Jon Henke thinks it’s time for the Right to throw out the lunatics:

In the 1960’s, William F. Buckley denounced the John Birch Society leadership for being “so far removed from common sense” and later said “We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner.”

The Birthers are the Birchers of our time, and WorldNetDaily is their pamphlet.  The Right has mostly ignored these embarrassing people and organizations, but some people and organizations inexplicably choose to support WND through advertising and email list rental or other collaboration.

Several of us — notably Melissa Clouthier, Doug Mataconis, and Matt Sheffield — bandied this about on Twitter yesterday.  And while I’m still inclined to agree with Jon that the Republican Party and organized conservative movement should distance itself from the yahoos, I’m not sure how much energy it’s worth.  Aren’t we better off, as Melissa suggests, in focusing “on a positive message all can unite around?”

Casting out the infidels will likely not have much benefit and comes with quite a bit of cost.

As Steve Benen notes, the RNC is among those advertising on WND.  And, while I’d love to see them not legitimate the loons by sponsoring their websites, it’s true that loons vote.  And they’re not going to go away just because the RNC doesn’t give them any money.  Indeed, it may well just prove to them that both parties are corrupt.

The more important criticism is that Jerome Corsi, the loon that sparked Jon to say “Enough” is the yahoo who was behind the Swift Boat Veterans slime group that attacked John Kerry so successfully in 2004.  While some of us on the Right denounced them at the time, most sat by and figured the ends justified the means.

At this point, I’d just be happy if the GOP can find leaders who rise above the Birther and Death Panels fray and put forth principled alternatives to the Obama-Reid-Pelosi programs.  Aside from continuing the status quo, what’s the Republican plan for solving the impending financial collapse of our health care system?  What’s the Republican vision of American security policy?  Does it envision continuing nation-building in every country where Islamist terrorists might live?  How do we pay down the national debt and get back on the road to fiscal sanity?

Ultimately, focusing on that might take the spotlight off the crazies.

Jon Henke argues that the embrace, by both sides, of unsavory characters under the principle of the enemy of my enemy is my friend has “poisoned both the Left and the Right in American politics.”  Accordingly, he takes on one of his own:

The continued tolerance and prominence of Jerome Corsi – his books, columns and appearances – is just embarrassing.  It is embarrassing for the Right, embarrassing for Republicans, embarrassing for conservatives and libertarians, embarrassing for all of us.

It’s not just that he’s frequently, remarkably wrong – something pretty well documented and acknowledged by both the Left and (while less enthusiastically) the Right.  (and the Obama campaign (PDF), of course)  Both the Obama campaign and Hugh Hewitt acknowledge that Jerome Corsi is “fringe”.

Bad as his gross errors are, though, it’s not just that.  It’s also about who Jerome Corsi is.

• Jerome Corsi is a smear artist (e.g., he has claimed that “Hillary Rodham Clinton is a lesbian and Muslims worship Satan”).
• Jerome Corsi has advocated the hysterical, deceptive North American Union conspiracy theory.
• Jerome Corsi associates with white supremacists.
• Jerome Corsi is guilty of plagiarism.
• Jerome Corsi is a 9/11 Truther.

I mean, c’mon.  Have some standards.  This guy does not deserve the platform, he does not deserve the publicity, and he does not deserve to be treated as member-in-good-standing on the Right.

Corsi’s got a new book out which, because of its provocative nature and the success of the Swift Boat effort in the previous cycle, is getting a lot of attention.  Because it’s Corsi, I just ignored it.

Henke’s right, though:  Honorable partisans should be more aggressive in distancing themselves from their prominent but less savory allies.  While I can’t speak to the veracity of all of those charges leveled in Henke’s post, having long stopped paying much attention to Corsi, he’s right on the fundamentals.

Politics ain’t beanbag and a certain amount of license in fighting for one’s cause is to be granted.  Outright sleaze, mendacity, and slander, though, deserves condemnation.

James Kirchich, recent nominee for an Yglesias Award for fairness, says that, while the Obama campaign is setting itself up to believe that “The only obstacle between Barack Obama and the presidency is the mountain of smears that will no doubt come his way,” the truth of the matter is that most of the smears are coming from his side.

Thus far, no one with any serious affiliation to John McCain’s campaign has resorted to the alleged “scare” tactics in which Republicans — and, apparently, only Republicans — have been perfecting since Richard Nixon was first elected. On the contrary, if the past few months have showed us anything, it’s that the Obama campaign is the one dealing in crude smears.

There have been only two incidents in which people officially associated with McCain have done anything approaching what Thomas and Wolfe predicted those dastardly, conniving Republicans would inevitably do. In February, a conservative talk radio host speaking at a McCain rally made reference to “Barack Hussein Obama.” McCain immediately condemned the statement, leading the embittered and embarrassed professional yacker to complain that McCain “threw me under the bus.” The only other smear-worthy episode occurred in March, when the McCain campaign suspended a low-level aide who provided a link on his Twitter account to a video featuring the rants of Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Heavy stuff, to be sure.

Contrast the absence of smears from the McCain camp with some of the outlandish remarks made by high-ranking Obama supporters. In April, West Virginia Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV said that because McCain “was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet,” and “was long gone when they hit,” the Arizona senator who spent five and a half years in a Vietcong tiger cage having his arms repeatedly broken didn’t really understand the carnage of war. “What happened when [the missiles] get to the ground?” Rockefeller asked a crowd at an Obama rally. “He doesn’t know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues.” That the great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller would impugn the wartime experience of John McCain is especially rich, given that the only “battle” Rockefeller has seen is when he hunts wild game at his 80-acre ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyo. g in crude smears.

