Logan Pichler, “Bush vs Kerry; a Qualitative Understanding of the 2004 Election and the Instrumentalizing of Veteran Mythology”
Mentor: Dylan Bennett, Social Sciences & Business
Poster #15

Veterans are a shrinking minority in the United States, but they hold an outsized cultural and political status as venerable and ideal citizens. This has created a mythology surrounding veterans, which carries a large amount of political fame and can be used to manipulate public opinion in favor of partisan outcomes. This leaves room to study how the mythology surrounding veterans is instrumentalized for political fame. How do partisan actors behave to confer its benefits, or take away those benefits from partisan rivals? And how do media elites and the voting public respond to their actions? To answer these questions this study takes a qualitative look at the 2004 election; reviewing newspaper articles, press coverage, focus groups, political debates, and other written or video materials about the election. With the Democratic Party candidate John Kerry, being a Vietnam War veteran who received several combat metals throughout his tour. This election provides an interesting frame of analysis, to see how veterans in politics attempt to instrumentalize their identities. During the campaign, Republicans and their affiliated groups tried to smear Kerry as weak, unconfident, and unpatriotic. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, headed by the Houston attorney John O’Neill, attempted to tarnish John Kerry’s military record. O’Neill would write “Unfit for Command,” in which he details the extent to which Kerry “lied” about the metals he won in combat. These attacks show case how partisan actors attempt to frame opposition candidates in a manner that degrades their identities as veterans. Inverting notions of patriotism, militarism, and masculinity, and using them as methods of attack.