Political hara-kiri season officially open
Image by Getty Images North America via Daylife
Barely out of the starting gate, two important political candidates are already engaged in the process of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory – one by way of a lie, the other by speaking the truth as he sees it.
First up – the lie.
Just days ago, Democratic Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal held a commanding lead in the race for the senate seat being vacated by retiring Senator Chris Dodd. It was a lead unlikely to dissipate barring an unforeseen disaster.
That disaster arrived in the guise of a New York Times piece revealing that Blumenthal has been misleading Connecticut voters into believing that he had served in the Viet Nam war when he never set foot in the country as that battle raged.
Who does such a thing?
This is not a simple case of fudging the truth a bit in order to look more heroic a la Hillary Clinton’s fairy tale involving ducking bullets on a runway in Bosnia. No, Blumenthal’s behavior reveals something far more disturbing as he appears to have convinced himself that he actually was in Viet Nam.
To his credit, Attorney General Blumenthal has been a powerful supporter and spokesman for veterans’ rights since the 1980’s. In that role, he has effectively argued the plight of veterans who returned from Viet Nam only be treated poorly by Americans who detested the war and chose to take it out on the soldiers who were sent to fight. This is something Blumenthal does not want to see repeated in the treatment of veterans returning from our latest series of unpopular wars.
So empathetic is Blumenthal to the pain of abused veterans, it seems that he brainwashed himself into believing he really is one of them.
Evidence reveals that for most of years involved in Blumenthal’s effort to assist the vets, he was clear on the fact that he had been a Marine reservist who never served a day overseas. However, in recent years, he began to take on the mantle of a vet who had personally experienced Viet Nam and the bitter mistreatment that followed for the soldiers of that war.
Former Connecticut Congressman Christopher Shays, a long-time friend of Attorney General Blumenthal, reports that he found the metamorphosis to be puzzling.
Shays discussed the matter with the New York Times:
At first, in the 1980s, he was humble. He played it down, Mr. Shays recalled, characterizing it as humdrum desk work.
Over the last few years, however, more sweeping claims crept into Mr. Blumenthal’s descriptions, he said: that Mr. Blumenthal had served in Vietnam and had felt the sting of an ungrateful nation as he returned.
“He just kept adding to the story, the more he told it.”
Via New York Times
Mr. Blumenthal is neither a stupid man nor inexperienced in the ways of politics. Somewhere in his psyche, he had to know the inconsistencies would come back to bite him. So why engage in the lie and why not quickly correct the press reports feeding that lie to Connecticut voters?
The answer may rest in Blumenthal’s convincing himself that the lie was not a lie at all.
Whatever the reason for Blumenthal’s bizarre behavior, it is not likely to bail him out with the voters. His free falling poll numbers suggest that what had been considered a ’sure thing’ for a Democratic win in November has been moved to the ‘up for grabs’ column, if not worse.
Still, in a story twist that can only happen in politics, Blumenthal may receive a reprieve from the relentless press attention that comes with telling a serious lie in the middle of a political campaign thanks to the arrival of the next national politician to set himself on fire. Only this time, the match was struck not by a lie – but by a despicable perception of truth.
Not 48 hours ago, Rand Paul was the man of the hour. The outspoken, small government Libertarian had romped to victory in the Kentucky GOP primary to gain his party’s nomination to run for Senator. In the process, the Tea Party supported Paul defeated not only his opponent but the powerful political machine of GOP Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell. There seemed little question that Paul would pull out a win in November, delivering a seat not only for the GOP but for the Tea Party movement to whom Paul is pledged.
What a difference a day makes.
Yesterday, a video of an interview conducted with the Louisville Courier-Journal surfaced, revealing Rand Paul stammering out his belief that while he supports the Civil Rights Act as it applies to discrimination in public places, he does not support the government forcing private businesses to integrate.
In other words, if it were up to Dr. Paul, the lunch counter at Woolworth’s would still be for whites only.
Compounding the damage, Paul appeared on NPR’s “All Things Considered” to share his belief that he doesn’t believe private businesses should be forced to cater to the needs of disabled individuals- thus putting out the hit on the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Here’s what Dr. Paul had to say in his interview with NPR’s Robert Siegel-
I think a lot of things could be handled locally. For example, I think that we should try to do everything we can to allow for people with disabilities and handicaps…I think if you have a two-story office and you hire someone who’s handicapped, it might be reasonable to let him have an office on the first floor rather than the government saying you have to have a $100,000 elevator. And I think when you get to solutions like that, the more local the better, and the more common sense the decisions are, rather than having a federal government make those decisions.”
