Jeff Jacoby provides the best write-up on the Kerry medal flap to date, and this part is particularly instructive:
Not one voter in 100 would vote against Kerry for trashing his Vietnam War medals when he was 27 years old. What he did with his combat decorations in 1971 has no bearing on whether he is fit to be president today. That long-ago episode is an issue today only because Kerry’s versions of it have changed so many times and because it so perfectly typifies his lifelong habit of saying one thing today and something else tomorrow — and then denying having done so.
He is right, and none other than RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie agrees with Jacoby on this issue. From Hardball last night:
MATTHEWS: Your side would never mention that again, the medals or ribbons, no matter what they are?
GILLESPIE: Let me say-Let me say, and I challenge you and defy you to find anywhere where I’ve said anything that contradicts what I’m going to say to you right now.
MATTHEWS: What’s that?
GILLESPIE: OK. Senator Kerry deserves credit for his service in Vietnam, but his policies on national security are wrong.
MATTHEWS: Including his objections to the Vietnam War?
GILLESPIE: Well, he has a First Amendment right to object to the Vietnam War.
MATTHEWS: Do you think that should be part of this campaign?
GILLESPIE: No.
MATTHEWS: His position on the Vietnam War?
GILLESPIE: I don’t think it’s relevant, and I haven’t talked about it. What was relevant was when he said-this flap over the medals was only relevant because five days ago he said, “I never said I threw my medals,” and then it turns out he did say he threw his medals.
Jacoby, in the piece mentioned above, mentions the number of different versions of Kerry’s stories- highlighting Kerry’s propensity to be on every side of theissue, to try to say whatever is most politically expedient and advantageous at the time.
No one, however is questiong Kerry’s patriotism.
No one is questiong Kerry’s service record (well- some might be- but not the White House or the RNC- a stark contrast to the Kerry Campaign and the DNC’s treatment of Bush).
What people are discussing is his flip-flopping (aka “nuance”).
In short, it is not the medals, it is the man.
JKC
John, I don’t believe for a second that you’re questioning Kerry’s patriotism. I doubt the same is true for every Republican out there.
It’s also not a problem unique to the Senator from Massachusetts. You yourself have written at length about the hidden costs of the Medicare drug bill, the deficit, etc.