all over the political blogisphere today people are hyperventilating about whether certain memos, which supposedly document that bush dodged his military service, are real or forgeries. just the like hyperventilation over kerry's swift boat record, i simply don't get what all the excitement is about. regardless of who did what in the vietnam era, it make no difference to the issue of who i will support in november.
is anyone really so shallow that it will make a difference to them? probably with some swing voters, to the extent there are any in this polarized election. and i suspect that's what's going on. partisans on each side are thinking tactically, not ideologically. liberals are arguing the documents are genuine in the hopes that the contents will bleed away some of bush's support. conservatives are insisting its a forgery to stop the bleeding. if the facts were reversed, i have no doubt that the right would stand behind the documents while the left cried forgery.
but i also think this whole thing will hurt bush, even if questions as to the documents' authenticity are never put to rest. just as the swift boat nonsense wounded kerry, even as the allegations against him were rebutted one by one, these memos will be a liability to bush. even if untrue, these things tend to seep doubt into the consciousness of the electorate.
i recognize that as long as this is true, both parties will always feel that they have to fight slime with slime. and while i hope bush's numbers do sink over this, i really wish it was over something more substantive. it would be nice to talk about genocide in darfur, to cite but one example, instead of whether typewriters in the early 1970s used proportional or fixed-width fonts. i know some people get fascinated by these details, but there just seems to be more important stuff out there.
