Of swift boats and close elections

Plus: Trying in vain to beat the heat in South Texas

Tim Walz during Army Basic Training, 1981, left, and J.D. Vance (then James David Hamel) in the US Marine Corps, 2003. -Photo illustration by TC via Wikipedia

There are few things that bother me more during a political campaign than seeing the military records of candidates dragged through the mud. If you served and were not dishonorably discharged, your service should be respected and esteemed. But such has not always been the case, especially in the last 40 years or so.

If, as a candidate, you misrepresent your military service, then it becomes fair game. So in the case of the two current vice presidential nominees, both of whom served honorably, is the discussion out of bounds?

Republican nominee J.D. Vance has been attacking his Democratic counterpart, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, for his 24 years of service in his state’s National Guard. The criticism centers around Walz’s decision to retire from the Guard in 2005, months before his unit was scheduled to deploy to Iraq, and for misstating his retirement rank as command sergeant major and suggesting falsely that he fought in a war.

Per a recent Wall Street Journal new story (free link):

After 24 years in the Guard, Walz was the command sergeant major, the highest-ranking enlisted soldier, of an artillery battalion. He was reduced in rank months after retiring, leaving him as a master sergeant. Minnesota National Guard officials have said that Walz retired before completing coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy, along with other requirements associated with his promotion.

Okay, so he lost the rank of command sergeant major when he retired because he hadn’t taken all the coursework to retain it. So in essence, Walz achieved the rank but lost it after he retired.

As the conservative Wall Street Journal (no friend of Democrats) put it in editorial entitled “Is Tim Walz Guilty of ‘Stolen Valor’? His military record isn’t a good reason to oppose his candidacy” (free link):

But that seems to have been a bureaucratic issue since to retire at that rank required longer service in the role and coursework he didn’t complete. So he retired at a lower rank, but there’s no doubt he had reached the higher position while active.

The other allegation from Vance is that Walz “abandoned” his unit by retiring not long before it was deployed to Iraq in March 2006. This was about the same time he decided to run for Congress. The use of the word “abandoned” is highly misleading and suggests Walz walked away from his troops while in a combat situation — a state of deployment Vance never experienced either because he served as a Marine Corps public affairs correspondent in a non-combat environment. “I was lucky to escape any real fighting,” Vance wrote of his deployment in his best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which (full disclosure) I will confess that I enjoyed.

Vance has also leveled accusations of “stolen valor” against Walz for inflating his credentials and wartime experience. In arguing for gun control in 2018, Walz said, “We can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at.” See video below on X:

The campaign says he misspoke. For now, I accept the explanation. I can tell you this from personal experience. I’ve done a fair amount of television and radio and if you talk long enough and often enough, eventually you’ll say something stupid and feel compelled to apologize for it. Ask anyone in the business. Now if misrepresenting his military service becomes a discernible pattern for Walz, I will reconsider my view.

It’s also worth noting that the man accusing Walz of stolen valor is the running mate of an ex-president who had the opportunity to serve. Donald Trump received four draft deferments during the Vietnam War and was subsequently diagnosed with bone spurs in his heels at the age of 22, seven years before the Vietnam War ended. The adult children of the now-deceased podiatrist who examined the future president said their father made the diagnosis “as a favor” to Trump’s father.

So for all his bluster and machismo, Trump was just as much of a chickenshit as the middle-class draft dodgers loathed by his right-wing supporters. Not surprisingly, this doesn’t seem to bother those in MAGA World. But — heaven forbid — someone of the opposite party should misspeak about his actual honorable service.

So the WSJ got it right. If you’re a conservative who wants to oppose Walz, challenge him on policy. There is plenty to work with. The Republican Governors Association has compiled a handy attack list. When, for example, he represented a moderately conservative rural district in Congress, Walz was known as a “Blue Dog Democrat” whose policies earned him an A rating from the National Rifle Association, only to be lowered to an F after he embraced gun control measures as governor of the whole state.

But I digress. For an excellent takedown of “L’Affaire Walz,” look to The Bulwark video below of former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who served as an Air Force pilot, completing two tours in Iraq, and later serving in the Wisconsin Air National Guard:

Of course, all of this brings to mind past questions about the military service of those on the national ticket: Dan Quayle’s Indiana National Guard Service; Bill Clinton’s draft dodging; John Kerry’s service as a Swift Boat commander in Vietnam. I, for one, did not let any of those controversies influence my vote and I hope, if you were old enough to vote at the time, that you didn’t either.

Disclosure: My son, father and father-in-law all served honorably in the military.

Trying in vain to beat the heat in South Texas

In other news, we are settling into life in Texas. As many of you know, I’m originally from Dallas. We left when I was 12, so I am no stranger to the Lone Star State and still have relatives here, including two cousins in the nearby Austin area. My son, his partner and their new baby, Emmett Christopher Cowgill, live about 15 minutes away.

We want to start exploring the San Antonio area but hesitate to do so in this heat. It is hard to describe how oppressive it really is in the San Antonio area this time of year. When I wake up at 5 a.m., the temperature is already in the high 70s. I like to go for a power walk in the park at around 7:30 a.m. If for some reason I can’t walk at that time, the afternoon is out of the question because it will be close 100 with dewpoints around 70. So a workout in our apartment complex’s gym will be in order.

This is essentially what you do here from June thorough most of September. If you’re retired, as we are, you avoid doing anything outside in the middle of the day. If you have to run errands or need exercise in the great outdoors, do it fairly early in the morning or early in the evening.

The flipside is the avoidance of winter. The average daily high here in January is 64, with December and January being the driest months, so it will be nice to actually see the sun during the cooler months. The downside is no Currier-and-Ives White Christmases. Boo hoo!