Value Judgment: McAuliffe Steps Up

Value Judgment is a daily weblog written by two independent voters on the eastern seaboard of the United States. VJ will focus on the 2004 U.S. Presidential campaigns, including strategy, tactics, and substance. The authors supported Howard Dean in the Democratic primary. Accordingly, his activities will be a prominent topic on this site.

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January 25, 2004

McAuliffe Steps Up

I was disappointed with Clark's answer in the last debate on the DubyaDeserter question. He needs to be sharper on these things. (I watched him on CSPAN this afternoon and he flubbed an interaction with a government-uterine-control advocate as well. Even so, he's my #2 again because I'm beginning to think that Edwards is a policy lightweight.) But anyway, I am glad to see the AWOL issue being raised again. Blitzer bugged Terry McAuliffe about it on CNN and McAuliffe actually had a decent answer.

BLITZER: Terry McAuliffe, when Wesley Clark was on that stage with Michael Moore, one of his campaign supporters, and Moore called President Bush a deserter and General Clark refused to distance himself from that comment right away, was that a huge blunder? You don't believe that President Bush was a deserter, do you?

MCAULIFFE: Well, Wolf, in order to to be a deserter, you have to actually show up.

Let's just deal with the facts. As you know, when President Bush got out of college in 1968, it was at the height of the draft. It's well known that the president, former president, used some of his influence to get George Bush into the Texas National Guard.

He then wanted to go to Alabama and work on a Senate campaign. So he went to Alabama for a year while he was in the National Guard, and he never showed up.

I mean, I would call it AWOL. You call it whatever you want. But the issue is the president did not show up for the year he was in Alabama, when he was supposed to show up for the National Guard.

Gillespie pipes up and claims that McAuliffe is "completely inaccurate." Yeah. Sure. If the media continues to hound Clark about that, I hope he shoves it back in their faces and insists that they demonstrate that he did show up for duty when he was required to. Push back hard, General. Just do it, man.

On another topic, but in the same transcript, was this fascinating exchange between Blitzer and Bob Graham:

GRAHAM: Yes. And another phrase that was used prior to the war was the phrase "imminent," that these were items that weren't just in a warehouse somewhere, or a laboratory, but they were ready to be used. In fact, the British at one time said they could be used on a 45-minute-notice basis.

So there are a lot of...

BLITZER: On that point, Senator Graham, on that point, the president himself, though, never used the word "imminent." What he said, there was a "gathering" storm raising the specter of the threat.

Now. When was the last time an 'objective' reporter corrected a 'mistake'' about a Democrat in that way? Could CNN be much more blatant?

Posted by J at January 25, 2004 10:29 PM

Comments

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Posted by: Mitchell Gore at January 26, 2004 03:18 AM