Getting Mad on Douglas Brinkley's Behalf

You know, I'm getting awfully sick and tired of conservative columnists and reporters labelling Douglas Brinkley as John Kerry's "court biographer" and "hand-picked historian" just because they find the portrait of Kerry in Tour of Duty too sympathetic--or, as the Weekly Standard is putting it, "famously sycophantic."

Now, I'll admit that my perspective here is subjective: I've been an admirer of Brinkley's work for years ( since 1998) and, in fact, I interviewed him earlier this year about the Kerry bio...I'd show you that if I could, but it was for PW, so it's behind a subscriber's curtain. During that conversation, we talked about the auspicious timing of the Kerry bio's publication, and he spoke at length about how he came to the project, making it clear to me that the book is an "authorized biography" in the sense that Kerry gave Brinkley access to his papers--because he trusted his credentials as a fair and honest historian, not because he expected a puff piece. More importantly, he assured me that Tour of Duty was not a campaign biography, and I believe him when he says that--and I think it's just as shameful to malign the reputation of an accomplished historian as collateral damage in the smear campaign against Kerry as...well, as the smear campaign against Kerry.

As a side point, those conservatives who smear Tour of Duty are doing a disservice to Vietnam veterans, since one of the book's major goals is to tell not just John Kerry's story, but the story of other military combatants in Vietnam. These veterans have long been scorned as self-pitying losers, but Brinkley deflates that myth with his accounts of their combat experience, especially when it comes to the swift boat campaigns. It's hardly surprising that the vets would get shafted like this, of course, considering that most conservative leaders did everything they could to avoid associating themselves with the military when the war was actually on and have a less-than-impressive track record when it comes to veterans rights and benefits voting issues. In a sense, conservatives--even Swift Boat Veterans for Truth--need the myth of the Vietnam losers, so they can have somebody to pick on, even if it's only a straw man.