I may end up voting for John Kerry in November, but one thing I can't stand about his responses to the recent media questioning over the "throwing the medals away" controversy is how he dismisses it as a Republican smear.
An interviewer will bring up the issue, trying to clear up the matter, and he just dismisses it as a Republican Party attack and then goes on to accuse the Republicans of hypocracy for not serving like he did.
Well, forget the Republicans. Whoever came up with the footage from 1971, where he said something different than what he's been saying since, shouldn't he try to simply explain the apparent contradiction rather than dismissing it?
I'm not a Republican. Dismissing the issue as simply a Republican smear does nothing to ease my own concerns about his ability to level with the American people. This makes me wonder if, in the future, he is ever caught in an apparent contradiction whether he will dismiss any objection as a mere partisan attack. I don't see how that stubbornness and arrogance is any better than Bush's own.
Of course it's smart to turn it back on to the Republicans, blowing any attack back on to them. But it seems to me that first you have to convince the listener that you are telling the truth and that the criticism being leveled against you is indeed unworthy of further discussion. That involves addressing the issue, explaining it to the satisfaction of a fair-minded observer, and then moving on from there to blame the Republicans for raising such a dumb matter. But you can't just skip ahead to blaming the Republicans without addressing the questions, without trying to ease the concerns of some people that wonder whether you are trying to hide something or lying. Skipping ahead to blaming the Republicans doesn't solve the problem; the questions need to be answered first.
Posted by rimes12
at 12:55 PM EDT
