Vietnam Revisited.

ROVE, Karl, 1950-; KERRY, John, 1943-; BUSH, George W. (George Walker), 1946-

This article focuses on the subject of the Vietnam War as a campaign issue in the 2004 United States presidential elections. The debate over Senator John Kerry's service in the Vietnam War sounded a sour and dispiriting note as the presidential campaign of 2004 approached the Labor Day weekend, the traditional start of the final and most serious phase of the campaign. While President Bush prepared to accept the official nomination of the Republican Party, he praised Senator Kerry's war record and expressed his disagreement with the attacks launched on that record by a group of Vietnam veterans who have been long-time antagonists of Mr. Kerry. But the president, while presumably disagreeing with the content of the ads, would not criticize the ads themselves, nor would he repudiate his Republican supporters who have financed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and their televised attack on their former comrade in arms. Karl Rove, a prot&xe9;g&xe9; of Lee Atwater, has been the principal architect of the campaign strategy that brought George W. Bush to the governor's office in Texas and, in the 2000 presidential campaign, to the office of president of the United States. Senator Kerry and his campaign advisers adopted the same strategy, and were guilty of the same condescension toward the American voter, when they decided to orchestrate the July Democratic national convention around the theme of John Kerry, war hero, "reporting for duty," surrounded by his "band of brothers." Instead, the most important issue to be debated and pondered in this, the most important presidential campaign in generations, is not what John Kerry and George W. Bush did nearly four decades ago in a radically different international context, but rather how well each man is prepared to deal with the world of today.