Aug.08

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Let the Swiftboating Begin

J.D. Vance has figured out that if he wants to make sure he remains Donald Trump's running mate, it will be necessary to take Gov. Tim Walz (DFL-MN) down a peg or six. In theory, if both VPs are unpopular, then Vance goes from "a liability" to "a wash." As part of his campaign of character assassination, Vance has dusted off a trick that is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year: Calling into question Walz' military service.

Most readers are old enough to remember how John Kerry got the same treatment in 2004, with a group called Swift Vets and POWs for Truth asserting that the then-Democratic nominee had misrepresented and exaggerated his service in the Vietnam War. Because, after all, anyone can luck into THREE Purple Hearts, right? The claims against Kerry came mostly from men who couldn't possibly have been witness to his service, and were eventually discredited, but the damage was done.

Walz' "swift boaters" are a pair of retired veterans of the National Guard, Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr. They have been flogging this for years, most obviously paying a local Minnesota newspaper to run an op-ed laying out their claims against Walz. It's taken 6 years, but Behrends and Herr have finally found someone willing to take the baton and run with it.

There are, in essence, three claims being made about Walz' service:

1. That Walz improperly claimed the rank of Command Sergeant Major.
   
   
2. That Walz improperly claimed that he carried "weapons" in "war."
   
   
3. That Walz made a point of retiring shortly before his unit was shipped out to Iraq.

These things aren't entirely false. They also aren't entirely true, in that there is context for each of them. To wit:

1. Walz was provisionally promoted to Command Sergeant Major, but retired before he could complete the 2 years' training to make the rank permanent.
   
   
2. What Walz said was: "We can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at." This is open to interpretation, but it seems to us that his point was not so much about his personal résumé, and more about the point that high-powered guns are meant as tools for soldiers, not for civilians.
   
   
3. Walz retired 2 months before his unit was deployed to Iraq and, crucially, at a time when he was commencing his first run for Congress. Certainly he could have read the writing on the wall and guessed that a deployment might happen, but he definitely did not know, and he had a pretty good non-war-related reason for concluding his service when he did. Also, because he has tinnitus, he might have been declared not fit for service, even if he'd tried to deploy.

To us, it looks like a politician putting the best possible spin on his military record, which politicians are wont to do. Walz did not make any claim that was patently false, like saying he has a military decoration he does not have.

Still, Vance is working mightily to squeeze some mileage out of this, characterizing it as "stolen valor." Will it work? Sure, it's possible. It worked against John Kerry, and there are some people for whom the mere mention of stolen valor gets their blood boiling. That said, it's not a slam dunk, for several reasons:

1. Nobody disputes that Walz served his country for 24 years. People who care about these things may well decide that is the "valor" that really matters. They might also take a dim view of Vance for presuming to pi** on someone's service to their country.
   
   
2. The distinction that Vance is trying to draw between Walz and himself is a pretty thin one. It is true that Vance was deployed to a combat zone for one tour of duty (6 months), while Walz was not. It is also true that Vance was not a combat soldier and never saw any combat action. To put it another way, (Z) has been shot at more times than Vance has.
   
   
3. Because of the Kerry precedent, some people might roll their eyes and say "this again?"
   
   
4. Maybe Vance wasn't briefed on this, but his running mate not only did not serve, but fraudulently avoided service by pretending to have an injury he did not have.

We'll also point out that because these attacks on Walz date back more than 6 years, you can be very certain that the Democrats' vetting team was well aware of all of this, and decided it wasn't a problem. We are inclined to agree with them, but we'll see what voters think. (Z)