‘Instapundit’ brought Kerry/Vietnam issue front and center

by Frank Cagle

If President Bush is re-elected, he needs to make Glenn Reynolds his new attorney general. He is a distinguished law professor at UT, the respected author of numerous books and law review articles, and an expert on hot-button issues like nanotechnology. Unlike John Ashcroft, his particular interests are individual liberty in an age of advanced technology. That alone makes him my candidate.

But Reynolds also hosts a web log called Instapundit that’s been called The New York Times of the blogosphere. In addition to original reporting and commentary, Instapundit is also the traffic cop for hundreds of sites that plug into a worldwide network people that operate blogs. In the old days, the Times would decide news and other news organizations would fall in line. Still true, though the Times influence has waned. Reynolds, the professor who never sleeps, is very influential in setting the topic of the day in the blogosphere. It may be something he’s interested in writing about, or something he has picked up on out there on the web and has linked to it.

A great newspaper has a large staff of reporters to fan out and gather information and funnel it back to the desk for presentation to its readers. It is not an exaggeration to say that Reynolds has a “staff” bigger than any newspaper in America. These days a supercomputer is not a room-sized machine doing computations. It is a room full of servers, interconnected and doing computations continuously, all linked together. The news and commentary web logs are similar in operation. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: individual computations (reporting, commentary) flow into a thread that produces a bigger picture. Instapundit is the often the nexus.

For the last several weeks Topic A has been the Swift Boat Veterans’ charges and Sen. John Kerry’s record in Vietnam. The searching analysis and the piling of bits on top of bits created an overall picture that has been incredibly damaging to Kerry. Long before the traditional media decided to cover the issue, the story had been advanced day after day for weeks on the web logs. The flat-footed responses from the Kerry campaign were mercilessly picked apart for inconsistencies. The traditional media could no longer ignore an argument on thousands of computers across the county. Editors read blogs as well.

In the run up to the 2000 election, I wrote that the Republicans in Tennessee were fired up and Vice-president Al Gore’s alleged home state was in play. Bush did indeed carry Tennessee. A couple of weeks ago I was prepared to write that the state that rejected home boy Gore seemed likely to vote for a liberal senator from Massachusetts. The Democrats in Tennessee are certainly fired up and enthusiastic, and conservatives have a lot of reasons to stay home rather than vote for Bush. (I have even foolishly bet a dinner on Kerry winning Tennessee.)

But the Vietnam issue has hurt Kerry badly, in the Volunteer state and elsewhere, and not necessarily by the substance of the accusations themselves. His campaign is distracted. The issue is inside his head. Any day the campaign is about things that happened 35 years ago rather than the economy, the deficit or the war in Iraq, it is a bad day for Kerry. The issue has energized the Republican base. With Kerry stalled, the Republican convention gave Bush a bump. Only the debates can save Kerry now.

A few months ago I expressed the hope that we would finally set Vietnam aside as an issue. Kerry seems to have forgotten the draft-dodger who beat a decorated World War II veteran in 1992 and another one in 1996. The National Guardsman beat the Vietnam veteran in 2000. But Kerry tried to use service in Vietnam to inoculate himself against Republican charges that Democrats are weak on defense. Making it an issue has dredged up all the old passions.

The vast majority of our generation did not serve in Vietnam. And those of us who did have mixed feelings that make it impossible to predict how it plays out in this presidential race. I agree with McCain that the attacks on Kerry’s service in Vietnam are beyond the pale. But Kerry’s inconsistent explanations and his failure to deal with the issue quickly made it fair game for the blogs. The blogs have defined him to much of America; it is almost too late to respond.

I think it’s terrible that an election that should be about the economy, fighting terrorism and the war in Iraq is now all about what happened in Vietnam 35 years ago. Vietnam was a hellhole then; it’s a hellhole now. Kerry should have known that. Dear God, when will we ever let it go?

Frank Cagle is a political analyst and the host of Sound Off on WIVK FM107.7, WNOX AM990, FM99.1 and FM99.3 each Sunday 8-9:30 a.m.

September 9, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 37 © 2004 Metro Pulse