Subtly, thy name is Bush

By now, you've surely heard that Bush-Cheney '04 has stooped to using Adolf Hitler as a campaign image in its latest ad. The ad in question shows clips of various prominent Democrats, including Al Gore, Howard Dean and Adolf Hitler, giving speeches in which they appear to yell and rant.

Okay, this part is old news. What is truly new and bizarre, however, are the twisted justifications being trotted out by Bush supporters to defend a tasteless and insensitive campaign commercial.

Here's the pitch, as penned today by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal:

The ad, called "Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-Eyed," is available on the Bush campaign Web site. It is a medley of clips from the Angry Left, including rants from Al Gore, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Dick Gephardt and Kerry himself (though Kerry looks downright lethargic compared with the others). The Hitler images--as the Kerry campaign must have known full well--are from a pair of ads the far-left, pro-Kerry outfit MoveOn.org posted to the Internet a few months back. In other words, the Bush campaign is not comparing Kerry to Hitler; it is criticizing Kerry's supporters for comparing Bush to Hitler.

Get it? It's doubly-ironic, see? We're not showing you pictures of Hitler interspersed among images of Democrats so that you'll associate Democrats with Hitler (that's just an added bonus). We're showing you images of Hitler so that you can see how wrong it is for the other guy's troops to use images of Hitler.

Right. And Bill Clinton didn't inhale.

But let's unpack Taranto's so-called logic a bit further, shall we? Of course to do that, we'll need to get some basic facts straight, which admittedly is not something that the WSJ editorial staff is all that familiar with.

First, MoveOn is not connected to the Kerry campaign. In fact, at the time that the contest was held, Howard Dean was the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination and John Kerry was a distant third. What this fact suggests is that MoveOn is not so much pro-Kerry as it is anti-Bush. It's a small point, but it makes the "things posted on MoveOn's site are attributable to Kerry" argument a bit more strained. For all we know, the Hitler ads were made by supporters of Dennis Kucinich who now support Ralph Nader. In any event, the link to Kerry is tenuous.

Second, MoveOn did not create the ads in question or do anything other than post them, briefly, on its contest website. John Kerry's campaign, I hasten to note, had absolutely nothing to do with the Hitler ads, either. Once again, the link to Kerry is tenuous at best.

Third, MoveOn quickly and forcefully repudiated the ads, and apologized for putting them on its website. Here's what they actually said:

None of these was our ad, nor did their appearance constitute endorsement or sponsorship by MoveOn.org Voter Fund. They will not appear on TV. We do not support the sentiment expressed in the two Hitler submissions. They were voted down by our members and the public, who reviewed the ads and submitted nearly 3 million critiques in the process of choosing the 15 finalist entries.

We agree that the two ads in question were in poor taste and deeply regret that they slipped through our screening process. In the future, if we publish or broadcast raw material, we will create a more effective filtering system.

In other words, MoveOn said "we don't believe that it is appropriate to use images of Adolf Hitler in campaign advertising", or words to that effect.

Contrast those three facts with these:

First, after MoveOn took the ads off their contest website, one of the only places to find them was on the Republican National Committee website.

Second, the Bush campaign itself created and is promoting the latest commercial to use Hitler's image, not some third party or surrogate.

Third, at the time, the RNC and others were apoplectic that anyone would stoop to using Hitler's image, calling it "political hate speech", "vile" and "heinous". Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the RNC, called for the ads to be immediately removed from circulation (despite the fact that one of the biggest circulators was the RNC itself). [link]. Now, they say, " likening the other fellow to Hitler may be noxious, but it's undoubtedly political speech, fully protected by the First Amendment." [James Taranto]

But now back to James Taranto's incoherent logic. Here's what he says:

Kerry had the opportunity for a Sister Souljah-like moment here. He could have said: "I categorically reject any comparison of the president to Hitler, and MoveOn was wrong to disseminate these ads. But two wrongs don't make a right. I call on President Bush to withdraw his ad." Instead, he tacitly approved of his backers' Hitler analogies, thereby validating the substance of the Bush ad, if not its choice of images.

Once again, the facts say otherwise. For example, Kerry's campaign sent an email to supporters (including, apparently, Taranto, since he quotes it) that says, "The Bush-Cheney campaign must pull this ad off of its website. The use of Adolf Hitler by any campaign, politician or party is simply wrong." Anyone who can find the part where Kerry is "tacitly endorsing" the use of Hitler's image, please raise your hands.

But more importantly, must President Bush wait for John Kerry to do the right thing? Taranto says that Kerry's failure to make the "Sister Souljah" statement shows that Kerry "lacks courage". Logically, therefore, if Kerry did make such a statement, it would courageous. And doesn't that indicate that Taranto knows that the ad is wrong...?