This election will not hinge on Vietnam

I may be the only anti-Kerry blogger who has not posted something about his secret trip to Cambodia (or not) thirty years ago. I'm sure it's personally gratifying to expose Kerry's (ahem) "exaggerations" but I think it's a distraction. Bush supporters need to keep the eyes on the prize and present a vision for America in the post-9/11 age while criticizing Kerry in the context of his anemic Senate career. The Democrats meditated on the past at their convention and suffered for it. On this matter, I could not agree more with Charles Krauthammer:

Politically, though, I think the whole Swift boat campaign is not very smart. It focuses attention on Kerry's one strong point. The man has nothing to say about his next 30 years. His own emphasis on his Vietnam days is a brilliant distraction from his mediocre Senate career and his unbroken string of misjudgments about the national security requirements of the United States: supporting the idiotic nuclear freeze, opposing crucial Pershing II missile deployments in Europe, opposing support for the Nicaraguan anti-communist insurgency, voting against the Persian Gulf War, trying to cut post-Cold War intelligence funding. The list is long.

Bush was wise to praise Kerry's service in Vietnam in his Larry King interview. Bury this issue and focus on the Senator's twenty years in Washington where he has consistently voted the wrong way on national defense, intelligence, and taxes.