KERRY PRESIDENCY WOULD REFLECT CLINTON's SECOND TERM

What do you do when someone steals your hit piece? Well, you do an alternate hit piece. After the NYT ran with CBS’s bogus munitions story that was slated for Sunday’s 60 Minutes, DNCBS scrambled to put together another hit piece just before the election. They ran with a pathetic attempt to smear the president with an accusation that National Guard troops were not sufficiently equipped for duty in Iraq. Did 60 Minutes mention, as the president did during the debates, that whatever the troops have it is more than if John Kerry had gotten his way when he voted against the 87 billion dollar supplemental for funding operations in Iraq and Afghanistan? Naw, that’s not important.

And what did Françoise Kerry do when the NYT piece hit? What Mr. self-serving opportunist has always done, use it for his own political gain – truth be damned. Even when the story quickly fell apart Kerry and his surrogates continued riding the lie. Then when the whole thing appeared futile, Francoise just he moved on to something else as if nothing untoward had happened. Compare that with what the president did. First, he resisted the urge to point out that Kerry is a grandstanding know-nothing, do-nothing, be-nothing, BS artist. Only after the story developed more holes than the sphere at a planetarium did Bush note the obvious; Françoise was shooting off his mouth without knowing the facts.

One could also imagine a call between the bigs at DNCBS and the bigs at the NYT. The CBS bigs complaining that their plan would have worked had the NYT bigs not rushed the story out. The DNCBS hit piece on 60 Minutes would have come too late for the pesky truth to catch up with it before the election. When the truth finally did come to light, the election would have been over and whatever the damage to the president would have been final. But NYT was over eager and perhaps wanted the credit for breaking the story that finally did the president in. But it was released too soon and the truth caught up to it before the election leaving egg on the faces of the NYT, DNCBS and Francoise.

If Francoise should win, the media will have done him and the nation a great disservice. By leaving the Kerry record a complete mystery while obsessing on Bush’s, the press has ensured that if elected, Kerry will spend much of his four years in scandal not unlike the second Clinton term. The SWIFTVETs will not go away if Kerry wins. All of the questions will remain about, military recors, tax records, anti-war activities etc. and the answers will dribble out over the four years a Kerry presidency. Kerry, as arrogant as anyone who has ever lived, will be defending himself daily from the truth that the voters deserved before this election.