DOUGLAS BRINKLEY'S STORY --
in the
Washington Post:
His cell phone is too full to receive any more messages. Reporters, sometimes four from one newspaper, call him hourly, demanding help in sorting fact from fabrication. The vets against Kerry go on cable TV and mischaracterize his work, he says ..
The effort to discredit Kerry's war heroism is "an outrage," said Brinkley. "There is just no evidence that John Kerry did not win his medals properly. It's a smear campaign, just as Democrats smeared Bush back in the spring" regarding his service in the Texas Air National Guard. "I treasure facts. When you have facts being distorted for a political agenda, I mind."
The Kerry campaign has refused to release Kerry's personal Vietnam archive, including his journals and letters, saying that the senator is contractually bound to grant Brinkley exclusive access to the material. But Brinkley said this week the papers are the property of the senator and in his full control.
"I don't mind if John Kerry shows anybody anything," he said. "If he wants to let anybody in, that's his business. Go bug John Kerry, and leave me alone." The exclusivity agreement, he said, simply requires "that anybody quoting any of the material needs to cite my book." ..
Kerry repeatedly said in the past that he was ordered illegally into Cambodia during Christmas 1968. His detractors claim he never entered that country at all. In "Tour of Duty," Brinkley does not place Kerry in Cambodia but, quoting from Kerry's journal, notes that Kerry's Swift boat was "patrolling near the Cambodian line." Later in the book, Brinkley writes that Kerry and his fellow Swift boat operators "went on dropping Navy SEALS off along the Cambodian border."
"I'm under the impression that they were near the Cambodian border," said Brinkley, in the interview. So Kerry's statement about being in Cambodia at Christmas "is obviously wrong," he said. "It's a mongrel phrase he should never have uttered. I stick to my story."
.. with this book, Brinkley has become a political historian as well, having authored a book that burnishes just the part of Kerry's biography that the candidate chose to highlight to defeat a wartime president who never has seen battle himself. "These days, Brinkley is acting a lot less like a historian and a lot more like a PR flack for John Kerry," wrote Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam. In its review, the New York Times referred to "the odor of salesmanship that lingers around 'Tour of Duty.' "
"Any contemporary history is going to be politicized in some way," said Brinkley, whose Republican parents are much prouder of his television commentary during the Reagan funeral than they are of his bestseller. "I'm in the [political] center. I honestly have to tell you that's my framework."
As someone "too young to have an emotional investment in Vietnam," he believes now he underestimated how Kerry's war and anti-war activities would re-ignite the '60s' cultural wars.
He had hoped, he said, his book would be about "healing the wounds. This August will be seen as picking the scabs apart."
Brinkley was also
interviewed by the N.O. Times-Picayune. Quotable:
"I'm not worried about it being seen as a campaign vehicle for Kerry," Brinkley said of the book. "I'm sympathetic to Kerry in his 20's, and it's no secret I think he would make a first-rate president. But my book has caused Kerry pain, too. The fact it's out may not have helped him. I mean, 'Unfit for Command' might not exist without it." ..
"It's true Kerry has brought on this fight," Brinkley said. "But I was looking for a story about Vietnam, and I think I struck the right story. What's made me angry is false accusations made against Kerry's military record, which, because I know the record, I feel I must respond to even if I risk appearing like Kerry's surrogate in the process." ..
But Brinkley's open admiration and support for Kerry have raised questions about his objectivity as an academic historian. The American Historical Association warns its members to be wary when venturing into politics, saying those who do so "may face a choice of priorities between professionalism and partisanship." Professors at UNO are not permitted to take blatantly partisan positions while wearing their school robes, said Rick Barton, the university's vice chancellor of academic affairs ..
[Brinkley] did not dispute being one of several hosts for a Kerry fund-raiser in February 2003, he said his speech at a Kerry rally in New Orleans in March has been misinterpreted. In fact, Brinkley was pushed onstage because Kerry was late ..
Brinkley, 43, noted that he wasn't old enough to absorb what was happening in Vietnam during the war and that as a result he doesn't bring as much emotional baggage to the table. On the other hand, much of Brinkley's academic career has focused on that era, and his sympathies are clear. He said Kerry would be a "first-class president" but denied that such an appraisal taints his history writing. He thought it was "an outrage" when Democratic Party leader Terry McCauliffe raised the prospect that President Bush had been AWOL during his National Guard service, and he thinks the same of the accusations slung by the Swift Boat Veterans.
"There was no documentary evidence to support the charge then against Bush, and there's no documentary evidence to support the charges now against Kerry," Brinkley said. "Whether the charge is against Aaron Burr or John Kerry, I have to see the documentary evidence."
As further proof of his scholarly detachment, Brinkley declined to sign a Kerry endorsement that circulated among prominent historians. He has no interest in working as a formal adviser to the campaign and has not made any financial contribution to the Kerry presidential run, Brinkley said.
"I'm not a partisan," he said. "I don't have some ax to grind against President Bush. I try to be judicial."
UPDATE: The Weekly Standard
fact checks Brinkley's "I try to be judicial" claim.
UPDATE II: Bill Dyer's take:
Clearly University of New Orleans Prof. Brinkley wants to be helpful to Sen. Kerry. The whole point of his book, after all, was to argue that Kerry's tour of duty in Vietnam and his subsequent antiwar activism have shaped and defined his moral and political character to make him a fit President.
And now also
Powerline.
Posted by Greg Ransom
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