Regarding Rather's embarassment for CBS:

What Is Bush Hiding?


By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A21

It is to be welcomed that President Bush wants to clear up questions about
his National Guard service. He wants more details out there, and good for
him. This story should be laid to rest, and the one person who can do it is
named George W. Bush.

Up to now, Bush has been interested in a rather narrow aspect of the story.
He wanted Dan Rather and CBS News to come clean about whether they used fake
documents in reporting on the president's Guard service back in the 1970s.

"There are a lot of questions and they need to be answered," Bush told the
Union Leader in Manchester, N.H., last week. "I think what needs to happen
is people need to take a look at the documents, how they were created, and
let the truth come out."

I couldn't agree more. And apparently CBS came to the same view. CBS messed
up, and yesterday, Rather fessed up. He said the network could no longer
stand behind the documents. There will be much hand-wringing about the media
in the coming days, and properly so.

But what's good for Dan Rather, who is not running for president, ought to
be good for George Bush, who is. "There are a lot of questions and they need
to be answered." Surely that presidential sentiment applies as much to
Bush's Guard service as to Rather's journalistic methods.

The New York Times put the relevant questions on the table yesterday in a
lengthy review of Bush's life in 1972, "the year George W. Bush dropped off
the radar screen," as the Times called it. The issues about Bush's National
Guard service, the Times wrote, include "why he failed to take his pilot's
physical and whether he fulfilled his commitment to the guard."

Oh, I can hear the groaning: "But why are we still talking about Vietnam?"
A fair question that has several compelling answers.

First, except for John McCain, Republicans were conspicuously happy to have
a front group spread untruths about John Kerry's Vietnam service in August
and watch as the misleading claims were amplified by the supposedly liberal
media. The Vietnam era was relevant as long as it could be used to raise
character questions about Kerry. But as soon as the questioning turned to
Bush's character, we were supposed to call the whole thing off. Why? Because
the media were supposed to question Kerry's character but not Bush's.

And, please, none of this nonsense about how Kerry "opened the door" to the
assault on his Vietnam years by highlighting his service at the Democratic
National Convention. Nothing any candidate does should ever be seen as
"opening the door" to lies about his past. Besides, Vietnam veterans with
Republican ties were going after Kerry's war record long before the
Democratic convention.

But, most important, there is only one reason the story about Bush's
choices during the Vietnam years persists. It's because the president won't
give detailed answers to the direct questions posed by the Times story and
other responsible media organizations, including the Boston Globe. Their
questions never depended on the discredited CBS documents.

Bush could end this story now so we could get to the real issues of 2004.
It would require only that the president take an hour or so with reporters
to make clear what he did and did not do in the Guard. He may have had good
reasons for ducking that physical exam. Surely he can explain the gaps in
his service and tell us honestly whether any pull was used to get him into
the Guard.

But a guy who is supposed to be so frank and direct turns remarkably
Clintonian where the National Guard issue is concerned. "I met my
requirements and was honorably discharged" is Bush's stock answer, which
does old Bill proud. And am I the only person exasperated by a double
standard that treated everything Bill Clinton ever did in his life ("I
didn't inhale") as fair game but now insists that we shouldn't sully
ourselves with any inconvenient questions about Bush's past?

I'm as weary as you are that our politics veer away from what matters --
Iraq, terrorism, health care, jobs -- and get sidetracked into personal
issues manufactured by political consultants and ideological zealots. But
the Bush campaign has made clear it wants this election to focus on
character and leadership. If character is the issue, the president's life,
past and present, matters just as much as John Kerry's.

Dan Rather has answered his critics. Now it is Bush's turn.

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