One of John F. Kerry’s supporters recently predicted that John Kerry would respond to the attacks by, as he supposedly did in Vietnam, “turning his boat into the fire.” Well, seemingly, he did just that. Unfortunately, in the world of politics, he appears to have turned his Swift Boat into the guns of an Iowa-class Battleship. Brave, perhaps, but also stupid.

In short: I’ve never seen the defending side in a political scandal so incompetently led. There was a way to defuse all of this early and, for some reason, John Kerry declined to take it.

If I were Senator Kerry I would, upon the unveiling of the first ad, have gotten myself a whole hour on either 60 Minutes or Dateline NBC and I would have answered completely (and as truthfully as possible) every question put to me. And I would have said something like this.

“I hold no animus towards these men. We were in a war together and, as those of us who have been in war understand, equally honourable men can have altogether different recollections of the same events. What really motivates these men, I think, was my opposition to the war after I came home and I understand and accept that as well.

“Having seen the war first-hand, I came to the conclusion that it was wrong and had to end and I worked passionately towards achieving those goals. Sometimes, in doing this, I said intemperate and inaccurate things. In my eagerness to see the war end, I was often willing to accept as the truth some things which later turned out to be false. For example, one of my closest allies in the anti-war movement, a man named Al Hubbard, claimed to have been an Air Force Captain in Vietnam when, in fact, he’d never even been there at all. We were in a hurry. We didn’t fact-check as much or as deeply as we should have. And we got some things wrong and for that, I am deeply sorry.”

Frankly, I think that something like that would have killed the story then and there. People would have instinctively understood that, amid the fog of war, some facts are occasionally lost. By implicitly accepting that some of the things that the Swift Boat Veterans say might be true, Kerry would defang many of their later attacks because he’d have set the tone for the subsequent conversation and there’s just enough on the record to make any assertion by the Swift Boat Vets seem like simply a matter of confusion.

More importantly, by apologizing for some of his anti-war conduct (but not his anti-war stance), Kerry would have managed to blunt the second attack: that he smeared his fellow veterans and betrayed his country. Once again he’d have set the tone for the conversation ahead: all of the truly radical things that Kerry said were the words of an idealistic young man who, in his fervour and desperation to end a hopeless war, occasionally went a little too far.

If Kerry had done that, pretty much anything that the Swiftees were able to throw at him afterwards (unless, as rumoured, they’ve got something real big in reserve) would really look like low blows: the desperate attacks of petty men assaulting a man who already conceded that he’d made mistakes.

This course of action, I’m convinced, would have blunted the effectiveness of these attacks. While I’m quite certain that the Swift Vets would have attacked anyways, the chances of their efforts backfiring would be much greater.

So, why didn’t Kerry try this or something like it? I can see only one answer: he was too proud and too convinced of his own absolute superiority to do any such thing. The John Kerry of thirty-five years ago may have been a cynical opportunist who sought medals for the sake of a political future career and then, when that didn’t work, threw those medals over a fence and betrayed his “Band of Brothers” but the John Kerry of today is an idealistic opportunist: someone who, after three and a half decades, has bought into his own lies.

From what I’ve seen, the John Kerry of today is someone absolutely convinced of his personal and moral superiority. His preposterous claims that his four months in Vietnam qualify him for the Presidency are heartfelt. He’s seemingly someone who has never quite been able to break the bonds of his Vietnam experience and has, therefore, constructed his entire life around it.

As a result, anything that threatens Kerry’s version of what he did in Vietnam is a threat to Kerry himself: to his emotional and psychological well-being. Just like Mark Hacking apparently constructed a life narrative for himself which starred him as an aspiring Doctor, John Kerry has created a narrative that features him as both the greatest war hero and the greatest anti-war leader in American history (nay, the history of the world). When you threaten the internal world of a fabulist, well, lock your bedroom door before you go to sleep.

Nothing other than pure irrationality could explain what has been, frankly, a bizarre response to the Swift Vets on the part of the Kerry campaign. The campaign’s own obsession with them (along with that of the pro-Kerry media) has only served to turn what would have been an important story into the story of the month. Not only has it erased whatever traces of a bounce Kerry received from his convention, but it’s giving the President a running start heading into his. The new Los Angeles Times poll of registered voters shows Bush pulling ahead by three points (where it hadn’t shown him ahead all year). If you did the same poll of likely voters, well, the results would almost certainly give the President a five to seven point lead.

These charges work because they feed into the pre-existing impression created by tens of millions of dollars worth of paid Bush advertising: John Kerry can’t be trusted because he’ll say whatever he has to in order to win your support today and he’ll also say whatever he must to win the support of your neighbour as well.

At first I was dubious when I heard that Karl Rove had decided to make Kerry’s “flip-flops” the primary target of the negative side of the Bush campaign. Well, I’m a believer now. Though other types of spring advertisements might have had a more immediate effect on the polls, the ad barrage turned Kerry’s shifting positions on the issues into a sort of meta-issue which colours how people see everything else that John Kerry says. On a daily basis now I have people (non-political, non-Republican people) make comments about how Kerry can’t be trusted because, “he’s always changing his positions to please everyone.” Kerry, my friends, has been successfully branded by the Boy Genius.

The response of the Democrats now (as directed by Kerry) resembles nothing so much as a blind panic. Yesterday, for example, the Democrats tested out their new tactic of releasing personal information on their opponents and trying to imply that they’re murderers.

As reported by Crushkerry.com and verified by the New York Daily News, the Kerry campaign is passing around copies of a “Brown Book” with negative personal information on all of the Swift Vets. The first blow was launched against James Zumwalt, the son of the late Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, with claims that he attempted suicide after his ex-wife’s fiancé, who he’d once tried to run off the road with his car, was murdered. Hint-hint. You know one side is getting desperate when it tried to imply that one of its opponents once murdered a man a charge which, presumably, can be easily demonstrated to be false (I presume this because, had he been charged with the murder or convicted of it, presumably the Kerry team would have said as much).

While some Democrats are crowing about the optics of sending triple amputee Max Cleland and former Green Beret Jim Rassman to the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas I think, quite frankly, that it was one of the silliest and most desperate political stunts I’ve ever seen in my life. It was, to put it mildly, a stunt worthy of a Michael Moore film and one which I think will be transparently seen as such.

It is, of course, much too early in the campaign to write off the Kerry candidacy altogether: an awful lot can happen in the next two months, especially these days. However, it now seems to be undeniable that the Swift Vets have drawn blood and will continue doing so unless an effective counter-attack can be mounted by the Kerry campaign. Already the feckless response to the initial charges had made this task more difficult and perhaps altogether impossible.

John Kerry’s turned his boat into the fire alright: and he’s had about as much success as that other JFK had when he turned his PT Boat in front of a Japanese Destroyer.