Dubya denounces anti-Kerry ads, sorta
So the word from Crawford is that Bush respects Kerry’s war record and doesn’t like the recent anti-Kerry ads from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. However, I couldn’t help but notice that his statements fell a wee bit short of a full repudiation, and that he quickly shifted to an indictment of all 527s. I was almost convinced that Dubya was professing some good honorable statesmanship until I realized that his statements were self-serving. For one thing, he’d certainly like the 527s to vanish since there’s vastly more funding and airtime from anti-Bush organizations than from anti-Kerry ones (an ABC News graphic indicated the split was something like $120M to $9M). For another, Bush would probably prefer to let the who-really-did-what-in-the-service topic to fade away, since he’d likely lose badly in a side-by-side comparision of their records.