Double talk on deficits (8/5)

By Ben Fritz, Bryan Keefer, and Brendan Nyhan

John Kerry has been promising to cut the deficit in half, but the figures in his plan don't add up. Sound familiar? George W. Bush has similarly been pledging to halve the deficit while presenting a dishonest plan about how he'd achieve it. Both deceptive claims are part of a larger trend toward PR-driven spin that has been accelerated in recent years by President Bush. John Kerry, however, has also proven himself a master of such tactics in the current campaign. (Read the entire column in the Philadelphia Inquirer.)

8/5/2004 01:23:49 AM EST |

Kerry's service record distorted (8/5)

By Brendan Nyhan

In his speech to the Democratic convention, vice presidential nominee Senator John Edwards, D-NC, was the latest figure to distort John Kerry's service record in Vietnam:

When John Kerry graduated college, he volunteered for military service. He volunteered to go to Vietnam and to captain a swift boat, one of the most dangerous duties you could have. And as a result he was wounded and honored for his valor.

Like many others who have made the same claim, Edwards' implication is misleading. As Chris Suellentrop pointed out on Slate, Kerry volunteered for swift boat duty before it became so dangerous. Here's how the Boston Globe recounted the story in its multi-part series on Kerry:

Kerry initially hoped to continue his service at a relatively safe distance from most fighting, securing an assignment as "swift boat" skipper. While the 50-foot swift boats cruised the Vietnamese coast a little closer to the action than the Gridley had come, they were still considered relatively safe.

"I didn't really want to get involved in the war," Kerry said in a little-noticed contribution to a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing."

But two weeks after he arrived in Vietnam, the swift boat mission changed -- and Kerry went from having one of the safest assignments in the escalating conflict to one of the most dangerous. Under the newly launched Operation SEALORD, swift boats were charged with patrolling the narrow waterways of the Mekong Delta to draw fire and smoke out the enemy. Cruising inlets and coves and canals, swift boats were especially vulnerable targets.

Kerry's biography on his campaign website (which Edwards echoed almost directly) promotes this confusion, citing the Globe's description of the revised mission of the swift boats and implying it was what the Massachusetts senator volunteered for:

In 1968, John Kerry began his second tour of duty, and volunteered to serve on a swift boat, one of the most dangerous assignments of the war. Swift boats patrolled the narrow inlets and canals around the Mekong Delta 'to draw fire and smoke out the enemy,' according to the Boston Globe."

In his convention speech, former President Bill Clinton also obscured what Kerry thought he was volunteering for, saying, "When they sent those swiftboats up the river in Vietnam and they told them their job was to draw hostile fire, to wave the American flag and bait the enemy to come out and fight, John Kerry said: Send me."

And some journalists have also gotten the facts wrong. For instance, Bennett Roth of the Houston Chronicle, who wrote that "Kerry enlisted in the Navy after graduating from Yale in 1966 and requested to command a Swift boat, one of the more dangerous assignments during the war."

Despite Kerry's decorated service record, the circumstances surrounding his request for swift boat duty should not be mischaracterized.

Update 8/12 11:33 AM EST: A version of this post was included in our Philadelphia Inquirer column today.

Update 8/31 8:49 AM EST: An alert reader points out that Kerry's second choice when volunteering for swift boat duty was for PBR (Patrol Boat River) duty, which was quite dangerous (124K PDF).

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8/4/2004 09:17:59 PM EST |

All the President's Spin released - buy it on Amazon.com today! (8/3)

Dear readers,

Our first book, All the President's Spin: George W. Bush, the Media, and the Truth, goes on sale today, and we're counting on your help to make it a success.

All the President's Spin is different from other books that have been published about the President. Using our trademark approach, it offers a nonpartisan analysis of the PR-driven deception that has come to define George W. Bush's presidency, chronicling his spin on issues ranging from tax cuts to the war in Iraq.

We also put Bush's presidency in perspective by tracing the history of public relations in modern presidential politics; examining how this process has culminated in a presidential campaign in which Bush and John Kerry are both engaging in deceptive PR tactics; and explaining why the media has failed to hold Bush and other politicians accountable for dishonest spin.

(For more on All the President's Spin, check out our book website.)

In the next few weeks, we'll be promoting the book extensively. But to make it a success, we need your help. Here's what you can do:

Make the book #1 on Amazon.com today

If you haven't bought the book yet, please do so today. We hope you'll consider purchasing it on Amazon.com for just $11.20. If you do so through one of our links, we receive a commission that helps support our work. And if you buy the book today, we can push it to the top of the Amazon sales rankings and generate crucial publicity for the release.

[Note: Shipping is free on qualifying orders over $25 from Amazon, or you can enter your zipcode and see if a copy is available for immediate in-store pickup at a local Borders.]

Tell your friends about the book

Word of mouth will be our most important sales tool. We would greatly appreciate it if you would help spread the word. Click here to email your friends and family a link to the book website. Or, if you send a separate email, please make sure to include a link to the book website at http://www.spinsanity.org/book/.

Blog about the book or make money with an ad for it

If you have a website or blog, please let your readers know about the book. We have also created a small ad for the book that anyone can run on their site and get commissions from Amazon.com for any sales the ad generates - click here for more information.

Finally, we'd like to thank you for helping to make this book possible. We never would have guessed three and a half years ago that the website we started would one day turn into a book. This happened only because you have promoted us to friends, sent us useful suggestions and critiques, and proved that there is an audience for non-partisan criticism of political spin. For that, we're truly grateful.

Sincerely,
Ben, Bryan and Brendan

Update 8/4 8:05 AM EST: The book has reached #21 overall on Amazon and #4 for non-fiction - we're moving up rapidly. Thanks to everyone who has already bought it. If you haven't, please check out the two great reviews on Amazon and consider doing so today!

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8/2/2004 05:33:49 PM EST |

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