Dan Rather: George Bush's MVP

There is a lot of talk on the Internet on the accuracies of the documents Dan Rather and CBS used as supporting evidence in a story on whether George Bush completed his required duty in the Texas Air National Guard.

The CBS story came out at the same time serious and exhaustive stories by the Associated Press and Boston Globe came out questioning many of the assertions Bush had made over the years regarding his service. The CBS story appeared to be the coup de grace.

Instead, questions over some of the documents have dominated the story, eliminating any discussion of the rest of the story. For that the White House must be very pleased with Dan Rather. A perceived villain of the right, Rather can now be the poster boy for alleged liberal media while providing needed cover for Bush to duck the story.

So a series of stories that show Bush did not fulfill his duties will be questioned by the controversy around documents used in the CBS story and potentially damage John Kerry.

As the Dallas Morning News put it: "The story is now about CBS and what looks like its sloppy reporting, not Mr. Bush and what he did during the Vietnam era.Which is not entirely fair, really, because Mr. Bush has not been entirely forthcoming about his Guard record...

CBS' bungling of this story with only seven weeks to go in the presidential race probably means that any further reporting on Mr. Bush and the Guard, however well sourced and documented, will be received by many Americans as mere political mudslinging."

So could the White House and Karl Rove be behind this? The Palm Beach Post reported that Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe said "I can unequivocally tell you that no one involved here at the Democratic National Committee had anything at all to do with any of those documents," but added "If I were an aspiring young journalist, I think I would ask Karl Rove that question."

According to the Post, Rove has declined to comment.

If George Bush were facing a set of documents that could destroy his presidency, wouldn't he do what ever it took? He did it with the vote in Florida in 2000 and ended up in the White House. Should anyone really be surprised if he did it again in 2004?