Boston Globe Takes Aim at Swift Boat Vets

With all of the videos of Barack Obama’s pastor problems and gaffes, it’s no wonder the liberal media are afraid of what conservative 527 groups will do with them.

A June 9 article entitled “Decency in D.C.” and featured in the “local news” section of the Boston Globe, columnist Kevin Cullen decried the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) – the group which ran ads against Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004 – as liars and all that is wrong with Washington, D.C.

Perhaps still sore from the 2004 election, and taking a cue from Media Matters, Cullen claimed, “And, the best part is, if [the Swift Boat Vets] can't find any videotape in which [Rev.] Wright actually says anything remotely as outrageous, they'll just make it up.”

The local news columnist also assumed that if Hillary Clinton were the Democratic nominee, the Swift Boat Vets would play the gender card: “No doubt [the Swift Boat Vets] are much chagrined it won't be Hillary. Taking sexist swipes at her would have been like hitting a tossed watermelon with a baseball bat: too dang easy.”

Giving a glimpse of his personal viewpoints, Cullen wrote, “We'll just have to settle for the swiftboaters spending millions trying to convince us that this election is not about the quagmire in Iraq, the troubled economy, or the fact that after eight years of neo-cons at the helm, the nation's reputation is lower than W's approval rating.”

Cullen went on to describe former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s relationship with former President Ronald Reagan and how they were able to see past each other’s political differences and be friendly towards each other as an example of how he thinks politicians should act. But, as Michael Novak noted in an August 2004 piece for the National Review, Kerry’s 1971 witness testimony before the Senate called Vietnam veterans – like those who were members of the SBVT group – “hypocritical, self-interested, even criminal.” So why does Cullen not remember this? That’s hardly “decency in D.C.”