Veterans remember even if voters don't

There was a time when being caught lying about military service, even tossing off an occasional lie, as Dick Blumenthal did, would have been a career ender for a politician. But that was a long time ago. Since Blumenthal was caught on tape saying he served as a Marine in Vietnam, voters in two polls have given him huge leads in his race for the Senate.

The Vietnam War, which Blumenthal did not attend, ended 35 years ago, so a voter has to be well into his 40s to even remember it. The draft, which was ducked by people like Blumenthal, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle and Bill Clinton by getting college deferments or joining the National Guard or Reserves or both, was ended in 1973. Men who were drafted for two years in the military are at least 55 and most are considerably older.

Today, National Guard and Reserve units are sent to Iraq and Afghanistan to augment the thin volunteer army, but they stayed home during Vietnam. The draftees went.

All this partly explains why so few voters seem upset by Blumenthal’s unfortunate statements about what he did in the war. They’re too young to care, too young to remember a time when we all shared in wartime sacrifices and didn’t have a volunteer army to go out and fight our wars for us.

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Having been drafted into the peacetime Army before Vietnam and even remembering Pearl Harbor, I belong to a generation that is probably less tolerant of Blumenthal’s geographical obfuscation. And having been critical of the way Bush, Clinton, Cheney and Quayle avoided the wartime draft, I was certainly not inclined to give Blumenthal a pass.

But I was not inclined to vote for the Republican candidate for senator, either. Had I been one of those voters asked by the Quinnipiac or Rasmussen polls to choose between Blumenthal and Linda McMahon, the wrestling mogul buying her election with “a fortune she made running a steroid-addled freak show for adolescents of all ages,†as Esquire magazine neatly put it, I would have been with the majority supporting Blumenthal.

Had Blumenthal’s opponent been Rob Simmons, I would have been among the undecided, willing to see what develops in the campaign, but nothing could convince me to give my vote to McMahon, the unqualified election purchaser.

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McMahon has already put a third of her promised $50 million election investment into defeating Simmons, the more competent and experienced Republican, who did serve in Vietnam as well as in the CIA and Congress, while McMahon was cavorting in the ring. Her government experience consists of a brief, appointed term on the State Board of Higher Education and generous contributions to candidates from both parties who could best serve the interests of her World Wrestling Entertainment organization.

What most voters now know about McMahon comes from those seemingly endless commercials showing anonymous citizens lauding her as the possessor of virtues that sound as if they were lifted from the Boy Scout oath. Her pronouncements on the issues are strictly Republican talking points about lower taxes, jobs, respect for our veterans and doubts about the health care bill. In one recent mailing, she called for reducing government business regulations on a page illustrated by a full-color photo of an offshore oil platform.

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We have yet to see McMahon debate, though Blumenthal’s single preconvention debate with the weak challenger Merrick Alpert wasn’t all that impressive. Nor did Blumenthal inspire much confidence after The New York Times reported his false claim about serving in Vietnam. His so-called press conference, with its bevy of Vietnam-era veterans used as willing, applauding props, was simply awful.

Accustomed to easy victories in his races for attorney general, Blumenthal has yet to prove himself as a skilled campaigner and when you’re running against someone with $50 million, you’d better be.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.