en garde

En Garde.
CBS' 60 Minutes tonight packs a punch. Ben Barnes is one thing; sure sure sure, Bush got into the National Guard via some political connections. Nothing to write home, or on a blog, about. It is quite another thing to blow, almost entirely, off that duty. Josh Marshall reports that this latter charge might just catch on in the mainstream media storyline post 60 Minutes. Kristof's column in the Times today has more.

And why does this matter? The Bush crowd (as well as mainstream media) like to say Kerry deserves the attack ads from Swift Boat Vets for Truth, et al, because he made his service in Vietnam such an issue at the Convention. (btw, that's BS...certainly, using his service in the campaign opens Kerry up to attacks on such service and on his protests thereafter; but, one never deserves lies and slander, ie, the SBVT ads.)
Likewise, Bush has used as campaign material his brief flying stint with the Guard. Remember his "return to the cockpit" en route to the USS Abe Lincoln? Bush, then, deserves investigation into his service just as Kerry deserves such inquiry. (And likewise, Bush does not deserve wide eyed slander.)

The above, though, isn't my reasoning. It is reasoning that gets around a preceding presumption that 30 years ago does not matter. While we wouldn't make these charges about the past, such reasoners say, Kerry/Bush compel us to do so because he made it an issue. I disagree. The past is relevant. That is why, as it turns out, we had the invention of biography.

A person's actions in the beginning of their adult life tell us something about the person. More so, in some respects, than even their more contemporary senate votes and policy decisions. For those people that vote on personality, policy decisions are a sorry meter. Such decisions are made within such complexity, and the commercials citing them produced with such simplicity, that voters come out of the process dumber than Gomer Pyle. It's like buying a car based on the soda they brought you at the dealership.

For those voting on person-hood, past actions (not words) is all we've got. Going to Vietnam, appearing before a Senate committee to speak against the war, ducking out of Guard service, daily jogs and favorite tv shows are all relevant and useful for that search into the person. Imagine a biographer who decided only to write about the last ten years of the subject's life.