Press Review: John Kerry's Vietnam Medals

Given the way the wounds of Vietnam remain open in the US, the country's press was predictably preoccupied with the controversy over Senator John Kerry's military medals: did he throw away the actual medals at an antiwar demonstration, as he claimed in a 1971 TV interview, or did he just throw away the ribbons, as he has maintained since 1984?

Kerry's vacillation, said John Podhoretz in the New York Post, was his "great weakness as a candidate - a weakness that will be hard for him to overcome, because it appears to be a character trait ... the conviction that he can talk himself out of a tough situation. Sometimes, it's better just to be silent, take the hit and move on. But Mr Kerry seems constitutionally incapable of doing that."

(Read story

The Boston Globe's Thomas Oliphant backed Mr Kerry's current story. Oliphant attended the event at which Mr Kerry is said to have thrown away his medals, and was "four or five feet" behind the future senator. "Mr Kerry did not make the slightest effort to pretend that he was throwing all of his military decorations [away]. He did what he did on plain view ... It was clear to me that Mr Kerry had arrived ... with only the ribbons he wore on his shirt."

(Read story

The whole controversy was part of a Republican smear campaign reminiscent of McCarthyism, reckoned EJ Dionne jnr in the Washington Post. "Thus," said Dionne, "the shameful display on the floor of the House of Representatives last week as one Republican after another declared that what mattered was not Mr Kerry's service but that he decided afterward that the Vietnam war was a terrible mistake for our country."

The only question, Dionne argued, was whether President George Bush would intervene to stop his fellow Republicans launching their attacks. "Or will he just sit by silently, hoping the assaults do their work while he evades responsibility?"

(Read story

The theme of Bush's complicity in the attacks was raised by Joe Conason in the webzine Salon. Conason argued that the fact that the former White House aide Karen Hughes had called for closer scrutiny of Mr Kerry's war record suggested Mr Bush approved the strategy. "She deserves to be challenged, however, about her own role in the concealment of Mr Bush's actual war record," wrote Conason.

Ms Hughes ghostwrote A Charge to Keep, Mr Bush's 1999 autobiography. "While including plenty of filler and self-serving rhetoric, Ms Hughes needed only five pages to recount Mr Bush's military career ... [In the book] Mr Bush proclaims: 'I am proud of my service. Yet I know it was nothing compared to what our soldiers and pilots were doing in Vietnam.' Having written those words, Ms Hughes should remember that whenever she feels the urge to demean Mr Kerry, who still carries a piece of shrapnel in his left buttock. And should she open her mouth about this subject again, someone should ask her what the president did with his medals."

(Read story

Not all, however, found the arguments compelling. The daily sniping, the personal smears and the negative ads all meant, said USA Today, that "for many voters, the 2004 presidential campaign already is more tedious than enlightening". The only good thing to have come from the rows, the paper felt, was that they had forced candidates to be more forthcoming about their pasts than previous presidential contenders. "Voters are entitled to accountability and openness. Candidates who recognise that help raise democracy to a higher standard."

(Read story