Does Bush Want To Win Or Doesn't He?

President Bush is no fan of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth:

"I haven't seen the ad, but what I do condemn is these regulated, soft-money expenditures," he said last night on CNN's Larry King Live.

He hailed Kerry's stint in Vietnam and said nothing about the Massachusetts Democrat's admission on Meet the Press in 1971 that he had committed "atrocities" there.

"He views it as honorable service, and so do I," the President said.

{sigh}

Why couldn’t Dubya have just “expressed concern” at the “controversy” and urged his opponent to release his all military records, “as I have done” so as to “set the record straight” and “get on with the issues of this campaign”? He’d have still been “above the fray,” really driven Kerry into a corner on it, and gotten a shot in at the Democrats’ jihad against him over his Texas Air National Guard service to boot.

I reiterate: the reason Kerry’s Vietnam fabrications matter is because it is a matter of (remember this?) the character of the man we might end up electing as President and Commander-in-Chief during a time of war. Do we really want to replace Bush with a man who “misled the country” out of a war and has been “misleading the country” about it, and a great deal else, ever since? Shouldn’t that at least be a factor the electorate has to consider before going into the voting booth?

Apparently the President doesn’t think so.

And if he doesn’t want to “impose his integrity” on anybody else, well, why should the American people give a shit about it either?