SmallGovTimes.com

By: John McIntyre | Published on 06/16/04    

CBS Evening News did a small profile on Teresa Heinz Kerry yesterday and in it they continued to perpetuate the urban myth about why Senator Max Cleland lost his Georgia Senate seat in 2002.

In discussing why Senator Kerry's wife changed her party affiliation CBS reports:

I was very upset at the way the party dealt with Max Cleland of Georgia," she says. Cleland is the Democratic senator who lost re-election in a bitter campaign when Republicans attacked his patriotism. In 1968, Cleland lost his right arm and both legs in Vietnam.

So according to CBS News Cleland is the Democratic Senator who lost his Senate seat "when Republicans attacked his patriotism." Now this of course has become a favorite rallying cry for Democrats and they are entitled to spin and manipulate events in any way they want.

But if CBS News wants to be considered a legitimate news organization and not a propaganda arm of the Democrat Party then you would think they would want to try and stay pretty close to the truth.

This isn't one of those subjective stories where the bias against Republicans is more a product of spin, exaggeration or distortion - this is just an outright falsehood. The editors at CBS are well aware that just because some Democrats think Republicans attacked Cleland's patriotism doesn't make it a fact.

I challenge CBS News or Democrats to produce one shred of evidence where the Chambliss campaign, the Republican Party questioned Max Cleland's patriotism. I'm not talking about some man on the street interview where CBS hunted around Georgia for two days and eventually found a few people who attacked Cleland's patriotism. I'm talking about real evidence that the Chambliss campaign, Republican officials, or their surrogates attacked Cleland's patriotism. Of course CBS won't be able to come up with any evidence because it didn't happen.

What did happen and what the Democrats and CBS are referring to is an ad by Chambliss that attacked Cleland for not supporting the Homeland Security bill, and ad which included pictures of Cleland, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. On October 11, 2002 the AP's Jeffrey McMurray posted this story:

Sen. Max Cleland is angrily defending himself against a rival's television ad that shows pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and implies the Democratic incumbent is soft on homeland security.

The ad, sponsored by Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss' Senate campaign, doesn't directly compare Cleland and the rogue leaders but alleges the senator isn't telling the truth when he claims to support some of President Bush's efforts in the war against terrorism. It began airing Friday in the Atlanta market.

The ad's primary focus is Cleland's position on legislation creating a homeland security department Bush is seeking. Although Cleland supports one version of that bill, he says he won't support the president's preference without an amendment guaranteeing labor rights for federal workers.

"To put my picture up there with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and insinuate I'm not fighting hard enough for national security, I just find that this is an incredible low in Georgia politics," Cleland said.

The ad claims Cleland voted against Bush's preferred department 11 times, most in procedural votes as the legislation moved through the committee process. In a statement from his campaign, Chambliss said he appreciates the war record of Cleland - who lost both legs and an arm in a Vietnam grenade blast - but urged him to follow the president's lead on homeland security.

"Georgians deserve to know - all Americans deserve to know - why Max Cleland is more concerned with protecting federal bureaucracy, rules and regulations than creating a department that can respond effectively to future threats of terrorism," Chambliss said.

Was the ad in question harsh, below the belt, over the top? Personally, I don't think it was. The way I remember the commercial at the time and in going back and reading stories about the ad today, it seems to me like the normal type of hard hitting ad you see all the time in the closing weeks of a campaign. Now I don't have a problem with the Democrats complaining and describing the ad as a misrepresentation of Cleland's record or a "low blow," that's fine. I think they are wrong, but that is at least debatable and reasonable people can have a difference of opinion. What isn't debatable is whether the ad attacked Cleland's patriotism. It didn't.

This "how dare you attack my patriotism" is a clever dodge the Democrats regularly resort to when their policies regarding national security and defense come under attack. Senator Kerry and the Democrats have been using this tactic for months now in an attempt to deflect attention from Kerry's vulnerability on defense and security issues.

The Democrats would be better advised to debate and argue the policies in question rather than cop out and attack Republicans for impugning people's patriotism. The American people aren't stupid and they see this is a tacit admission by the Democrats that they can't debate national security issues on the merits of their own policies.

What really happened in Georgia in 2002 was the Democrats had a Senate seat they regarded as relatively safe. In the wake of Chambliss' upset victory and the aftermath of an abysmal election nationally, somebody or something had to take the blame. It was too disturbing to acknowledge that the White House had rolled the Democrats on the Homeland Security bill or to accept the fact that Chambliss ran a much better campaign in the final month of the election, or maybe the people of Georgia agree more with President Bush and Saxby Chambliss than they agree with Max Cleland and Tom Daschle. So with the facts an irritating nuisance, the urban myth was created that the reason Max Cleland lost his senate seat was because the Republicans despicably attacked his patriotism.

We saw the same sort of behavior after the Democrats lost Florida in 2000. The idea that they lost the Presidency by such a small margin was just too much to handle mentally and emotionally. Instead of looking in the mirror and asking, "why did we even let this election get this close when we have all of this peace and prosperity?" Democrats decided that somebody else had to take the blame.

So we get a whole host of urban myths about how evil republicans suppressed the black vote, even though there is no evidence to support that ever happened. They also say had the Supreme Court just let them count all the ballots properly they would have won Florida, even though the extensive post-election study by the nation's news organizations determined George W. Bush still would have won.

Urban myths and conspiracy theories are great tools to excite your base but they don't help win over the voter in the middle who is looking for the party or candidate who is going to deal with the nation's many challenges in a straightforward, commonsense way.

Like I said earlier, Democrats are entitled to say whatever they want, true or untrue, in their attempt to win over the public. CBS News, on the other hand, should not report Democratic allegations as fact that are either outright falsehoods or at best charges that are subject to vastly different interpretations by reasonable people.

The public is well aware of the spin and distortion the mainstream media use against Republicans, and the continued ascent of FOX News is a direct result. CBS News needs to wake up and start reporting the news more honestly or they will continue to lose market share, viewers and legitimacy as an independent objective news organization.



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