He gives other examples, many of which detailed yesterday in “Democrats Attacking McCain’s Military Record: Is A Pattern Emerging?”

Greg Sargent, meanwhile, asserts that,

The truth is that there’s zero evidence that there’s any coordination going on or that the Obama campaign wants this conversation to be taking place. Not that this matters: The McCain campaign is very determinedly pointing to anything it can — Webb’s comments included — to drive the message that Obama is demeaning McCain’s military service.

Not to resort to the undergraduate paper standby of “they both have good points and bad points,” the argument seems rather silly.  Professionally run campaigns make a concerted effort to maintain plausible deniability, ensuring that the candidate and senior campaign staff can disavow any negative attacks that get judged as beyond the pale while nonetheless benefitting from their effects.

Do I think there’s a concerted effort on the part of Democrats to call into question the degree to which John McCain’s military service makes him more qualified than Barack Obama to step in as commander-in-chief?  Of course.  Are some of the attacks over-the-top?  Yup.  Have they reached the worst levels of the Swift Boat attacks against John Kerry in 2004?  Not yet.

Is there a smear campaign to undermine public confidence in Barack Obama’s patriotism and that of his wife?  To say that he’s a Muslim and might be terrorist-friendly?  Yup.  Were they promulgated by Republicans?  No, by Hillary Clinton supporters, actually.  Will Republicans pick up the ball?  Probably.

The “Who’s smearing more?” game is silly at this point since McCain has been the presumptive Republican nominee for months and has thus been the object of Democratic attacks for much longer.  By contrast, there hasn’t been much need for the GOP to smear Obama, since Clintonistas like  Larry Johnson were more than happy to do it.   I’m pretty sure McCain won’t touch any of that nonsense.  Pro-Republican or Pro-McCain or Anti-Obama 527s, though, are another story.

John McCain’s Truth Squad, formed a few months ago in order to respond to charges by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth clone Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain, is prominently featuring an actual member of the Swifties as a spokesman, CNN’s Rebecca Sinderbrand reports.

One of the members of John McCain’s new Truth Squad — which his campaign says was launched to respond to unfair attacks on his record of military service –- was a member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and appeared in an attack ad for the group in 2004. The group was created to attack 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry’s military service record.

“How can you expect our sons and daughters to follow you when you condemned their fathers and grandfathers?” asked former Air Force Col. Bud Day, who was a prisoner of war with McCain in Vietnam, in a 2004 Swift Boat Vets spot.

McCain has said that he opposed the group’s efforts.

Politico’s Ben Smith asked Day about the seeming inconsistency.

“The Swift Boat ‘attacks’ were simply revelation of the truth,” said Day, a former prisoner of war and Medal of Honor recipient who served I the Air Force. “The similarity does not exist here.”

“What the Swift Boat campaign was about was to lay out John Kerry’s record. John Kerry has never produced any evidence to deny that,” he said. In contrast, he said, he and others on the call had produced “evidence pointing out that [Clark's] remarks were completely inaccurate.” “One was about laying out the truth. This one is about attempting to cast a new shadow on John McCain,” he said of the salvos at the two military men.

To the extent that Day’s attacks were limited to criticism of Kerry’s postwar accusations against his fellow veterans, rather than the business about whether Kerry truly “earned” his Vietnam medals, I’d agree that the equivalence is dubious. And, certainly Bud Day has earned quite a bit of latitude.

The truth/not truth argument, however, is an amusing one.

General Wesley Clark is trying to argue that John McCain’s military experience is irrelevant to future service as commander-in-chief:

Clark said that McCain lacked the executive experience necessary to be president, calling him “untested and untried” on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” And in saying so, he took a few swipes at McCain’s military service.

After saying, “I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war,” he added that these experiences in no way qualify McCain to be president in his view:

“He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded — that wasn’t a wartime squadron,” Clark said.

“I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.”

Clark has been banging this drum for awhile now but this is the first truly high-level exposure he’s gotten. Pat Lang remarked on this gambit two weeks ago and, as Steve Benen notes, he’s trotted this out on early morning television as well. The trial balloon worked well enough to get Matt Yglesias‘ consideration as a VP candidate.

On one level, Clark has a point.  Commanding a training squadron isn’t the same as running a wartime theater. And, as I argued when John Kerry was relying too much on his Vietnam experience and I’ve continued to counsel vis-a-vis McCain, being a war hero only goes so far in making a case for a presidential candidate.  Nor is Clark “Swift Boating” McCain; he’s not questioning his wartime accomplishments.

Still, at the larger level, this strikes me as a poor argument.  While “getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down” might not be sufficient qualification to be president, it’s certainly more than Barack Obama ever endured.  And, while Obama has experience at the community level that McCain can’t match, it’s a dangerous game for him to send out surrogates to minimize McCain’s service.  As Bruce McQuain asks, “if the willingness to fight for your country, put your life on the line and suffer the brutality McCain suffered as a POW doesn’t make the cut as far as qualifications go, how far below that does a ‘community organizer’ show up on the list of non-qualifications?“

Michael Kinsley hopes that Swift-Boating, a combination of smear and truth that “exploits its own complexity and the reluctance of the media to adjudicate factual disputes” and thus sticks, will not reappear this election season.

