"Vietnam duality challenges Kerry"

Several things are clear from this Boston Globe article (HT: Captain's Quarters).

1. The Kerry people live in a cocoon. They misjudged how devastating his 1971 Senate testimony about routine atrocities would be in a presidential campaign because "Massachusetts voters never gave him serious trouble for that remark". So a rabid statement about U.S. war crimes was no matter of serious concern because he never had much trouble with it in the one state McGovern carried in 1972.

2. His Vietnam record was seen as a product attribute-- like the new, secret ingredients detergent makers are always touting in their commercials. "New Wargo -- now with pentantium ferrohydroz!" It was a way to sell an undistinguished, very, rich, and very liberal senator from New England to voters in West Virginia and Arkansas.

His hagiographer Brinkley is quite clear on the political utility of the war record.

"Kerry decided to make Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign for one clear reason: Imagine him without his military record -- he would just be another liberal from Taxachusetts," Brinkley said. "With Vietnam, he could challenge Republicans on their strongest position -- standing with the military and with the American flag. Now you're seeing the negative effects of that"

3. The Kerry staff has been blind-sided by the importance of the new media . They knew that the MSM would give little play to the charges of his critics. They thought that with their contacts in Washington, Boston, and New York they held the interior lines and could out quickly quash any scattered outbreaks of bad press in the hinterlands. They had no idea what the new media could do-- how it helps people organize despite the distance between them, the speed with which books can go from final draft to the display tables at Barnes and Noble, the cumulative effect of thousands of fact-checkers, the degree to which the internet and talk radio have eroded the credibility of Kerry's MSM allies. (See more here.)