REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Birth of a Political Urban Legend
Don't believe the Dems' cock-and-bull story about why Max Cleland lost.
The story below has yet to surface on Snopes.com, where the Web savvy go to separate fact from folklore. But we suspect it's only a matter of time.
In the wake of last week's Senate defeat, prominent Democrats and their media acolytes are spinning misinformation about the way Saxby Chambliss defeated Democratic incumbent Max Cleland in Georgia. We thought we'd set the record straight, before the tale becomes one more liberal political legend.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy told a radio talk show last week that President Bush "supported a man, for example, in Georgia who was, well, the best way to put it, was a draft dodger who attacked Senator Cleland on his patriotism. And the President joined in that." John Kerry of Massachusetts took the same line on ABC's "This Week": "What they did to Max Cleland, you know, a veteran, a guy who lost three limbs in Vietnam, left them on the battlefield, and they challenge his patriotism--that sickens everybody in our country."
The phrase "sore loser" comes to mind here. A four-term Congressman who heads the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, Mr. Chambliss never dishonored Mr. Cleland's Vietnam sacrifice. We doubt Georgia's patriotic citizens would have stood for it if he had.
Mr. Chambliss won by exposing Senator Cleland's voting record on the issues that mattered most to Georgians, such as taxes, missile defense and especially homeland security. Chambliss campaign ads noted that Mr. Cleland recorded 11 votes against the President on homeland security and 22 votes to gut or delay the Bush tax cut. "He says he supports President Bush [in the war on terror] at every opportunity," said one TV spot, "but that's not the truth."
It didn't help Mr. Cleland that he opposed a homeland security bill co-sponsored by Zell Miller, Georgia's more popular Senate Democrat. Mr. Miller bent over backwards trying to bring Mr. Cleland aboard, even getting him invited to the White House to go over the specifics with Mr. Bush. Instead Mr. Cleland stuck with the John Kerry-Pat Leahy obstructionist line against any homeland bill that didn't pass muster with the AFL-CIO. Maybe the two Senators should blame themselves for Mr. Cleland's defeat, all the more so because the Senate is about to pass Zell Miller's bill this week after all.
Mr. Cleland tried the patriotism-as-shield strategy himself during the campaign, a fact not lost on the local press. Jim Wooten of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote in June that "This 'how-dare-you-attack-my-patriotism' ploy, replete with feigned outrage . . . is a device to put Cleland's voting records off-limits." But Mr. Chambliss didn't allow that to happen, and on his way to winning 53% of the vote he picked up a Veterans of Foreign Wars endorsement, which specifically cited his voting record on national security. Was the VFW also questioning Mr. Cleland's patriotism?
Election Day revealed that Democrats have a credibility problem with voters on war and national security. Yet to discredit the GOP Senate takeover, and build immunity on the issue of national security for 2004, they are now concocting Willie Horton-type tales of why they lost. Mr. Kerry, who assailed Mr. Bush's Iraq policy right up to the time he voted for it in the Senate because he wants to be President, has his own reasons for promoting the Cleland myth. He's hoping to use his own admirable Vietnam service as a shield against his long liberal voting record on defense and the war on terrorism.
But the Chambliss-Cleland race shows that voters see through this. Instead of reflexively opposing the President's policies, Democrats would be better off developing a tough and credible national security agenda of their own. Urban political legends won't save them in 2004.
