The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the Politics of Realism, and the Manipulation of Vietnam Remembrance in the 2004 Presidential Election

The group calling themselves The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth first organized in April 2004 in order to plot a strategy to undermine John Kerry's bid for president. They developed several advertisements that questioned everything from the legitimacy of Kerry's medals to the accuracy of his version of the past; they portrayed Kerry as an overly ambitious person willing to distort the truth to achieve his political goals, and they generated a firestorm of political debate. This essay argues that the Swift Boat veterans used realist discourse in collusion with Vietnam remembrance to create rhetorically powerful indictments of Kerry. To develop the argument, I focus on the Swift Boat veterans' first broadcast advertisement, an ad that had a significant influence on the presidential campaign both ideologically and in the polls. I argue that a discourse of realism dominated the ad, concealing not only its questionable credibility and political motives, but also the rhetorical tactics it used to reinforce its realist frame.