if so many people actually believed this there was such support for invading Afghanistan.

Some polls can be useful, like the good methodology, huge sample ones done by Gallup over two dozen times between 1991 and 2003 which showed a consistent majority in favor of "the use of US troops to invade Iraq in an attempt to remove Saddam Hussein from power", which are excellent evidence against the preposterous assertion that the war was all about "Bush lies".  Snapshot drive-by polls like the one on Obama are often worse than useless.

Lots of people might think there is some kind of Muslim connection with a guy named Barack Hussein, but this is not going to determine the election. See the post by icarusr above.

Robert,

"This joke didn't really specify what it meant by "behind"--most folks did know that we had been at war more-or-less continuously with Iraq since 1991, a fact that has been completely buried in an avalanche of propaganda and revisionism."

I will bet you most folks had no idea or comprehension of the war we were waging with Iraq from 1991 to 2003.  No way to prove though other than that most Americans still can not even find Iraq on a map, John McCain can not tell Shia and Sunnis apart, but I do know that he got the sh#t kicked out of him for years in Vietnam so he must know what is up. Robert, you are the exception to this and your rationale for our presence in Iraq is sound, I believe that most Americans were more persuaded by threats of wmd's, false links to 9/11, promoting democracy and all the garbage used to justify our presence than your well documented rationale.

Hence my belief that the large # of stupid ( I use the term for criminally uninformed people who base important decisions on proven falsehoods) voters in our country.  By your logic the BHO Muslim connection is justified or rationalized by Barack's name, I could then challenge that Joe Liberman and Joe Biden are Stalinists because they share a name with Joseph Stalin.  

You mean Lieberman and Biden aren't Stalinists? They're Democrats, aren't they?

But seriously, greg, I think holding out for "lots of voters are idiots" is a very counterproductive position to take. You can certainly find polls that indicate some huge percentage of US graduates are functionally illiterate, or think Elvis is in a UFO, etc. but that doesn't square very well with the fact that our universities are consistently in the first rank, that technical innovation and work-force initiative here have enabled economic wonders, etc.  Sure, there are a lot of stupid people out there, but most of them don't vote. Assuming voters are stupid leads to running stupid campaigns, even if you were right. And I don't think you are.

You may be prepared to bet that "most folks had no idea of the war...", but I think you'd lose. If you add up all the millions of people who had loved ones among the many hundreds of thousands deployed to the Gulf during the period in question, combined with the millions more whom Gallup polled on the "regime change" issue, and the millions who either supported Desert Fox or accused Clinton of "wagging the dog", you've got an awful lot of people. Saddam Hussein may have been the best-known foreign leader in the world for average Americans in the '90's.

Nice point about the military Robert, my frustration may hinge on the very people the MSM use a voice of the American people are the ones who send shivers up my spine but it may just be good TV and soundbites, nothing more.

I still think most, 100's of millions, have literally no idea of the history in the area and why are involved in Iraq outside of the President's reasons which for me is stupid.  I always hold out hope that we could have a rational debate that goes over the reality of the situation as you have described here many a time and decide if the military is the proper option and then have the entire population support the decision because it was well thought out, not bait and switched and we stick it out because that would be a failure.

"Over time there is no more reliable mechanism on the planet for insuring the common welfare than voters in the US. "

I would not argue against this, however the quality of a nation's democracy depends largely on the quality of that nation's citizens.

"Assuming voters are stupid leads to running stupid campaigns"

Not necessarily; gullability is, imho, one of the most prevalent stupidities in America. And it seems to me that the Conservative movement has been very intelligent about running campaigns that exploit this gullability.

greg--Fritz Schumacher, who served for years as economic advisor to the British Coal Board, wrote for "The Economist", "TheTimes",  and others, was one of the most prescient thinkers of his day on energy, the environment, and other issues. He said in 1964, echoing 19th Century economist Jevons, "There is no substitute for energy. The whole edifice of modern life is built upon it. Although energy can be bought and sold like any other commodity, it is not 'just another commodity', but the precondition of all commodities, a basic factor equally with air, water and earth".

Most Americans know this instinctively, as they know that when a totalitarian state interrupts access to energy through various invasions and the like, it's a grave and vital matter. We also know in great numbers that perhaps the principal lesson of WWII was that when aggressive fascist police states are allowed to violate generally agreed upon norms of international conduct with impunity, the long term price can be monstrously high.

I'm sure you're right that most people don't know all the history of the Greater Persian Gulf, but you can bet your boots they know that if we're dragged into a war with such a state as Ba'athist Iraq, it's better to win than to play for a tie. All the polling data and Congressional votes 1991-2003 indicate a pretty good grasp of the essentials in terms of Iraq, currently popular partisan propaganda notwithstanding. It wasn't "Bush lies" that prompted 70% of voters polled by Gallup in 1993 to support "regime change" in Iraq by means of "using US troops".

GSpinks--gullibility is a problem that will always be with us. Republican ability to exploit it has been a fact of recent political life, but my point is that Democrats have tried to do so just as much, only with less success. Why is a question worth pondering.