Blumenthal Can Be Thankful Vietnam Is a Generational Issue

Whether the candidacy of Richard Blumenthal will survive has nothing to do with Vietnam, and everything to do with his honesty and integrity. Democrats are circling the wagon around him because he’s their best hope, and this is not a year where they can afford to have a big screw-up in a Democratic state. But if there’s a silver lining for Democrats, it’s discovering that Vietnam is not an issue like abortion, which will be with us forever. It’s generational, and at a certain point, there will be nobody around who can remember what it felt like for those 20-year-olds who took to the streets and protested the war. And once they’re gone, they will take the ghost of the Vietnam War with them.  

The attitudinal shift came too late for John Kerry, whose leadership of the antiwar movement seemed like a betrayal to the vets he served with. Democrats have chafed for decades under the yoke of being the party that pulled the funding for Vietnam, and cheered for the protesters.

But the initial reaction to the revelations about Blumenthal exaggerating his service suggests that for the many young men of that era who did what they could to avoid the draft, it’s no longer seen as something shameful, or even anything out of the ordinary.

Vietnam was a divisive chapter in the evolution of America. It gave us the first generation for which military service was not an obvious and honorable thing to do. That’s changed, and the military has reinstated itself as part of the social fabric. People routinely honor those who serve, but no one much cares anymore whether someone went to Vietnam or not. Blumenthal got five deferrals before securing a coveted spot with a Marine Reserve unit, which was just another way to avoid going to Vietnam. He obviously didn’t want to go, and that’s fine. It’s his wanting to associate himself with a valor that he avoided at the time, and that he now wants to align with, that makes him a hypocrite.

Hypocrisy is nothing new in politics, and as Blumenthal stood flanked by veterans, defending his record and refusing to apologize, it was clear that his problem is not Vietnam, and that the Democrats’ problem is a lot bigger than a Democratic seat in Connecticut. It’s about misleading the voters, that’s what has folks across the country in an uproar. As we watch the two parties put their best spin on these events, I’m reminded of Bill Clinton and impeachment. The Republicans said impeaching Clinton was not about sex, it was about honesty and integrity. Clinton lied. But it was about sex. And the voters rendered their judgment. The Democrats picked up seats in the 1998 midterm elections, repudiating the GOP for what looked like a witch hunt.

Now Democrats are saying what’s happened with Blumenthal, their bulwark against a GOP takeover of the Senate, is about Vietnam. But Vietnam is long over and pretty much settled. It’s about honesty, and that’s a much bigger hurdle for Blumenthal to get over than to convince voters he meant to say he served “during” Vietnam as opposed to “in” Vietnam. Forget Vietnam. When we talk about amnesty today, it’s for illegal immigrants not Americans crossing the border to Canada.

Clinton was 46 years old when he had to explain a letter that surfaced during the 1992 campaign that revealed his attempts to get out of the draft before he was saved by a high lottery number. That was 18 years ago, and it almost ended Clinton’s presidential bid. Now we’re grilling a 64-year-old man about what he did more than 40 years ago, and the issue of what he did and when he did it doesn’t have the same salience for a generation that was born long after all those men died needlessly in Vietnam.