The raw material for swift-boating this year is already apparent. There is Obama’s loony pastor, his friendship with a former radical, his dealings with a convicted financial sleaze. McCain’s friendship with a woman lobbyist is an issue the New York Times fumbled, but it could resurface. McCain was one of the Keating Five, tied to a financial and influence scandal from the early ’90s that could be brought down from the attic. And there is his alleged bad temper, a potentially legitimate issue that could be blended with his age in unsavory ways.

To swift-boat or not to swift-boat? What’ll it be? Both candidates have publicly sworn off the practice, and McCain was admirably loud in denouncing the Swift Boat campaign in 2004. Of course, that was when he was still a maverick. I’ve been shocked by how many Democrats, in an informal poll, take the position that whatever it takes to win is justified. They say, first, that the Republicans will do anything to win, and it would be naive to attempt a higher standard. Second, they say, the stakes in this election are so high that an excess of scruples in trying to win it would be morality misplaced. Many Republicans agree at least with this second point. The belief of some Democrats that only scruples are stopping them from swift-boating as effectively as Republicans is almost touching.

If these junior Machiavellis are right, there is no hope for a civilized campaign.

They are and there isn’t. There’s a decent chance both of the campaigns will forswear the practice but zero chance that their surrogates won’t engage in whatever tactics they think give their team the best chance at winning.

Ironically, the normally intellectually honest Kinsley both poisons the well and begs the question in his essay,
dismissing arguments that the smears about John Kerry in 2004 and about Michael Dukakis in 1988 were part and parcel of the Republican campaign strategy as unworthy of discussion. Indeed, this is precisely as underhanded as Swift-Boating itself, forcing the other side to prove and negative and relying on the complexity of a national campaign to obscure the truth.

There’s also a Reverse Swift-Boat at work here as well. While I immediately condemned the early, scurrilous charges of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against Kerry, they did bring to the table, as Kinsley concedes, many arguments against Kerry which were true and which damaged him. The fact that the group which did this was itself contemptible does not mean that the charges themselves were illegitimate. That charges that Kerry was a war criminal and a coward who connived to get phony medals were outrageous; pointing out that he repeatedly lied about other veterans and his own service was fair game.

Similarly, giving credence to the “Obama is a Muslim” argument and claiming that the Obamas are secret racists who hate America is beyond the pale. It’s perfectly fair, however, to call into question Obama’s judgment for associating with Jeremiah Wright and other questionable characters for so long. And, while most Keating Five attacks on McCain at this stage are likely to be specious, his involvement in the scandal is not an unreasonable topic for exploitation, especially against a candidate running on cleaning up government corruption.

Jake Tapper, notes the contrast between DNC chair Howard Dean’s statements about John Kerry’s military service in 2004 and McCain’s in 2008.

Commenting on John McCain’s new “The American President that Americans Have Been Waiting For” ad yesterday, Dean said, “While we honor McCain’s military service, the fact is Americans want a real leader who offers real solutions, not a blatant opportunist who doesn’t understand the economy and is promising to keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years.”

Tapper reminds us that, in March 2004, Dean said, “The real issue is this. Who would you rather have in charge of the defense of the United States of America, a group of people who never served a day overseas in their life, or a guy who served his country honorably and has three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star on the battlefields of Vietnam?” Tapper observes, “McCain, by the way, has been awarded the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Star Medals, a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross.”

Of course, the notion that military heroism in one’s youth automatically qualifies you to be president later is life — let alone settles the issue if one’s opponent never wore the uniform — is silly. That Kerry and McCain served when others didn’t and that they acquitted themselves well under extreme stress redounds to their credit and earns them a certain amount of respect and deflects some lines of attack. But it’s not the end of the discussion.

The first presidential election in which I was truly engaged was the 1980 contest between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. On the merits of their military careers, re-electing Carter would have been the obvious choice. He was, after all, an Annapolis grad and had been a rising star in the Navy’s nuclear program under Admiral Rickover. Reagan, by contrast, made propaganda films for the Army. Reagan was nonetheless my choice (although I was not yet eligible to vote for him) and he turned out to be better on foreign and military affairs than his rival.

In 1984, the first election in which I was old enough to participate, Reagan ran for re-election against Carter’s former vice president, Walter Mondale, who served as a corporal at Fort Knox during the Korean War. Let’s just say their respective military careers didn’t factor into my calculations.

In 1988, we had George H.W. Bush, who earned a Distinguished Flying Cross as the Navy’s youngest pilot in WWII, and Michael Dukakis, who had two years of peacetime service in Korea but looked very funny driving a tank during the campaign.

In 1992, Bush was defeated by artful draft dodger Bill Clinton. The contrast in their military service was an issue in the campaign, to be sure, but obviously not a decisive one. In 1996, Clinton handily defeated Bob Dole, who can’t use his right arm because of wounds suffered in WWII.

The 2000 election pitted George W. Bush, who was trained to fly an obsolete fighter jet during the closing days of Vietnam and sort of served in the National Guard afterwards, against Clinton’s former VP, Al Gore, who served as an Army photojournalist in Vietnam. Bush won re-election against Kerry, who served gallantly as an officer with the Swift Boats.

