Newsweek On The Campaign

Some details struck me from the Newsweek coverage of the campaign:

Edwards on responding to criticism of Kerry's Vietnam record:

Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, also wanted to take a swipe at the Swifties.

...Stephanie Cutter, the boss of the Kerry communications shop, explained that the campaign didn't need to give the Swift Boat vets any more attention than they were already getting.

Edwards played along, but his aides were indignant. They warned the veep candidate that the story was already out of control and about to get worse. Historian Douglas Brinkley, author of a wartime biography of Kerry, cautioned that Kerry's diary included mention of a meeting with some North Vietnamese terrorists in Paris. Edwards was flabbergasted. "Let me get this straight," the senator said. "He met with terrorists? Oh, that's good."

Let me get this straight - Edwards did not know this?  Kerry mentioned it in his 1971 Senate testimony.  What else about the Swift Boat ads outraged him, even though he knew nothing?

A quick hit on the Newsweek coverage of the CBS forged documents debacle:

Even before the "60 Minutes" segment finished airing, a blogger was up on the Web questioning whether the documents were fakes. The story quickly turned from Bush's war record to Dan Rather's carelessness and overzealousness—and even to the question of whether CBS had been secretly working with the Democrats to smear Bush. Rather and CBS kept the story alive by refusing to admit error. The Democratic involvement in the story was minimal and essentially meaningless, but the whole flap diverted attention away from questions, never entirely resolved, about whether Bush had skipped out on his guard service.

Newsweek has fallen into the timing trap - the critical post at Free Republic went up at 8:59 Pacific Time; the show went off the air at 9:00 Eastern Time.

As to unresolved questions about Bush's service, Newsweek does not note that questions about Kerry's service remain unresolved.  Nor do they mention his failure to sign a Form 180 authorizing the disclosure of his military records.

We have commented on the Clinton phone call earlier, but let's repeat it:

In an earlier phone call, Clinton—ever the political triangulator, looking for ways to pick up swing voters by reaching into the so-called Red States—had urged Kerry to back local bans on gay marriage. Kerry respectfully listened, then told his aides, "I'm not going to ever do that."

"Ever" must not have included August - according to this story, Kerry endorsed the gay marriage ban that had been recently enacted in Missouri.  More here.

MORE: Let's add some red meat to our diet.  First, Down the Memory Hole:

Kerry's operatives had worried from the beginning that some right-wing group would try to use his old Vietnam antiwar speeches against him. In the summer of 2003 the Kerry campaign had quietly made some inquiries with C-Span, asking the cable network not to release old videotapes of Kerry as an angry young vet fulminating about war crimes and atrocities. Portions of his sometimes overwrought testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 could be twisted into an attack ad, the Kerryites feared.

And Full Disclosure:

The Kerry campaign did work closely with the major dailies, feeding documents to The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe to debunk the Swift Boat vets. The articles were mostly (though not entirely) supportive of Kerry, but it was too late. The old media may have been more responsible than the new media, but they were also largely irrelevant.

By August 22, the WaPo was apparently fed up with this approach.  There is more on Douglas Brinkley's "cooperation" in the original article:

Brinkley, who is director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans, did not reply to messages left with his office, publisher and cell phone. The Kerry campaign has refused to make available Kerry's journals and other writings to The Post, saying the senator remains bound by an exclusivity agreement with Brinkley. A Kerry spokesman, Michael Meehan, said he did not know when Kerry wrote down his reminiscences.

UPDATE:  Eleanor Clift:

President Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act when he was in the White House, advised Kerry in a phone call early in the campaign to find a way to support the state bans. Kerry never considered abandoning his principles to that extent, but he also didn’t take seriously enough the threat.

Comments

[Brainster]

The comment about meeting with NV terrorists caught me by surprise too. Who or what are they referring to? Presumably not the VC, who were (nominally anyway) South Vietnamese.

[bethl]

NBC would not release transcripts or a video copy of a 1971 Meet the Press on which John Kerry and Al Hubbard were the guests. Do you suppose this was at the request of the Kerry campaign?

[Ridolph]

Newsweek blithly skips over the details of the whole swift boat charges. Saying only that they wanted to respond but didn't, implying that it was for political reasons rather than the simple fact that there was no good response since the charges were well-founded. Only the stonewalling that the MSM let them get away with. Don't let this go unchallenged. I know the election is over, but the MSM must be held accountable, and Kerry must still be forced to sign the 180 or hopefully lose his senate seat.

