Thinking about Politics

This morning, while doing some web surfing, I came across this, here:

Sunday's New York Time revisited the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacks against Sen. John Kerry and highlighted how Kerry is still working hard to clear his name and knock down any questions that remain about his stellar service in Vietnam. Kerry's not the only one nursing wounds from the Swifty attacks. For lots of people the phrase 'Swift Boat' has become synonymous with 'Florida Recount'; a dreadful, hard-to-relive chapter in campaign history, in which Republicans played bare-knuckle hardball and the press pretty much let them get away with it.

My initial thoughts on this are basically 'yes, absolutely', because I supported Kerry in that election, and I believe that the Swift Boat Veterans were a put up job by the Republicans. But as I read that, I found myself cringing a bit at certain words. "Still working hard to clear his name", for example. "Stellar". "The press pretty much let them get away with it." Those words clearly show the bias of the author, and lead me to question whether I can rely on what they are saying. Even though I do believe the general thrust of the comments, I wonder about them, a bit. In fact, in a bit of psychological judo, I find myself wondering if this was actually planted by the Republicans as a straw man, so that they could say 'See what obviously biased supporters he has; they clearly are not telling the truth'.

I expect that this is the sort of thing that we are in for, in the next year or so. I think that the bulk of the blame for this kind of campaign has to be laid at the door of the Republicans, which means that they have the bulk of the responsibility to keep it from happening. Do I think they will? No, quite the contrary. I think that they will do it more often, with less compunction -- and I think that the Democrats will join them. It will become a question of who lies more effectively.