As James Taranto notes, “You have to go back to 1988 . . . to find an election in which the winner clearly had a more impressive military record than the loser.” Depending on your politics, you might think we’d have been better off if some of them had gone the other way. Likely, though, not because of the military service issue.

If, as seems likely, John McCain faces Barack Obama in the fall, he’ll have an easier time making the “ready on day one” argument. He’ll have a credibility advantage in talking about military affairs. But the election, ultimately, will turn on their competing visions of the future and whether Americans trust them at the controls.

Andrew Sullivan has declared that the “Swift-Boating” of Barack Obama has begun, noting that both Republican operatives and Clinton supporters are piling on over the Jeremiah Wright scandal.

He cites a report by The Politico’s Jonathan Martin that, “A YouTube video mash-up that attacks Barack Obama on issues relating to his patriotism that has rocketed around the Internet in recent days was created in part by a prominent conservative talk radio producer.”

Here’s the video in question:

It’s no wonder this has gone viral. It’s brilliant polemic, contrasting Obama’s “Don’t tell me words don’t matter” mantra with his own words and those of his wife and pastor. That Wright said some things that Malcolm X said about “chickens coming home to roost” strikes me as lame but it will no doubt resonate with some.

A reader emails to ask whether I think this also “poisons the well,” as I asserted many on the left were doing by trying to claim those who don’t buy Obama’s explanation are racists or idiots. Of course.

The difference is that I started with the presumption that the bloggers in question were trying to have an honest dialog about the matter, whereas I presume political operatives are simply trying to score points. If the former is one’s goal, insulting the motives of those one is trying to persuade is counterproductive. If winning is the only thing that matters, going negative works.

Although I’m decidedly not an Obama backer, I reject the implicit claims in the video. I’ve written previously about the silliness of the charge that Obama isn’t a patriot because he won’t wear a flag pin on his lapel and ad nauseam about why Wright’s words don’t reflect Obama’s judgment. I even more-or-less defended Michelle Obama’s comments about never having been proud of America. But I think most political attacks are opportunistic, out of context, and unfair.

Does the video play on the fears that some whites have about angry black men? Sure. Mostly, though, it seeks to undermine Obama’s portrait of himself as mainstream. It’s more than a little unfair but that’s the nature of these mashups. It’s no different than the various ads of one candidate morphing into an unpopular politician that we’ve seen over the years. And it’s frankly much tamer than the infamous 1964 ad that implied Barry Goldwater would get us annihilated in a nuclear war or the 2000 NAACP ad featuring the daughter of James Byrd stating that “when Governor George W. Bush refused to support hate-crime legislation, it was like my father was killed all over again.” Goodness, I’m not sure it’s even as insidious as the “3 a.m.” ad that the Clinton campaign ran to such good effect last month.

Sullivan and Marc Ambinder also cite a Lanny Davis piece in yesterday’s HuffPo, which both declares that “there isn’t a shred in Senator Obama’s being that shares these hateful or bigoted feelings” but asks,

1. If a white minister preached sermons to his congregation and had used the “N” word and used rhetoric and words similar to members of the KKK, would you support a Democratic presidential candidate who decided to continue to be a member of that congregation?

2. Would you support that candidate if, after knowing of or hearing those sermons, he or she still appointed that minister to serve on his or her “Religious Advisory Committee” of his or her presidential campaign?

These questions strike me as disingenuous because the analogy doesn’t quite fit. Jeremiah Wright is a conspiracy theorist who uses racially charged rhetoric; he doesn’t advocate murdering white people. Again, though, this pales in comparison with other charges that have flown around in heated primary campaigns.

Would I like to see campaigns waged on a higher plane than this? You bet. But it’s not going to happen. My colleague Dave Schuler frequently argues that we’re a post-literate society and that we hope in vain for a return to the days when politicians spoke in paragraphs and political discourse was conducted through things like the Federalist Papers or the hours-long Lincoln-Douglas debates. People are used to consuming information in sound bytes and, increasingly, through visual media like video. That’s the world we live in.

As lamentable as these developments are, however, we cheapen the debate when we refer to every negative attack as “Swift-Boating.” That term got its derogatory connotation because of some of the outlandish and demonstrably false claims that were flung about by that group (along with many true ones) to see what would stick. That’s a scorched earth approach that we should all condemn. But politics ain’t beanbag, either. Bad analogies are the least of our worries.

I might add that the Obama campaign has benefited from at least three other viral videos. The “Hillary 1984” video was very powerful in knocking down the original frontrunner. The “Obama Girl” video was vapid but got a lot of attention for demonstrating Obama’s appeal to young voters. The “Yes We Can” video was an internet sensation which spawned numerous imitators, including a “McCain 10,000 Years” video which itself went viral. So, now, another vapid video is working against him. That’s politics.

Supporters of Hillary Clinton, apparently forgetting that she’s probably not going to get the nomination, yesterday moved on to the general election campaign and trotted out a new line of attack: John McCain doesn’t have the right experience to be commander-in-chief.

The opening salvo came from, of all people, Gloria Steinem. And she did it in Texas.

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem took to the stump on Hillary Clinton’s behalf here last night and quickly proved that she has lost none of her taste for provocation.

From the stage, the 73-year-old seemed to denigrate the importance of John McCain’s time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. In an interview with the Observer afterward, she suggested that Barack Obama benefits—and Clinton suffers—because Americans view racism more seriously than sexism.

