Campaign Desk has been curious for a while now about what happened to the story of President Bush’s Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard. After the White House’s February 13 Friday night data dump of all assembled records, there was little press follow-up. We never read anything that sorted through the details of the over 300 documents released to figure out what, exactly, happened back then; all we ever got was a few pieces noting that little of the information was new, and listing still-unanswered questions.
Why, exactly, did the media drop the matter?
In part, no doubt, it’s because some of the details seem to come down to personal memories. But that doesn’t strike us as an excuse for throwing in the towel and failing to clarify a controversial story that the press had resuscitated itself (largely courtesy of Bush’s “Meet the Press” interview on February 8).
Today, however, in the course of writing about John Kerry’s release of his own Vietnam service and some of his medical records, a few articles in national papers hark back to the Bush controversy — and seem to be making excuses for letting the issue die.
In her Kerry story, Katherine Seeyle of The New York Times writes, “In February, after accusations that he had been AWOL from the Guard in the early 1970’s, Mr. Bush released hundreds of documents covering his service. Although the documents did little to resolve questions of how often Mr. Bush reported for duty, the release quelled the growing debate over his service.”
Well, sort of. What was “quelled” was any further press curiosity as to what exactly happened back then.
Likewise, Jim VandeHei and Lois Romano wrote today in The Washington Post that “After initially refusing to release his records, Bush made public more than 300 pages of documents and defused, at least temporarily, the controversy.”
One could be left with the impression that, in the end, to the reporters involved, the Texas Air National Guard story was more about extracting those records from the White House than it was about getting the story right.
Perhaps, with the military records of both candidates poised to become an issue during the campaign, we’ll get some answers yet — but we’re not holding our breath.
–Bryan Keefer
Bryan Keefer was CJR Daily’s deputy managing editor.