the Kerry implosion begins

the Kerry implosion begins

Actually, it started a few weeks ago at the Democratic convention, but that won't become obvious for a while yet.

The Kerry campaign began the convention with a military salute, and "John Kerry, reporting for duty". With that, Kerry finally outsmarted himself. He has spent the better part of four decades crafting himself in an image: the über-candidate. If a party needed a war hero, someone who could look tough, he could be that. On the other hand, if a party needed a war protestor, someone who could look compassionate, why, he could do that too. He could be anything to anybody, promise anything... as long as he looked good, he would come out on top.

And now, the truth is coming back to haunt Kerry. His entire career, built on a stack of cards, is about to come cascading down. The reason? John Forbes Kerry is all about appearances. His whole career has been a self-crafted illusion.

The Democrat party needed a candidate who would appear to be tough with terrorists - not one who actually would be tough on terrorists, because those people are in the White House now. In the new JFK they hit the jackpot. Here was a guy who won three purple hearts, bronze star and silver star. The Dems rah-rah'ed it up at the convention, played up his Vietnam service, indeed made it the central plank of their platform.

"If you want to know what John Kerry is made of ... spend three minutes talking with the men who served with him." Better yet, visit their website. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an organization that includes most of the men who served with, above, and under John Kerry, make some fairly strong statements about his character - or rather, his lack of same.

Kerry's version of Vietnam and the versions of the others who were there are polar opposites, and the documentation (what the Kerry camp will release) bolsters the Swift Vets' case, not Kerry's. What emerges is a man whose every action in life has been geared to one end: the acquisition of power by guile. The latest bizarre chapter in Kerry's merry Vietnam adventure is the sampan incident:

"Critically important is the fact that Kerry filed a phony after-action operational report concealing the fact that a child had been killed during the attack on the sampan and inventing a fleeing squad of Viet Cong. The operational report is one of the important missing documents that Kerry neglects to make public on his campaign Web site. "

Will the Kerry camp release the document in question? Or the medical reports from his Purple Heart awards? Based on the August 19th 2004 statement by Larry Thurlow on the Swift Vet's site, I am beginning to suspect that the officer who recommended Kerry for all of his medals was none other than LtJG J.F.Kerry.

One thing is certain: if we leave it up to the old media, this story will get swept under the rug. One thing is different in this election from all the previous ones though: blogs. With most of the mainstream media in the USA leaning heavily to the left, there is a disincentive for them to criticize their favoured political party, and an incentive to demonize the Republicans. The old media have left in their wake a fact-checking void. This has been going on for a long time, and were it not for the internet would continue.

But the internet has changed political discourse radically in the last four years, with the arrival on the scene of blogs. Now, when journalists shirk their job responsibilities, Instapundit can do on his lunch break as much fact-checking as "reporters" do in a week. Captain Ed has done some serious digging on Kerry, too, enough that it ought to sink Kerry's boat. And - this is the point that eludes the press - these bloggers and millions of others like them are providing instant references to what they write, linking to each other, fact-checking and correcting each other, and in general circumventing the mainstream press.

The general public is starting to see this too - seeing blogs scoop the mainstream news by in some cases weeks. Editorial cartoons covering subjects not covered anywhere else in the paper, but covered in the blogosphere, are starting to appear. As the newspapers and TV news decline in credibility, blogs increase in credibility. With that credibility comes readership, and the advertising dollars will follow soon enough, morphing the most successful political blogs into the new fourth estate.

update: Dean Esmay agrees.