Steinem also told the crowd that one reason to back Clinton was because “she actually enjoys conflict.” And she claimed that if Clinton’s experience as First Lady were taken seriously in relation to her White House bid, people might “finally admit that, say, being a secretary is the best way to learn your boss’s job and take it over.”

Steinem raised McCain’s Vietnam imprisonment as she sought to highlight an alleged gender-based media bias against Clinton. “Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years. [The media would ask], ‘What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?’” Steinem said, to laughter from the audience. McCain was, in fact, a prisoner of war for around five-and-a-half years, during which time he was tortured repeatedly. Referring to his time in captivity, Steinem said with bewilderment, “I mean, hello? This is supposed to be a qualification to be president? I don’t think so.”

Steinem’s broader argument was that the media and the political world are too admiring of militarism in all its guises. “I am so grateful that she [Clinton] hasn’t been trained to kill anybody. And she probably didn’t even play war games as a kid. It’s a great relief from Bush in his jump suit and from Kerry saluting.”

To the Observer, Steinem insisted that “from George Washington to Jack Kennedy and PT-109 we have behaved as if killing people is a qualification for ruling people.”

We could reasonably dismiss this talk as the raving of a lunatic, I suppose. The Clinton campaign quickly distanced themselves from the remarks, although without actually rejecting their premise:

The Clinton campaign sends over the following statement from Howard Wolfson: “Senator Clinton has repeatedly praised Senator McCain’s courage and service to our country. These comments certainly do not represent her thinking in any way. Senator Clinton intends to have a respectful debate with Senator McCain on the issues.”

Unfortunately, former NATO commander Wes Clark, a much more respectable Clinton surrogate on these issues, echoed the same theme in a blogger conference call. Byron York provides the transcript:

In the national security business, the question is, do you have — when you have served in uniform, do you really have the relevant experience for making the decisions at the top that have to be made? Everybody admires John McCain’s service as a fighter pilot, his courage as a prisoner of war. There’s no issue there. He’s a great man and an honorable man. But having served as a fighter pilot — and I know my experience as a company commander in Vietnam — that doesn’t prepare you to be commander-in-chief in terms of dealing with the national strategic issues that are involved. It may give you a feeling for what the troops are going through in the process, but it doesn’t give you the experience first hand of the national strategic issues.

If you look at what Hillary Clinton has done during her time as the First Lady of the United States, her travel to 80 countries, her representing the U.S. abroad, plus her years in the Senate, I think she’s the most experienced and capable person in the race, not only for representing am abroad, but for dealing with the tough issues of national security.

York also quotes Admiral William Owens, former vice chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, following Clark’s remarks with, “I would just say that I agree with Wes on that.”

Clinton supporter Taylor Marsh links York’s transcript as authoritative and has a podcast of the entire call available.

This is a spectacularly dumb line of attack. It’s true, I think, that being a fighter pilot and prisoner of war is not, in and of itself, experience which necessarily qualifies an individual to make decisions on matters of grand strategy. But McCain’s experience isn’t limited to that Clark had as a mere company commander in Vietnam; he rose to the rank of captain (equivalent to an Army/Air Force/Marine colonel) and did a tour as the Navy’s liaison to the United States Senate. He followed that with four years in the United States House of Representatives and another 22 as a United States Senator. He’s a former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and is now the committee’s Ranking Member.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, tagged along on some trips overseas with her hubby, the president.

One can make the argument with some credibility that seven years in the Senate as a backbencher and eight years as the partner of a Commander-in-Chief provides enough experience to make strategic decisions. But to argue that she’s “the most experienced and capable person in the race” on these issues is laughably absurd.

This isn’t Bush-Kerry, either. While I argued strongly against the attempts of the Swift Boaters and others to besmirch Kerry’s heroic service in Vietnam (but that hammering his outrageous post-war attacks on his fellow veterans was fair game) we were indeed comparing the records of two junior military officers, one of whom served with valor for several months in a combat zone while the other did the bare minimum he could get away with in the Air National Guard. That comparison redounded to Kerry’s benefit and for Bush surrogates to draw attention to it was stupid; attempting to discredit Kerry’s fine service was cheap and slimy. But Bush had, by the 2004 campaign, almost a full term as Commander-in-Chief. That rather obviated Kerry’s advantage on military experience.

While I don’t like her personally and have some questions about her temperament, and goodness knows disagreements on policy, I believe Hillary Clinton has sufficient seasoning to do the job of president. But John McCain has much more of it. It’s just silly of the Clinton campaign to try to pretend otherwise.

The “experience” card might make more sense in a McCain-Obama race, although I’m skeptical that it’d work. Voters likely won’t make their decision on that basis. If Clinton somehow wins the nomination, though, it’ll be a non-factor in the race.

UPDATE: AllahPundit summarizes Clinton’s argument: “Having seen the horrors of war isn’t quite as valuable experience-wise as picking out White House china patterns.” Slightly unfair, perhaps, but funny.

Last week, I wrote about some weird emails I received inviting me to attend an event at the National Press Club unveiling a new book that would Swift Boat a major candidate. As promised, I skipped it but kept alert for the details.

Mary Ann Akers, who writes “The Sleuth” blog for WaPo, attended, along with “about a dozen reporters and four photographers who clearly had nothing better to do.”

