[Airbornelawyer]

Though Kerry's whole "I was in the 'Nam" campaign has been premised on the contrast between him and Bush, they actually strike me as similar (Gore, too, and Quayle to a lesser extent). Scions of political families, they had no choice but to serve, but weren't especially interested in being infantrymen. Except for Quayle, they volunteered for assignments that did put them at risk, but relatively less risk than playing the draft lottery or volunteering for combat.

Bush chose fighters because his father was a combat aviator; Kerry sought small boats because his political idol and role model skippered a PT boat. Gore and Quayle had the same MOS, 71Q (Information Specialist/Reporter).

Bush and Gore got their preferred gigs right off the bat, while Kerry spent a desultory year on the USS Gridley (where, ironically, given Gore's and Quayle's MOSs, the job he received the most recognition for was public affairs officer).

Bush apparently inquired about Palace Guard, a job that would put him in Vietnam but not in the most risky assignment - 102s were hard planes to fly, but in terms of combat, flying incerceptors is not the same as flying Cobras or Wild Weasels.

Kerry sought Swifts again after his Gridley tour, which would put him in Vietnam, but not "in" Vietnam (coastal patrols were far less risky than the Brown Water Navy). It was Kerry's bad luck that ADM Zumwalt changed the Swifts' mission after Kerry got his new assignment.

Gore, having spent a year defending Fort Rucker with his typewriter, also realized that he was not getting the political benefit he would need for his future career, nor had he helped his father in conservative Tennessee (despite using the son in uniform in campaign ads, Senator Al Gore, Sr. lost his reelection bid). Gore was sent to Vietnam, arriving on Jan. 2, 1971. He was assigned as a reporter in HHC, 20th Engineer Brigade, at Bien Hoa. After 4 1/2 months where he saw no action, Gore got an early out, leaving Vietnam on May 22, 1971, and was discharged within a week. Something which I don't recall ever having been looked at in 2000 is this: the 20th ENG BDE was slated for inactivation in 1971, casing its colors in September. It has been stated elsewhere that the brigade's soldiers would have been transferred to other units or to the MAC-V general replacement pool, in which case Gore stood the risk of getting sent to a unit closer to combat or even getting reclassified as infantry. Gore's early out (to "attend" divinity school - he dropped out after failing 5 classes apparently due to non-attendance). As Kerry is alleged to have played the system to get out of Vietnam after 4 months, so Gore appears to have played the system to get out in an even shorter time, and to avoid the risk of becoming an infantryman.

The point is not to denigrate the risks that LT Kerry and SP/5 Gore did take. Gore (according to his own account) may never have fired his weapon in anger, but he couldn't know that going in. And Kerry did take his boat upriver. The point is that both played a very typical game of balancing the risks. In doing so they engaged in exactly the same calculus as Bush, for whom flying interceptors was risky, but not as risky as flying Corsairs or Intruders off a carrier into Vietnam would have been (the jobs most comparable to what his father did, if he had truly been following in his father's footsteps).

They remind me of a friend from high school who said he planned on becoming an MP. His logic was that he wouldn't be on the frontlines - he'd be behind the lines making sure the rest of us stayed at the front (maybe he would have been more comfortable in the NKVD). That way, he wasn't in the rear with the gear, but he wasn't in the trenches either.

The difference with our politicos here is that Bush is not running for President based on his not-quite-heroic-but-hardly-risk-free choices. Gore really wasn't either - he may have claimed to have been the model for Ryan O'Neal's character in "Love Story", but not for Matthew Modeen's Private Joker. Kerry, by contrast, is basing pretty much his entire claim for the Oval Office on having been the guy always running toward the sound of gunfire, when in reality his choices were just as ambivalent as those with whom he contrasts himself.

The military service of all three of these gentlemen is evidence of character, not proof. Kerry wanted to use his service to bludgeon others and to shut down debate. But the evidence is that no stark hero-vs-coward contrast can be honestly drawn. And while Bush's narrative is that he did not lead an ideal youth, but grew and learned from his mistakes, Kerry's is that he has not.