Plenty of Joe-mentum just

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Plenty of Joe-mentum, just all in the wrong direction.

A few other thoughts.

I’ve been mulling for several days why President Bush suddenly seems so wobbly both in the polls and also with those who have heretofore remained steadfastly loyal. I discuss what I came up with in my new column in Wednesday’s edition of The Hill. A quick hint: Immigration reform, Mars mission, prescription drug shenanigans — they’ve taken a toll.

Also take a look at Jonathan Alter’s new piece on Kerry’s onslaught on the military service issue. I’ve gotten a number of emails over the last few days from Republicans asking, with a genuine disbelief and incomprehension, how it is that the questions about President Bush’s military service record are coming up now after they were ‘dealt with’ in 2000.

As Spencer Ackerman discusses ably in this piece in the new New Republic, they weren’t really dealt with at all. Or rather, the national media never really got to the bottom of what happened. Certainly they didn’t devote even a fraction of the attention to it that was lavished on Bill Clinton’s awkward history with the selective service in 1992 and 1996.

But there is something different here. And the difference is that the Democrats have decided to go on the offensive — and this is a version of preemption that Dems may, and should, warm to. After Clark had some stumbles with the issue, Kerry has been hitting it for a couple weeks. And the recent round of coverage on it would never have emerged had Terry McAullife not forced it into the news cycle over the weekend.

Perhaps it takes a vet like Kerry to fix on the importance of maintaining the initiative at all times. Now, let’s see if he remembers about unity of command.

And one more point about the president’s military service. I’m told that pay records — for which the records are apparently much better kept — might be able to settle the matter of what President Bush was doing during his sojourn in Alabama. We’ll get into that more later.

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