August 9, 2024 - 1:00pm
As Democrats unite around Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as their ticket’s VP nominee, Republicans are trying to find lines of attack against the folksy Midwesterner. So far, they have fallen flat, with neither “Tampon Tim” nor “Twitchy Tim” catching on. His Republican counterpart Senator J.D. Vance may have just found a potent, if controversial, rhetorical weapon, however, when he cast doubt on Walz’s status and image as a veteran.
Some are comparing it to the infamous “swiftboating” tactic of questioning a veteran-candidate’s service record used by the George W. Bush campaign in 2004 against then-Democratic presidential nominee (and Vietnam veteran) John Kerry. In this case, Vance has pointed to the fact that Walz retired from the National Guard just prior to the announcement that his unit was being deployed to Iraq in order to run for Congress. Republicans are depicting this as an act of abandonment on the part of Walz.
As Politico reports, then-Command Sergeant Major Walz “filed paperwork for his congressional run in February 2005, about a month before reports emerged that the Army National Guard might be [sent to Iraq],” which his defenders can cite as evidence that Walz did not know about the looming deployment. Waltz retired after 24 years in service, including a stint conducting support work for Operation Enduring Freedom.
In any event, the Trump campaign has added to the critical claims of other veterans who served with Walz and has taken to calling the Governor’s representation of his record an instance of “stolen valour”. The campaign has sought to highlight a 2018 speech in which Walz made reference to “weapons of war that I carried” even though he has openly stated that he has never seen combat. (Vance, a former marine, did deploy to Iraq but served as a combat correspondent, and did not see active combat either.)
It remains to be seen, however, whether this attack will be effective. For the pattern of presidential politics in America suggests, perhaps incongruously for a nation that venerates its warriors, that voters do not actually care all that much about a presidential candidate having combat or military records, of any kind. In fact, the last president (and vice president) with combat experience was George H.W. Bush, who fought in the Second World War.
Since then, not only have there been no chief executives or VPs with combat experience, but candidates with distinguished war records, like Kerry or Republicans Bush Sr., Bob Dole, and John McCain, ended up losing to ones with conspicuously no such experience, namely Bill Clinton and the younger Bush (who also managed to swiftboat McCain in the 2000 GOP primary, before the term was coined); these two elder Boomer presidents managed to avoid service in Vietnam, the latter through student deferments and the former by obtaining a placement in the Texas Air National Guard, before such units were deployed overseas. Yet these issues failed to blunt their respective campaigns.
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