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Selective service | page 1, 2
Few believed Quayle when he denied receiving special treatment due to his
family's influence, and the similar denials now emanating from the Bush
press office sound just as false. But so far this year, the Texas governor hasn't been subjected to the sort of
flying media interrogation about his service record that was inflicted on
both Quayle in 1988 and on Clinton in 1992. When Clinton claimed he didn't
remember receiving a draft notice before he applied to join the Reserve
Officers Training Corps, another traditional method of avoiding service
overseas, that incredible assertion marked a permanent downward turn in
his relationship with the press. Journalists of Clinton's generation found it impossible to believe that he
could forget such a memorable letter from the Selective Service. They didn't
know anybody who had forgotten theirs. That fall, an increasingly desperate President Bush and his surrogates went
after Clinton as a "draft dodger," defining the issue as a test of "character"
that demonstrated the Democratic nominee's unfitness for the presidency. It
was one thing to be a fortunate son like Quayle, to whom an "honorable"
method of evading Vietnam was awarded like a graduation present. It was
apparently quite different, and unacceptable, to be a fatherless young man
from a poor family like Clinton, who didn't want to fight in a war he believed
was terribly wrong. "I have a different concept of public service and service to the country," the
elder Bush told Rush Limbaugh in September 1992. Limbaugh's own rather
undignified means of avoiding the draft, a medical deferment for a
persistent boil on his backside, went unmentioned during that inspiring
radio chat. So did the fact that none of the then-president's four sons served
in Vietnam. Other candidates for the Republican nomination would surely like to use
George W. Bush's military record against him, but only McCain has a
politically palatable answer to the questions posed at the beginning of this
column. From Pat Buchanan to Dan Quayle, too many of them suffer from the
"chicken-hawk" syndrome, which afflicts those who thought the Vietnam war
was a great and worthy national crusade so long as someone else did the
fighting and dying. They are all likely to keep their mouths shut on this
sensitive topic. There is, however, another presidential candidate who actually volunteered
for the military during Vietnam and went over there for a while. It is often
said that he did so in an effort to help his father, an antiwar Southern
senator confronting a difficult reelection campaign. Both that senator and
his son were named Albert Gore.
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About the writer Sound off Related Salon stories The not-so-good war Just like President Clinton, eight of 10 Vietnam-era GOP presidential candidates managed to avoid going to Vietnam -- and the wealthiest wound up in the National Guard. Does it still matter?
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