Is it the way I look? The way I sound?

Why John Kerry Lost
BY Thomas Lipscomb
January 7, 2005

"Newsweek talks exclusively with John Kerry about why he lost" promised the cover story this New Year's week, and it turns out that Senator Kerry's reflections boil down to the Nixonian. "The pundits have never liked me," he said. "Is it the way I look? The way I sound?"

The rest of the press hasn't done much better. Immediately after the campaign, they decided the election was won on "values." A few days later the consensus shifted like a school of fish. Mr. Kerry lost because, as Newsweek's Evan Thomas put it, "sitting presidents are never defeated in wartime." So the election was really about security and Iraq. Grudging praise now seems to be going to Karl Rove for his success in getting out the GOP vote.

Whatever the raison du jour for the Bush victory, two months after the election no one yet seems to understand the importance of the question: Why did Mr. Kerry lose? Before the election got under way, major polls agreed that the American people wanted change. And the only other election since World War II in which an incumbent was re-elected when the electorate wanted change was Harry Truman's astonishing victory in 1948.

The senator from Massachusetts sailed out of his convention with a comfortable lead. The Zogby poll had him ahead 47-43 against President Bush. His "war hero" convention strategy, now mocked in retrospect, was working just fine. Terence McAuliffe's Michael Moore-inspired attack on Mr. Bush's National Guard service, which began in January, dragged on and on all the way into August when the Associated Press succeeded in winning injunctive relief in a New York court to force the release of Mr. Bush's military records.

The stage at the Democratic Convention in July glittered with the stars of a galaxy of retired admirals and generals as Mr. Kerry "reported for duty." And the rolls of Mr. Kerry's "Veterans for Kerry" campaign committee were rapidly filling with stalwart GOP and independent military, active duty and retired, who preferred an authentic war hero who had at least served in combat to some rich kid who it appeared had hidden out in the National Guard and then wouldn't come clean about it.

Yet only three weeks later the president had reversed the Kerry lead. Mr. Bush went into his convention on August 30 with a 46-43 Zogby lead, without even the advantage of a convention bounce. Mr. Kerry never pulled significantly ahead again. What happened?

What happened was the reveille to more than 26.1 million Americans who serve or have served in the military. Their average age is 57.4 years. That is 13% of potential American voters 18 and older. The percentage of actual voters is far higher. After all, the average age of voters in America is 46 while the average American is 34. Older voters vote in far higher percentages: 73% of 67 to 68 years olds vote while only 27% of 18 year old "youth voters," so beloved of the Democratic Party, actually vote.

The reveille was the publication, two weeks after Mr. Kerry's nomination, of the book by John O'Neill and Jerry Corsi, "Unfit for Command." The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth book exploded up the bestseller list and spent much of its revenues on the most effective television advertising of the election. What the American press missed was the firestorm it ignited in the veterans' community. Perhaps too few scrivners served in the military, but whatever the reason the press failed to see this community's importance and sensibilities, leading to forecasting errors.

Election analysis chose to break it up into such demographic classifications as race, age, and income, rather than recognize veterans as a community at all. The Kerry campaign had actually done the most sophisticated analysis and organization of veterans, and now all that work was about to rebound on them with remarkable force. For veterans are notably sensitive to fakes who pretend to military awards and records they do not deserve. And no one has yet to come up with anyone in the history of the Navy, except for John Forbes Kerry, who has won three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a Silver Star with a Combat V in only four months in combat, without missing a day of duty.

By disclosing the questionable aspects of Mr. Kerry's claims and putting reasonable doubt on the way Mr. Kerry was using and withholding Naval records, by questioning two of his Purple Hearts and by demanding to know what a combat V was doing on his Silver Star, by probing after-action reports that Mr. Kerry wrote but denied writing and that slighted his fellow commanders in his own favor, the Swift Boat veterans quickly destroyed the element most essential to Mr. Kerry's support among veterans - the credibility of his claims to military honor.

The veterans' community is linked together by newsletters, organizations, Web sites with chat rooms, and networks in constant communication between former shipmates, squadron members, or members of regiments or divisions who stay in contact for decades. They are individuals whose lives depended on the credibility of fellow members of the service. Nothing is more important to them. The word spread quickly that "war hero" Kerry couldn't be trusted.

Newsweek's "exclusives" suggest the press still doesn't get it. Mr. Kerry himself is "puzzled" and planning another campaign in 2008 over the scorched earth left behind as his credibility as a "war hero" went up in flames. But in 2008 there will be more than 25 million former Americans who served in uniform just waiting for the senator to try to run again as a "war hero." Many will be veterans of America's Middle Eastern campaigns who put their lives on the line for what Mr. Kerry mocked as "the wrong war." And they will continue to do best what Mr. Kerry does so poorly - remember.

http://www.nysun.com/article/7381