Via TPM
To complete the hat trick, Paul appeared last night on “The Rachel Maddow Show” to dig the hole even deeper on the whole civil rights thing.
While one could feel a certain admiration for Rand Paul’s speaking his mind where to do so is likely to make his election a far bigger question mark than previously thought, there is no denying that Mitch McConnell is handing out the “I told you so’s” like they were cigars after the birth of a baby. As for Rand Paul, he is spending today busily backtracking from his 24 hours of political insanity hoping to stomp out the fire that he has ignited.
Good luck with that. When you set yourself ablaze, the fire department rarely arrives in time to save you.
So, one likely winner committing an act of self-destruction with a horrendous lie, the other sticking the knife into his own belly with a proud admission that he would return the country to a time when African Americans were denied entry because of their race and a paraplegic was denied a job if he couldn’t walk up the stairs to reach his desk.
I think it’s going to be a long, hot summer.
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You too, huh Rick? It’s cute how everyone is suddenly an armchair psychoanalyst where Blumenthal is concerned. The Times asks a military historian to diagnose Connecticut’s attorney general, and everyone else will just take ex-GOP congressman Chris Shays’ word for it. Of course, the former Congressman who was tossed out of his seat in Nov. 08 by resurgent Democrats in CT knows what’s at stake, and has some reasons to be bitter. He doesn’t offer any other new details or instances of speeches in which Blumenthal talks about his combat service overseas. You know, the one at the start of the speech where he makes it clear that he served during Vietnam, not in Vietnam. Shays just parrots an article that’s already done its damage as though he’s on the payroll of either the Simmons or the McMahon campaign.
You’ve been snookered. This is gutter journalism by the Times, and you’re propagating it. You shouldn’t give it the time of day.
Gotta disagree.
I did hear the intro piece on the offending video tape. It is nowhere near a statement that he did not serve in Viet Nam – rather a broader statement that could be interpreted either way. And I’d be completely happy to give him the benefit of the doubt – and then some – if it were just this one instance where he got involved in a misstatement.
But it wasn’t just one time. And after other misstatements that were picked up by the newspaper, Blumenthal made no effort whatsoever to correct the story.
How is this to be explained and how is this the NYT smearing Blumenthal?
I like the guy, but there is no getting around the fact that he did – on multiple occasions – paint himself as a Viet Nam war vet , and that is just plain weird.
As for Shays, I suppose it’s possible that he’s on the payroll of the Simmons or McMahon campaign- but I doubt it. Remember that Shays was turned on by the Conn. GOP because he was too liberal for them. They hated him for his efforts to accomplish campaign finance reform. He’s also got a reputation for being an incredibly straight shooter who likely lost his election in 2008 (51%-48%) because he refused to go negative on his opponent – who turns out to have been a Goldman-Saks banker.
Actually, there is one reason to question Shays’ comment. He says that he often thought about saying something to Blumenthal about this – but never did. That leads me to question how close of a friend he really was to Blumenthal – but it doesn’t mean he’s lying when he says he’s been aware of Blumenthal’s habit of overstepping the reality.
Indeed, knowing Shays’ history, I think it more likely that he would be voting for Blumenthal than either Simmons or McMahon.
While I’m not a psychoanalyst by any stretch of the imagination, there is no denying that Blumenthal got into this bizarre thing of saying he was in the war when he wasn’t. And, as I say in the post, since he’s neither stupid nor inexperienced, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to wonder how he feel into the pattern. I mean, is there anyway its not weird?
In response to another comment. See in context »Could you imagine telling a crowd that you’ve won the Pulitzer Prize for an article you once wrote when you haven’t. Can you imagine telling this lie knowing that the press would print it. Can you imagine reading the lie in print and deciding to just let it be rather than feeling a need to correct it before you are profoundly embarrassed and exposed as a fraud? I know you would not. So, how do we explain a guy who did the equivalent on more than one ocassion?
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Actually Rick, I can imagine saying something like what Blumenthal says. I might be heard to say “When we won the National Debating championship” even though I did not personally debate in the final round of the 2001 National Debate Tournament. But my teammates at the University of Iowa did, and the glory to a certain extent is breathed down on all of us who worked on it because it was a team effort. And if they had lost, I might be saying, “When we lost in the finals.” Does that make me a liar?
So it makes sense to me that when he’s invited to go before veterans groups, he’ll say things like “When we came home.” Because he empathizes with the experiences of fellow former service-members, and is giving voice to them. It may be a hackneyed form of speech, like a child of Holocaust survivors saying things like “When the Nazis killed us” even though they didn’t personally suffer from Hitler’s persecution. It may be cliched. It’s not a lie.
