Before the balloons had been cleaned up in New York, John Kerry launched a blistering attack on Bush's National Guard service and Cheney's five Vietnam deferments.(The Week)(Brief Article)

* Before the balloons had been cleaned up in New York, John Kerry launched a blistering attack on Bush's National Guard service and Cheney's five Vietnam deferments. It's not the first time he has spoken in this vein, for all his fulsome assurances that he had never made anyone's Vietnam service an issue and never would. Kerry was heeding the advice of Democrats who believe that the election is being stolen from him by scurrilous negative attacks and that what he needs to get back in the game is to launch some scurrilous negative attacks of his own. This is a foolish misdiagnosis of Kerry's problem. The Swift Boat charges hit home because Kerry staked so much on Vietnam, not really having anything else to say on national security. The charges themselves need to be carefully considered (as Byron York did in our last ...