Do the Democrats really have nothing better to throw at President George “Dubya” Bush in an election year than some missing National Guard records?
The chairman of the Democratic National Committee recently said that Bush was AWOL (absent without leave) from the Air National Guard back in the mid-1970s.
With 10 years of military service, six of which are in the National Guard, missing records are not surprising to me, nor that big of a deal.
Even with all the advances the military has made in the last couple decades, accidents still happen.
While I was in the military, I had paperwork and parts of records disappear two or three times. Part of the problem is the reliance on people to process and update records.
As the military has modernized and switched to computer-based files, this has become less and less of a problem.
Bush’s records from 30 years ago being incomplete is not a surprise to many of us veterans, especially since he was drilling and working in a different state unit, Alabama, than his home unit, Texas.
This issue came up before in the last election when a retired National Guardsman claimed that he had seen part of Bush’s records in a garbage can. He also claimed to have heard a supervisor talk about checking Bush’s records for anything that would embarrass him.
This is a dead issue and only worthy of note on a slow news day.
Opponents of Bush have tried to bring up other black marks from his past as well.
During the last election they discovered that Bush had received a DUI in 1976.
Bush also refused to answer questions about his possible use of illegal drugs. He only made the statement that he had not used them in the last seven years and his campaign later said that he had certainly not used illegal drugs in the last 25 years.
No one seems to have made any connection between the dates on the two issues yet.
I am sure someone will soon come forward and say that during the time Bush was supposedly absent from the National Guard he was on a drug and alcohol spree.
Bush’s possible use of drugs while in the military also seems of little concern, but according to recently released records he always passed his physicals and was given the OK to fly airplanes.
Bush claims not to want to talk about the drug and alcohol issues because he was young and foolish back then.
He also says he doesn’t want his daughters to make the same mistakes.
Maybe it is time he has a good father-daughters chat with the girls since they have now had several run-ins with the law concerning underage drinking.
Maybe he can also talk to his niece-Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s daughter-about her convictions and rehabilitation for crack cocaine use.
If the Democrats or anyone else really wants to throw something at Bush that will stick, they are going to have to do better than they have been.
After all, we elected Bill Clinton twice and he “didn’t inhale.” It also turned out he did not know the meaning of “improper relations.”
We have spent the last two decades more worried about our presidents’ personal lives and personal histories than we have about what they do in office.
No one seems to want to say anything about the war in Iraq anymore, the fact the Osama Bin Laden is still loose or that those “detainees” are in Cuba.
Saddam Hussein did a great job of fooling our intelligence agencies into believing he had weapons of mass destruction. His first word when he heard we were invading was probably “suckers!”
Everyone wants to blame the intelligence agencies and not the man who lead the charge.
The motives for the war in Afghanistan were understandable compared to those for the war in Iraq. The longer we leave troops there to get killed, the more people will come to realize that.
I think this election will be won or lost based on domestic issues: unemployment, trade deficit, economy and education.
These are the areas that the Democrats and anyone opposed to Bush needs to look at.
They should also take note of the Patriot Act and parts of Homeland Security, which are beginning to come under fire for civil rights issues.
I am not a Democrat or a Republican, but I am an American.
I feel just as free as anyone else to criticize our politicians and even presidents.
However, I think that there are better things that we can criticize, even on a slow news day.
John Summerlot is a graduate student in counseling education. He can be reached at [email protected].