And I didn’t say Shays was on Simmons or McMahon’s payroll, I just said he’s acting like he is. Like Senators Lieberman or Specter, Shays could have changed his affiliation when he faced questions about the viability of his political career by keeping an (R) attached to it. Rather, he’s remained a loyal Republican. Shays does not add a single new detail to the tall tale that the McMahon campaign already helped the New York Times spin – he just propagates the assassination of Blumenthal’s character for miswording a thing or two.
We have a single verified instance of Blumenthal stating outright that he served ‘in Vietnam’ (the second one today in the Stamford Advocate remains fishy b/c there’s no transcript/recording of the speech and during/in is precisely the kind of thing a furiously-scribbling reporter might screw up). We have no evidence that Blumenthal has been traipsing around CT for the past forty years talking about his valiant war-time service. Nor do we have evidence that he’s made his non-existent service in Vietnam a major part of his narrative for why voters should continue to elect him to higher and higher service. More than that, we have one of the Times’s original sources, Jean Risley, telling ABC News that they misquoted her. All we have is a disgusting smear assembled by the McMahon campaign and propagated uncritically first by the New York Times, and now by unreasonably agitated fingers on the Internet like you.
Michael-
1. In your example you use “we” – and that certainly makes sense in your construct and is neither dishonest nor misleading. But Blumenthal said the following -
“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. ”
Note the “I served in Vietnam”.
Very different.
Then there is the account of the Courant photographer Bob MacDonnell-
““I photographed several military homecoming ceremonies where AG Blumenthal made similar speeches to the one in the NYT video. Based on those examples, I was a bit surprised that he had not served in the war. I can’t recall his exact words, he may well have said he served in the reserves during the Vietnam war, which would be accurate, but to me the implication was that he served in the war.”
Now, you could definitely argue that while MacDonnell got the impression that the AG served in the war, he does acknowledge that the exact words might not match.
But we also have The Greenwich Time reporting that it found the following section in a 2008 story they printed which quoted Blumenthal as saying-
“I wore the uniform in Vietnam and many came back . . . to all kinds of disrespect,” Blumenthal told the crowd. “Whatever we think of war, we owe the men and women of the armed forces our unconditional support.”
Then there is the Shelton Weekly who reported on May 23, 2008…
“that Mr. Blumenthal “was met with applause when he spoke about his experience as a Marine sergeant in Vietnam.”
Now, I certainly acknowledge that you appear to know Connecticut much better than I – but is it really likely that all these newspapers got it wrong? in each case it wasn’t the ‘we’ scenario you suggest as one who is part of a team – in each instance it is a direct attribution as an “I” – referencing himself as having been in Viet Nam.
What am I missing?
2. Tto be fair, I did not suggest that he has been traipsing around Conn. for 40 years lying about this. Quite the contrary, I reference that it is a more recent development which is why I raise the possible explanation for the behavior.
3. I’m not agitated at all. I like the guy. If I lived in Conn. I would vote for the guy. But when it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s usually a duck.
“and now by unreasonably agitated fingers on the Internet like you.”
Be nice…my editor always tells me not to mistreat my fellow bloggers!
In response to another comment. See in context »1. Small newspapers in the northeast make big mistakes all the time. You know those funny shirttails they place at the end of New Yorker articles with corrections from small local papers? Those are usually pretty funny. This isn’t. I mean, the Courant photog, who hopefully is more focused on snapping photos than listening to speeches if he does his job well, says “I can’t recall his exact words,” and we’re supposed to take his word for it that Blumenthal was lying to people about his service? My answer is yes, it is entirely possible that all of these small local papers where overworked, underpaid people are writing got it wrong. Especially when there are so many contradictory instances of Blumenthal clarifying that he did not in fact serve IN Vietnam.
Plus I’m not contesting that we know for certain that he once said that “I served in Vietnam.” He’s not contesting it either – it’s there on the tape. What’s also there on the tape is earlier in the speech stating that he served during Vietnam, and also a loud cell phone ringing right as he said it, quite possibly throwing off his train of thought. I’m sure Blumenthal gives a bang-up speech in a courtroom, but in that Norwalk setting, he’s stiffer than John Kerry combined with the 2000 campaign trail Al Gore.
2. You didn’t suggest that that of Blumenthal, but you’re calling him a liar when lying requires a high degree of deliberation. The Attorney General of Connecticut concedes that he has misspoken in a few instances. Truly mendacious fakers of military service go to much greater extremes than Blumenthal has ever evidenced. The Times tries to go all the way back to 2003 to make the case, but as I keep pointing out, Blumenthal has not in any of these years made a major part of his political appeal that he’s a veteran. His MO is that he’s a law and order guy.
