The electorate in the United States is about to take yet another gullibility test; that is, a test to see how many voters will swallow a specious claim stripped of logic, but promoted widely.

Although lying in political races has an old if not honorable tradition in American politics, it wasn’t until the 21st century that it was codified into the political toolkit by name: Swiftboating.

Swiftboating is defined as “a pejorative American neologism used to describe an unfair or untrue political attack.” It was brought to us during the Bush-Kerry race by a political operative named Chris LaCivita. LaCivita seems like a standard-issue political gunslinger: university graduate, for sale to Republicans, and somewhat extravagant in his actions. (He admitted to ordering employees around while brandishing a sword and thrusting at the wall. He says he’s quit doing that.) He had a direct report named Torbin, who was sentenced to 10 months in prison for his part in a dirty tricks scheme. Nothing particularly unusual, especially for Republicans.

In case you have succeeded in flushing the memory of the Swiftboat campaign from your memory, here’s a brief recap: during the Bush-Kerry contest a group of rich people sat around a hotel room discussing how they might best smear Kerry. Evidently somebody knew of a little-known book another Swiftboater, incensed by Kerry’s later anti-war activities, had written entitled “Unfit for Command.” That became the basis for the campaign.

The fact that the campaign's claims were disproved by the testimony of others who had served with Kerry and by his own service records didn’t matter. From what I remember, the question they raised was whether Kerry deserved all three of the Purple Hearts he was awarded. I don’t remember them questioning the Silver Star and the Bronze Star. In any event, LaCivita’s smear campaign worked, and Bush won.

Now comes LaCivita, using J.D. Vance as a mouthpiece, trying to do the same thing to Tim Walz. I imagine that it’s inconvenient to have Trump levy the charges since the military associations he’s most famous for are his bone spurs and the generals who worked for him calling him a moron or some other less-than-flattering name.

And here’s where the gullibility test comes in. In 2004, the voting public was asked to judge the character of a candidate, based on a lie and completely ignoring the irony of criticizing a decorated veteran and ignoring the fact that, based on his own records, his opponent hadn’t completed his National Guard obligation.

I would have liked to have heard the discussion in the creative session that spawned Swiftboating:

We’re going to sow seeds of doubt about Kerry’s medals.

How many medals?

Five. Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts.

How does our guy stack up?

He finished part of his National Guard obligation.

Eh, doesn’t matter.

Now, we are being asked to judge the character of a candidate because he left the National Guard after 24 years of service to run for Congress. Based on the published timeline, Tim Walz retired in May 2005, his unit received an alert in July, and deployed in 2006. Did Walz hear rumors about a possible deployment prior to May 2005? I don’t know, and so far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter. He had served 24 years. He had decided to run for Congress. He received an honorable discharge, went to Congress, and was applauded for his work on the Veterans Affairs committee. He was then elected governor twice. That, plus his teaching and coaching career, makes for a outstanding lifetime of service, one that we should all respect.

I do not denigrate any veteran’s service. I didn’t serve. The military didn’t want me for a variety of reasons, one of which was the intonation of my saxophone playing. However, military service in my family is broad and goes back for generations. I honor all of that.

And it really doesn’t bother me that J.D. Vance is currently on his third name. So far as I’m concerned, that’s his business. I even sympathize with his wife, who has become the target of the idiocies of Nick Fuentes. She did, however, open herself up for legitimate criticism when she said that Vance only intended to insult those who choose not to have children. I couldn’t figure out how that was any of his business. I did find it funny that Vance piously announced "Truth matters," in such close proximity to a press conference where their candidate was clocked at about 160 lies an hour. 

What does bother me is that J.D. Vance just seems like a prettier Trump. He advocates taking us back to the beginnings of the nineteenth century and reinstituting the spoils system, stripping away the hard-won protections that civil servants have. It bothers me that he seems to be a charter member of the Project 2025 Club, a plan designed to create a Republican-led authoritarian state. Even if you believe that Trump doesn’t embrace the power grabs of Project 2025, you can believe Schedule F. He tried to implement it last time.

Vance, like Trump and others, has made an effort to distance himself from Project 2025, although it was largely written by Trump associates. That rings a little hollow since he also wrote the Foreword for a yet-unpublished book by Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, that the published once blurbed as “Burning Down Washington to Save America.” Publication of the book—Dawn’s Early Light—was previously scheduled for September. Publication has now been postponed until after the election, perhaps because they consider it too radical for even the most gullible of our electorate to swallow.

The attack on Tim Walz is, as noted, Swiftboating 2.5. I don’t think LaCivita should get full credit for the smear he concocted against Obama in 2008. He attempted to tie Obama to William Ayers, who in his youth had been a student radical but by 2008 was a respected academic. The electorate didn’t buy it, possibly because the 2008 recession was more important than an alleged link from many years ago. I look at Tim Walz’s record and see a man who obviously cares for others, is effective in his job, and doesn’t need to constantly put down anybody. That’s my kind of guy.

And I look at Project 2025. That's not my kind of country.