S wiftboating, as it has come to be defined by the left, is the political trick of claiming to expose truth while in fact lying. The left invented the word to counter the Swift Veterans and POWs for Truth, an organization of former commanders of Vietnam era river attack vessels called swift boats. Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry was a swift boat commander in the Vietnam War. He was the recipient of the Silver Star and other decorations for his service in the navy, including several Purple Hearts. In May 2004, the Swift Veterans announced their opposition to Kerrys presidential ambitions in a letter to him. The letter read, in part: It is our collective judgment that, upon your return from Vietnam, you grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct of the American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen of that war (including a betrayal of many of us, without regard for the danger your actions caused us). Further, we believe that you have withheld and/or distorted material facts as to your own conduct in this war.
The Swift Veterans ran a series of ads questioning Kerrys war record, his decorations, but especially his involvement in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and the 1971 Winter Soldier project. As a part of those activities, Kerry had testified before a Senate committee alleging American soldiers committed atrocities in Vietnam, which especially angered the Swift Veterans.
The Swiftboat advertisements generated an enormous controversy about Kerrys war record and the Swift Veterans affiliations with the Republican Party and various activisits assisting the campaign of George W. Bush. But Washington Post political analysts Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei wrote, Privately, key Democratic strategists fear that attack ads against Kerry will undermine the Democratic presidential nominees character and credibility, no matter whether the charges are accurate, because they dovetail with an argument Bushs campaign has tried to pound home in its advertisingthat Kerry is unreliable and untrustworthy.
Swiftboating, used as a verb, came to mean just that: undermining character and credibility, no matter whether the charges are accurate. Supposedly too, this odious means of political combat was exclusively the practice of the right.
For many years, the left has accused American conservatives of building a well-oiled propaganda machine. David Brock, a onetime conservative firebrand, wrote a book called The Republican Noise Machine in which he outlined precisely how this mechanism worked: Think tanks cranked out position papers and arguments and opinions, which then found their way onto talk radio, and into newspaper and newsmagazine opinion columns, and eventually influenced the opinions and political outlook of the American voter. The left admired this powerful machine and made conscious efforts to reproduce it even as they denounced its baleful effects. By 2006, the left had consciously duplicated this imagined mechanism to push voters to the left. In the same way, the left adopted the perceived tactic of its political opponents in attacking George W. Bush.
The lefts animus toward Bush was nurtured in the Florida sun in the thirty-five-day recount drama of the 2000 presidential election. Bush was scorned by the left even before Al Gores agonizingly close electoral loss, but after the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that gave Bush the presidency, he was forever viewed by the left as illegitimate. The objection that Bush was selected not elected soon became a common refrain and a fuming bumper sticker.
Bush entered office with a huge budget surplus, a country at peace, and in a climate of wedge-issue politics the left found more annoying than threatening. Then 9/11 changed all that.
After 9/11 the left began to realizewith mounting horrorthat a man they regarded as a likable numbskull was taking on the near-heroic status of a national war leader. Worse, to attack him while the country itself was under attack would make them seem unpatriotic.
The answer was swiftboating . Undermine the president by a campaign of lies and ridicule. Thus Bush was mocked and scorned for continuing to read grade school kids a childrens story while aides scurried for information on the attacks behind the scenes. He was later portrayed as a frightened president on the run when security demanded Air Force One fly from one Air Force base to another while the situation in the capital was assessed.
Swiftboating Bush involved attacking the president on several key fronts: on the disputed 2000 election, on his response to 9/11, on the Iraq War, on the national security initiative that involved warrantless domestic wiretapping, on enhanced interrogation techniques, on the surge, on uranium from Niger, on the number of deaths in Iraq, and on the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. After being relentlessly swiftboated by the left, these events turned into twisted versions of the truth: the illegitimate president selected by the Supreme Court, the president who let 9/11 happen, the rush to war based on lies about WMD, spying on Americans, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, watch what you say, the Downing Street memo, outing his own CIA spy, we killed a million Iraqis, Bush let New Orleans drown and many more.
Operating under that definition of swiftboating, and employing the maxim quoted above (What we repeat is what the public remembers), the left repeatedly assailed Bush, conservatives, the Iraq War, counterterrorism efforts, and the entire apparatus designed to keep America safe by defeating al Qaeda. The left said, Heres the truth about failure of judgment, loss at war, incompetence at all levels. All this coalesced as the Case against Bush. The entire edifice was built of demonstrable lies masquerading as the truth. But through repetition the lies proved very effective.
Moreover, it must be acknowledged, Bush himself was woefully inadequate as an explainer and defender of his policies. That gave the left eight years to build an edifice of lies and distortions virtually unopposed by the president or his staff.
Polling tracked the disillusionment among Americans as the lies set in. Wrong track polling on President Bush finally ran into the 80-percent zone, and the credibility of the president was eroded into the low twenties.
Saddam had his Mother of All Battles and the left in America had its Mother of All Big Lies, namely this now widely accepted but erroneous idea that everything America has undertaken since 9/11 was wrong, based on various Bush lies, and was in fact criminal.
The lefts Big Lie won them the Congress in 2006, and the hollow quality of the lies became immediately clear as the Democrats repeatedly declared the war was lost, opposed the surge, demanded an immediate withdrawal, slandered a generaland watched its own approval rating sink lower than even the hated George W. Bush.
The election of 2008 has proved that lies work. One only has to look at the charges leveled against the Bush administration by candidate Barack Obama to witness the success of this campaign. Obama ran and won on the lefts extensive catalog of lies about George W. Bush.
The election also ensured that the levers of power in Washington, D.C., will be in the hands of Democrats for at least four years and perhaps longer. The left now has the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, a lopsided leftist majority whose existence was founded on the Big Lie, the oft repeated and almost mythic tale that the War on Terror and the War in Iraq are failures and national humiliations.