3. He’s not a duck. It’s more like it’s duck-hunting season and the McMahon campaign and the Times went out and shot a deer and when they got busted by the game warden they’re trying to convince everyone that that the deer is a duck. Don’t buy their venison jerky or you’re an accomplice.
In response to another comment. See in context »This just posted on The Washington Post Plum Line -
The Stamford Advocate is now claiming to have unearthed another damning quote from Richard Blumenthal, this time from the Veterans Day parade in Stamford on November 9th, 2008:
“I wore the uniform in Vietnam and many came back to all kinds of disrespect. Whatever we think of war, we owe the men and women of the armed forces our unconditional support.”
voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/05/blumenthal_i_wore_the_uniform.html?wprss=plum-line
Yet another identical mistake by yet another Connecticut newspaper? What are the odds?
In response to another comment. See in context »Actually it posted about 12 hours ago. Again it’s a reporters recollections, without the full context of the speech – how do we know the reporter didn’t botch the quote when he said ‘in the Vietnam era’ or ‘during Vietnam.’ We don’t know because the Stamford Advocate didn’t go back to its reporters’ notes, probably because Devon Lash no longer works for the paper anymore. In 2008, she or he was fresh out of college from what I can tell (still writing in Penn State college paper in ‘07). Cubs get things wrong all the time.
And even if it’s accurate, Attorney General Blumenthal conceded that he may have said ‘in Vietnam’ on a few occasions, and expressed his regrets for doing so (he should have apologized). It doesn’t make him a liar, especially when the guy has never made any of his service his primary raison d’etre as a politician and has routinely stated before and since 2008 that he didn’t serve IN Vietnam.
In response to another comment. See in context »And I apologize for the agitated Internet fingers, of which I certainly have a set. I thought I had deleted that before I hit submit but I guess I did not.
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Both cases seem like gotcha politics to me. I know, that’s the only kind of politics in the 24-hour news cycle, but to me, the operative comments are Blumenthal having a good record of supporting veterans, and Rand Paul saying he would have voted for the Civil Rights act.
We have to give our politicians some leeway for artistic license or we will take all the “art” out of elections. I trust voters to take any statement by any politician with a grain of salt.
I particular like reading about Rand Paul. He is a great experiment in American politics. We all need to see the Von Mises/Ayn Rand thinkers vetted. Conclusion: At least this one is truly whack. Michael remains in denial about the democratic party. National career politicians are mostly liars and narcissists regardless of their political stripes. Blumenthal is an epic liar. Nuns taught us little Micks that an intended lie is worse than a “regular” lie because it is an effort to deceive and retain the argument of technical thruthiness. We all deal with these kind of liars in our daily lives. They are the ones that get in a rage if they lie and you are not inclined to believe them. They feel you if don’t have incontrovertible evidence that they are spewing BS, you are bound by tradition to countenance the baloney. Blumenthal – liar. Done!
“In other words, if it were up to Dr. Paul, the lunch counter at Woolworth’s would still be for whites only.”
I completely disagree with that basis. And you know that was not his interpretation of the law. His is based on if the federal government has the right to run a business and determine who we should associate with. One with economics understanding would know that any company that used racial discrimination would go to the wayside resulting from less efficient production resources and thanks to free fast information, would be quickly called on it.
Civil Rights Act was promised to not be a quota system, yet today it is. The idea of freedom also means a person has the freedom to be a racial idiot as long as they do not harm anyone. Society and the market will outcast them, and they will lose.
And just because he understands the law and has some disagreement does not mean he promotes the opposing view. The idea, as in your poor conclusion, is instead there would not be a Woolworths today, as no one would go there.
His views are spot on with where libertarian views are at. In the truest sense of freedom. Freedom to run your own business, freedom to be stupid, freedom to fail, and freedom to succeed. The only alternative is for government to make the decisions, prevent failure, and support mediocrity.
As an aside from the main discussion I would like to comment on the recurrent theme of the disrespect sufferred by VietNam Vets..I served as a line medic for the 5th Inf, 25th Dividion C company in 1966. I was badly wound in combat and spent 5 years in reconstruction 2 of which were at Walter Reed. Once I got back on my feet it didn’t take long for me to secretely get an apartment in downtown DC just off DuPont Circle. From there I commuted daily to the hospital.
I spent a great deal of time hanging out in a bar that was equal distance from Howard U. and Georgtown; lots of students and I never experienced any sort of disrepect from anyone. Nor did I ever have a problem anywhere including flying out of SF International in uniform. I hear the same story of solders being spat upon but I think it is the same crap as every white guy spent his time in VietNam in some special-ops unit nobody ever heard of or had vaguely heard about.