John Kerry

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/01/the_boffo_awfulness.php

Late Update: A few people have written in to say I’m wrong to call this ‘swift-boating’. I guess Swift-boating is in the eye of the beholder. So let me explain what it is I mean. In the main, the premise of this ‘documentary’ seems accurate. Mitt Romney wasn’t an entrepreneur in the sense most of us think of the term. He was a private equity guy, which at its best is the tip of the spear of capitalism’s creative destruction. At its worst, it was a very mercenary and destructive type of takeover operation in which a lot of companies had short term value ‘extracted’ from them and then got junked. Either way, that’s part of the economy we now live in. But it doesn’t look good held up to the light of day in a dismally bad economy. And as the basis for the claim to be a ‘job creator’ it’s either painfully laughable or laughably painful. So if you’re definition of ‘swift boating’ is simply character assassination by falsehood, I agree the term probably doesn’t apply.

But a broadly accurate story run through the stygian apparatus of swift-boatery I think I can still identify as such. This looks to me like it comes right out of the David Bossie chop shop world of right-wing phantasmagoria — the Islamophobia documentaries, the portentous voice, the quaking real Americans snuffed out by the shadowy figure with furin’ connections, the rustling dark clouds.

This doesn’t strike me as a disinterested review of political economy. I think I know this stuff when I see it. I can’t say I’m too broken up about it. But I know it when I see it.

No, I can't agree. I don't recall it being about ascetics at the time. It was about taking something that was the truth (Kerry's service was unassailable even if you disagreed with his politics), and then making an alternate "truth" up from whole cloth!! That was the particular perniciousness of swiftboating. They made it up and had ZERO proof to back it up. No one but Kerry kept a diary or wrote letters home at the time. He was literally the only guy you could go to for evidence apart from the official Naval record which even the Bush Administration said was beyond reproach.

But frankly, you just have to sigh about this stuff. Some of us get it, but most of the DC crowd just don't. For them it's all a game, and for Josh in particular, he was more concerned about strategy at the time than examining the lies themselves. Remember? The Bitch Slap:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003295.php

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_15.php

(As an aside, reading through these archives, I kinda miss the old TPM where it was just Josh talking. You could disagree, but he really is an interesting person to read. I still read TPM every day but miss his voice which only comes in occasionally.)

Still, sounds like Chuck Todd was a lot worse.