Distraction
I don’t often agree with the New Republic, but I think they are dead-on when they say that
any day in which Bush’s National Guard service is the dominant news story is a lost day for the Kerry campaign, since it’s a day Kerry can’t talk about the things that can improve his chances of winning, like Bush’s attrocious record in office.
Don’t let the Republicans define the agenda - even if it seems like it will look bad for Bush. It’s controlling the news cycle that matters, not the specifics of stories that happened thirty years ago.
UPDATE: Tom Tomorrow, as usual, says it best:
With the focus off Bush’s record and onto 1970’s typewriter fonts, Karl Rove couldn’t have planned this better if he’d tried. Which, for all we know, he did.
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Comments
I agree that it is “fair game” (is anything not in an election?), but I think the article is correct to say that most people for whom “character” is import have already made up their minds at this point about Bush’s character. They need to be informed that he is loosing the war and loosing the economy. Kerry needs to make these two issues front page news.
The problem is, as the article also points out, that the media only seem to have room for one or two stories at a time. We can’t talk about Sudan now, because the Russian school tragedy is the top story, and we can’t talk about the war or the economy because Bush’s war record is the top story.
Moreover, unless they come out with some kind of impeachable offense they aren’t going to do him much damage on this.
Posted 9/12/2004 01:12:15 AM by D. Ghirlandaio Kerim Friedman finds himself agreeing with The New Republic:any day in which Bush’s National Guard service is the dominant news story is a lost day for the Kerry campaign, since it’s a day Kerry can’t talk about the
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An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
I don’t know — I think the national guard stuff is strategically important.
And I also think it’s fair game, as it points to legitimate weaknesses in Bush’s character. It’s more than just ‘payback’ for the Swift Boats stuff… though it is that too.