[panu]

Why were the North Vietnamese Kerry met with were called "terrorists?"

[Les Nessman]

So many people and organizations crashed and burned for their Lefty religion this campaign cycle. Thanks in large part to the internet, it was a MSM trainwreck.
BTW, is there a death pool started for Air America? I pick Feb. 15.

[Capt Trevett at the Commons]

I read the whole issue. I learned some interesting things, but it was loaded with gaps and innuendo.

[A different NJ Tom]

Why were the North Vietnamese Kerry met with called terroists.
Breck boy is probably too stupid to know the difference or maybe he is trying to shore up his tough guy stance for 2008 by calling all of America's past enemies "terrorist". If so that is fine with me as long as I get to call the Sons of female dogs that killed the most Americans Terrorist too, of course that would be the Confederates.
5,4,3,2,1...

[Tim]

Let me get this straight - Edwards did not know this?

I guess it didn't work out so good having every Democratic nominee spending their oppo resources on a President DURING THE PRIMARY.

[Bill]

This post-election newsweek coverage has a lot of fascinating stuff, but MY GOD is it awash with DNC spin. You'll notice that everything that Republicans do is "misleading" or "distorting", it never bothers to really explain why this is so, it is simply declared. It has now become clear that "distortion" = "True statement about John Kerry we'd rather the public not know". And I love this bit

Dole blathered that Kerry was a great friend and that he admired him, but he didn't take back what he had said.

Got that? he "blathered". Are they saving money at Newsweek by just having aides at DNC headquarters write the article directly?

[Norma]

I watch c-span panel at Georgetown University Public Policy Insitute rehash the election. Melinda Henneberger of Newsweek could barely contain her dislike for Bush, even while she was advising that Democrats need to be less condescending toward middle-America, a place she very obviously didn't want to be.

[Marlowe Anderson]

I think the post-election post-mortems are interesting ala Newsweek and elsewhere. Who cares who spins what now? Bush won , big-time, fair and square, and all that--so the impact of that on the future is of utmost interest and deserves careful analysis; the past and the election will sort itself out in time so that good bona-fide historians will be able to tell for the most part what the successes and failures of both the Kerry and Bush campaigns were. As for the one backward glance that everyone seems to agree on--Michael Moore, Hollywood celebrities, and 727s were big losers--especially Soros and Move=on.org were not true friends of Kerry's chance at the big house--they were land mines who blew up in the solid red states and 2,500 counties where people of lots of descriptions recognized instantly that these people did not think as they did and do. Enough said--Bush has a mandate and his party will now move the country in quite different directions than a Kerry administration would have.

There was a cartoon in the New Yorker not long ago about a group of doctors surrounding an obviously very ill patient on a gurney:"We've agree that your prognosis is that you have one foot in the grave; now we are trying to decide whether it's your left foot or your right foot!" That probably applies to the present Democratic Party, as well!

[Jim C.]

"Dan Rather's carelessness and overzealousness"

Good way to spin knowingly presenting forged documents!

[ed]

This article gives great insight to how in the tank the MSM was for team Kerry. The Kerry camp doesn't want to give the Swiftee's any more attention? Fine, the "responsible" old media won't touch the story. Too late you say, Fox and the Internet are already pushing it? Fine, the Kerry camp gives the green light for the MSM to run hit pieces, feeding them with background information. Newsweek spells out the coordination from the Kerry camp and MSM's news cycle, although they fail to take note of it.

[UpNights]

The Newsweek article states that C-SPAN wouldn't give the SwiftVets the audio for Kerry's 1971 testimony and that it's an actor doing the voiceover ("Jenjis Khan" and all). C-SPAN did show the testimony, as well as the Dick Cavett debate, a few months ago. IIRC, C-SPAN explained that there was full audio, but only partial video, so some of the audio was played as voiceover to still shots. IIRC, it was the same drawling, upperclass voice as on the SwiftVets ad. Does anyone know about this?

[Crank]

Yeah, what Tim said. If I'm a Dem considering running Edwards in 2008, I'd want to know why this guy apparently had not done any homework on his opponents. What a lightweight.

[Sharpshooter]

"Why were the North Vietnamese Kerry met with were called "terrorists?""

Because the fit the definition, maybe?

DOH!!!

[Tim]

"Why were the North Vietnamese Kerry met with were called "terrorists?""

Because that's what Kerry called them in HIS diary?

The VC terrorists were terrorists before they were killing Americans BTW.