A lapsed Mormon, Michael Moody mocked his former religion (in very nasty terms) and declared Romney unfit for the presidency because of what he sees as the Mormon former Massachusetts governor’s biggest conflict: his “blood oath” to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

And then came the “C” word: “The great American cult,” Moody said, characterizing the religion founded by Joseph Smith, a prophet to Mormons.

[...]

Instead, Moody spoke in more dumbed-down terms of how Mormons are beholden to living prophets, such as Gordon Hinckley, who can tip them off to the Second Coming. “The Mormon prophet — he is the man,” Moody said, adding that “they” — the Mormons — are “waiting for Hinckley to tell ‘em: ‘Let’s go to Missouri and knock it off with an Osmond concert and build the new Jerusalem.”

I also got a fourth breathless update from Daryl Toor, the press agent for Revelation Press. The intro:

In 2004, John Kerry faced opposition from an unexpected quarter – his fellow Swift Boat veterans from Vietnam. In 2008, it’s Mitt Romney’s turn to be “Swift-Boated” – but this time, instead of unsubstantiated innuendo, Romney is “Swift Boated” with a comprehensively-researched, solidly fact-based book – Mitt, Set Our People Free! Like Toto in Oz, this book tears away the curtain and reveals the truth behind the Mormon Church and its beliefs about the U.S. Presidency – and what that will mean to “President” Mitt Romney.

This exciting new book – Mitt, Set Our People Free! – published by Revelation Press, reveals just how Mitt Romney’s sacred oath to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, known as the Mormons or the LDS – including a vow of obedience to the “Living Prophet,” the President of the LDS Church – will impact his ability to govern as President of the United States.

Jesus said that man cannot serve two masters – but if Romney is elected President, he will have to serve two conflicting oaths. American Presidents swear an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. However, this Presidential Oath is in direct conflict with Romney’s sacred oath to his Mormon Church – a blood oath which puts Romney’s life, fortune and obedience at the unrestricted service of his Church. This obedience is defined by the Church’s Living Prophet, the President of the Mormon Church and – as they believe – the literal Voice of God on earth.

(The email had weird machine language characters where the em dashes appear above but it cut and pastes fine. Likely a Mormon plot directed by the angel Maroni.)

These people are clearly buffoons. They continue to direct me to a website, http://www.revelationpress.com/, that does not exist. Their press release says the book is available at Amazon but they don’t provide a direct link. Nor does a search for the author or title reveal any results. Perhaps Hinckley and his evil minions are behind these plots?

I’m glad I decided not to walk the four blocks from my office over to the National Press Building for this one. Methinks I’ll pass on the book as well.

Ironically, however, I’m still not voting for Romney.

Joe Gandelman reports on an email that he, myself, and presumably several others have gotten, twice, in recent days promising a shocking revelation against some unknown candidate to be revealed Monday, on the eve of the New Hampshire primary.

I received the first email with the subject line “Right for your Blog?” on Monday and a second, entitled “Major Presidential Candidate to be Exposed Monday,” today. The text of both are essentially the same:

Four years ago, “swift boating” became a new term in the Presidential campaign lexicon, when John Kerry’s candidacy was torpedoed by widely-disputed accusations from men who’d served in Vietnam with the candidate.

For Kerry in 2004, this Swift Boating was an action based on “iffy” information – but for one leading 2008 presidential candidate, this experience is about to be repeated prior to the New Hampshire primary – but this time with rock-solid, well-sourced and absolutely accurate information.

One of this year’s leading candidates will be “Swift-Boated” in a new book to be announced next Monday, January 7th at 1:30 p.m. in the Murrow Room at the National Press Club in Washington.

One candidate is about to be challenged – with hard and cold facts, presented cogently by an author and former political activist and decorated military veteran who shares this candidate’s party affiliation – and who has known the candidate personally since their college days.

Next Monday, the truth will be revealed when a book that literally gives “chapter and verse” about this candidate’s less-than-candid candor with the American people will tear aside the curtain, just as Toto exposed the Wizard of Oz.

This book is supported by 10 pages of meticulously-researched end-notes supporting every factual assertion about the candidate’s failure to shoot straight with the American people, and this breach-of-faith’s implications for the Presidency.

If you’re serious about covering the 2008 Presidential campaign, you won’t want to miss this announcement – and you will want to meet the author.

Both messages were on behalf of an outfit called “Revelation Press” which I Google’d and found bupkis about.

I emailed Monday seeking to elicit more information, noting that “I tend not to go cover events involving unnamed authors touting unspecified rumors about unnamed candidates in books by publishers without a reputation.” I was informed that, “Obviously, we can’t tell you more at this point – not without inviting in-advance (and ill-informed) criticism – but if you’re serious about covering the 2008 Presidential campaign, you won’t want to miss this announcement – and you will want to meet the author.”

I’ve decided to take my chances and skip the event. In the highly unlikely event it turns out to be something substantive, I’ll investigate further.

Image credit: Welcome to the Underground via Google Images.

Famed oilman T. Boone Pickens has offered $1 million to anyone who can disprove claims my by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against John Kerry — and John Kerry has taken him up on it.

