Meanwhile, George W. Bush was having his own troubles with scandal. It was not charged that in l972-73 he was off to Alabama with a girl. The charge was that while serving with the National Guard in Alabama, he paid flighty attention to routine obligations. He got one or more leaves to involve himself in a political campaign, and one general, with a name Charles Dickens would have lost sleep for not having invented, said he had no memory of Lieutenant Bush serving in his squadron. Later, General Turnipseed said, well, he couldn't actually swear on the matter, and a flurry of other reports from others who had flown with Bush and seen him here and there doing National Guard duty checked in, certifying to his presence.
The accusation had more throw weight than marital infidelity because if it were so, there could emerge a charge of retroactive neglect of duty. But the effort to impeach the credibility of a functioning president on the grounds that 30 years before he had taken shortcuts while on stateside military duty will be hard to do. Here is the way those things work out in politics. The voter who doesn't like Bush will denounce him as, among other things, the man who neglected military duty. The voter who doesn't like John Kerry may vote against him, among other reasons, because he drove the girl to Kenya to find a husband.
What we are reminded of in these games is the public indifference to other kinds of deceit, like Howard Dean's and John Kerry's three positions on Iraq. The Democratic platform is shaping up as a call to national rejection of President Bush as a man who cannot be trusted. He is not to be believed to care about health or veterans or old people or education or international allies -- because he cannot be trusted.
As for John Kerry, he can be trusted, never mind his cakewalks on army service, the Vietnam War, the national responsibility for deterring enemy activity, and a basic commitment to property rights. If only every political allegation involved sex, we could then at least enjoy the titillation.