Truth - Al Franken [27]
Okay, this is Al again.
Hang on, Al. But I harbor no bitterness toward those who did not vote for me. Any American who exercises his franchise, or her franchise, is a living testament to the greatness of our framers’ vision: a federal republic united by the spirit and vision of “we the people.” And to those nonvoters, to you I say this: Come, join our celebration of democracy. Experience the challenge and the promise of self-government. For though ours is a nation of laws, not of men, those laws are only as wise and as just as are the elected legislators who write and revise them each year in the halls of Congress.
Okay, this is Al again. John had to catch a plane for a ribbon-cutting in Manchester. But I think John was about to address the criticism from some quarters that his campaign should have spent every dime that it raised, and maybe even gone into debt, rather than leaving $15 million in the bank on Election Day. I’ll bet his response would have been that the leftover money was being kept as a strategic reserve, which would have been a godsend if they had had to fight a recount battle. Think about it. If Gore had saved a little dough for Florida, he might be serving a second term today, 9/11 might have been averted, and our troops would already be returning home triumphantly from Darfur.
But I’m getting off track. What I’m saying here is that I’m not going to get bogged down responding to every little criticism of Kerry. He did some things very well, and other things—let’s just say I wish he’d done those differently. Like the things he screwed up. I wish he had done those things differently.
No, the point of this chapter is this: For the last five elections, at least, the Republicans have gone after the Democratic nominee with constant, vicious, dishonest character attacks. 2004 was worse than usual, but it’s always ugly. We’ve got to expect it, be ready for it, and know how to beat it. This chapter tells the story of how the Republican smear machine took a war hero with a record of unflagging support for our troops and convinced a slim majority of voters that he was a sniveling traitor running for president in order to dismantle our armed forces, ban the Bible, and raise taxes enough to award himself tens of millions of additional unearned medals. I present this story not just to shock you, not just to make you laugh and cry alternatingly or maybe even at the same time, not just to set the record straight—but to rouse you, to prepare you for battles ahead. The only vaccine powerful enough to inoculate you from Republican lies is the truth. If you run for president as a Democrat, they’re going to come after you. They’re going to come after you no matter who you are. Even if it’s you, Hillary. You may not believe it now. But if you read the rest of this chapter, I hope you’ll come away convinced. This chapter is both sword and shield. Enjoy.
Tom Oliphant was mad. And when Tom Oliphant gets mad, close observers of Tom Oliphant can often detect a slight tilt to the usually perfect horizontal set of the mild-mannered Boston Globe columnist’s signature bow tie. Sitting across from Tom that hot August day in Air America’s roasting craphole of a studio, I could see he was mad indeed.
Nearly forty years of journalistic experience informed Oliphant’s elegant rage. He had covered Kerry since his return from Vietnam and his emergence as an antiwar leader. He knew Kerry’s story chapter and verse and he had heard these attacks before. This time, something had changed.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (or as I like to call them, Swift Boat Veterans for “Truth,” or Swift Boat Veterans “for” Truth, or better still, the “Swift” “Boat” “Veterans