Sen. John Kerry, whose 2004 presidential campaign was torpedoed by critics of his Vietnam War record, said Friday he has personally accepted a Texas oilman’s offer to pay $1 million to anyone who can disprove even a single charge of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

In a letter to T. Boone Pickens, the Massachusetts Democrat wrote: “While I am prepared to show they lied on allegation after allegation, you have generously offered to pay one million dollars for just one thing that can be proven false. I am prepared to prove the lie beyond any reasonable doubt.” Kerry, a Navy veteran and former prosecutor, said he was willing to present his case directly to Pickens, who provided $3 million to bankroll the group during Kerry’s race against President Bush.

Pickens has responded by raising the stakes:

Pickens wrote Friday in a letter faxed to Kerry, “I am certainly open to your challenge,” but he said he would not pay Kerry unless the senator first provided him with copies of his wartime journals, as well as movies he shot while on patrol and his complete military records for 1971 to 1978.

Pickens said such documentation, which the group has previously sought, would be needed to disprove its ads. “When you have done so, if you can then prove anything in the ads was materially untrue, I will gladly award $1 million. As you know, I have been a long and proud supporter of the American military and veterans’ causes,” Pickens wrote.

He also proposed a counter-challenge: “If you cannot prove anything in the Swift Boat ads to be untrue, that you will make a $1 million gift to the charity I am choosing — the (Congressional) Medal of Honor Foundation.”

Jane Hamsher thinks this constitutes “reneging” on the deal and is “cowardly.” Patterico guest DRJ figures he’s merely specifying “the material terms – the rules – regarding how the winner will be determined.”

In any event, it’s a sucker bet.

Many of the more outrageous claims in the book have been rather strongly rebutted. Likewise, the debut ad, which questioned the character of Kerry’s service in Vietnam and implied he didn’t deserve his medals, was “contradicted by the statements of several other veterans who observed the incidents, by the Navy’s official records, and, in some instances, by the contemporaneous statements of SBVT members themselves.” John McCain pronounced it “dishonest and dishonorable” and I pronounced them the Swift Boat Nuts noted that they “sound increasingly like lunatics.” That said, given the passage of time, it’s doubtful the reasonable doubt threshold can be reached.

Still, as I wrote in “Swift Justice,” a July 2004 piece for Tech Central Station, the charges about self-inflicted wounds, war crimes, and undeserved medals weren’t why the Swift Boat ads were so effective. Indeed, if they had continued on that path, the campaign would almost certainly have backfired.

The idea that Kerry’s war medals were unearned is rather dubious and almost impossible to prove. Furthermore, as Bush’s re-election team seems to grasp, the mere fact that Kerry went to Vietnam trumps Bush’s record of halfhearted service in the Air National Guard. And the business about Kerry killing “a lone, fleeing, teenage Viet Cong in a loincloth” is just unbelievable coming 35 years after the fact.

That said, Kerry’s actions after returning home from Vietnam will ultimately hurt him more than his Vietnam service helps him. We should expect to see several ads focusing on his outrageous accusations against his fellow veterans, including the Senate testimony where he put forth numerous documentable lies. As political scientist Steven Taylor has noted, most of the animus of the SBVFT was generated by Kerry’s actions as leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War rather than his actual conduct in theater. It seems quite likely to me that this reaction will ultimately take place in other veterans and in the swing voters who have yet to make up their minds on Kerry’s character.

The second, third, and fourth ads concentrated on those angles. Stories of medals thrown over a wall by Kerry that weren’t actually Kerry’s medals, memories that were “seared — seared!!” into Kerry’s brain but couldn’t possibly be true, and reminders that Kerry had smeared American troops in “a fashion reminiscent of GEN-jis Khan” effectively undermined Kerry’s credibility and he failed to respond effectively. It’s rather odd to suddenly be offering up proof more than three years later.

UPDATE: Jules Crittenden wonders why Kerry would want to remind people of his failed campaign.

Five authors, including Swift Boater Jerome Corsi, are suing publisher Regnery for defrauding them out of royalties.

Five authors have sued the parent company of Regnery Publishing, a Washington imprint of conservative books, charging that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to book clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.

In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”

Some of the authors’ books have appeared on the New York Times best-seller list, including “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry,” by Mr. Corsi and John E. O’Neill (who is not a plaintiff in the suit), Mr. Patterson’s “Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America’s National Security” and Mr. Miniter’s “Shadow War: The Untold Story of How Bush Is Winning the War on Terror.” In the lawsuit the authors say that Eagle sells or gives away copies of their books to book clubs, newsletters and other organizations owned by Eagle “to avoid or substantially reduce royalty payments to authors.”

The authors argue that in reducing royalty payments, the publisher is maximizing its profits and the profits of its parent company at their expense.

“They’ve structured their business essentially as a scam and are defrauding their writers,” Mr. Miniter said in an interview, “causing a tremendous rift inside the conservative community.”

The practices, detailed at much greater length in the article, are standard in the publishing industry. Steep discounts are frequently given to book clubs and other vendors for promotional purposes. The problem here is that Eagle Publishing owns said book club and other promotional organizations and thus has a rather powerful conflict of interest.

Kevin Drum sees some rough justice at work here and wonders, “[I]f a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged, what do you call a conservative who’s come face to face with the naked face of vertically integrated capitalism?”

Jane Hamsher inexplicably sees “irony” here and snarks, “These ‘authors’ seem to believe that if Richard Mellon Scaiffe wasn’t giving away copies to replace the Monkey Ward’s catalog as outhouse toilet paper that people would be paying full price for their brilliant tomes.” In actuality, though, consumers were paying something close to full price for the books; it’s just that the Conservative Book Club was getting the book at a steep discount from Regnery. Or the books were used as an inducements to get people to subscribe to Human Events or various newsletters at full price rather than at frequently available cut rates. In all cases, Eagle Publishing profited by the authors didn’t.

An equally unsympathetic Barbara O’Brien is probably right, though, that the authors have little little chance of prevailing in court. She observes, “It’s not at all unusual for a niche publisher to run its own book clubs and other distribution outlets that sell books at deeply discounted rates. Regnery didn’t invent this practice.” The problem is that Regnery isn’t a “niche publisher” but rather the producer of highly profitable national bestsellers. Channeling these books through their corporate owned distribution networks so as to deprive authors of their rightful share of the proceeds is unethical. It’s probably perfectly legal, though.

Reason’s Dave Weigel takes to the pages of The American Conservative to warn Republicans that they’re not going to win in 2008 simply by bashing Hillary Clinton.

Conservatives are fraught, angry at their traditional party, unable to decide on a standard-bearer, unsure even what they stand for. They don’t think this is the year to sort those problems out. They’re counting on a short-cut when the Democrats nominate an unelectable cold fish who has infuriated the Right for a decade and a half. Millions remember how they felt when she belittled other wives for “staying home and baking cookies,” and Bill Clinton promised voters “two for the price of one” if they sent his family to the White House.

On the Right, the list of grievances was even longer. Both Clintons were seen as ambassadors of 1960s radicalism and cultural decadence, and Hillary was the worse of the two: a pro-choice feminist who didn’t take her husband’s name until pollsters told her it would help him make a political comeback.

Yet for all of that outrage, Republicans lost that election to the Clintons. And the hope that voters will see what they see and reject what the Clintons stand for resembles the plan Democrats clung to in 2004. They choose John Kerry on the theory he would be the least controversial general-election candidate, then counted on an electorate fed up with George W. Bush to deliver the election.

While negative campaigning and pointing out the weaknesses of one’s opponent can be quite effective, there hasn’t been a presidential election in my lifetime decided on that basis. (Off the top of my head, I can’t think of an example of that happening, period.) Drawing a contrast with Hillary Clinton will be effective in mobilizing the base. But Republicans won’t keep the White House if they don’t inspire the public with a positive agenda of their own.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum disagrees with my conclusion, asking, “Is there any doubt that the Swift Boat ads that ran virtually nonstop in Ohio managed to switch at least a hundred thousand votes and thus swing the state — and the election — to George Bush?”

I do think there’s substantial doubt, yes. I’m honestly not sure how much the Swift Boat ads mattered in the long run, although they certainly weakened Kerry’s attempts to capitalize on his Vietnam service. And to the extent that they were effective, I continue to believe it was the legitimate attacks on his post-Vietnam activism, including the Winter Soldier smears, that hurt rather than the nonsense about Kerry’s faking injuries to get his Purple Heart and so forth.

Indeed, I’d cite the 2004 campaign as a classic case of what I’m talking about here. The Kerry campaign was built almost entirely on attacking the Bush presidency rather than presenting an alternative vision. Given the unpopularity of the war, he came close but not quite close enough.

Could Kerry have run that campaign and won were it not for the Swift Boat ads? Maybe. But he could more easily have picked up another hundred thousand-odd votes in Ohio by giving the people something to vote for rather than just highlighting what they should vote against.

Glenn Greenwald argues that many of those now condemning MoveOn.org and/or demanding that Democrats condemn MoveOn.org for suggesting General David Petraeus would “betray us” are hypocrites, since many have used inflammatory rhetoric themselves.

He’s surely right in many particulars. Those on the Ann Coulter wing of the Right, who routinely throw around words like “traitors” and “treason” to describe mainstream Democrats for expressing honest disagreement, live in proverbial glass houses.

Many of us, though, have been rather consistent on this issue, decrying those on both sides of the aisle for going beyond the pale and creating a chilling effect on democratic debate. Still, I’ve argued since before the Iraq War started that there were plenty of honorable reasons to oppose it; I’ve defended John Kerry, John Murtha, John Edwards, and Joe Biden from unfair attacks; argued that Ward Churchill has a right to academic freedom (but not academic misconduct!); and I’ve repeatedly rebuffed the notion that Democrats are anti-victory, let alone anti-American.

The point of all this isn’t that I’ve been a bastion of civility in an otherwise harsh body politic. I’ve been at this since January 2003 and I’m sure that someone looking through my archives hard enough could find instances within the 15,958 posts I’ve written and find contrary examples. I’m occasionally snarky and infrequently angry but try to avoid painting with too broad a brush.

I’m hardly unique in this role. Most of the bloggers on my blogroll and certainly those in the recommended feeds in the top navigation bar have been mostly civil in their discussion of some incredibly divisive issues. That’s true of plenty of other non-blogging pundits, too (see this four-year-old George Will column, for example).

So, yes, condemn hypocrisy. But stand up and be counted when major spokesmen for your side go beyond the pale, too.

UPDATE: Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry and Jane Hamsher (and, presumably, others) argue that tactics like the “Betray Us” ad are not only brilliant but necessary to get one’s point noticed. But, surely, Ann Coulter, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and others despised by the Left could make the same claim.

It’s true on many levels, of course. Bomb throwing tactics are often quite successful. But at what cost to civil society?