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| Bush would offer no explanation for his absence and, as he had throughout the campaign, refused to discuss his military service during the Vietnam War. Why would a man who was running for the office of Commander and Chief of the US Armed Forces refuse to discuss his service in the military? Why didn't the public and press take notice? Their attention that day was focused on something else. |  |
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That same day, while senators were asking for an explanation of Bush's National Guard absence, the media and the public were watching another breaking Bush scandal: the sudden revelation of a 1976 drunk driving conviction that Bush had failed to mention during the campaign. As Bush spent the final days before the election explaining to America that he hid the arrest to protect his daughters, the National Guard absence was swept under the rug, as if a commercial cleaning had scrubbed the issue clean, not made into a campaign issue by Democrats. |
| Both Candidates avoided making Vietnam an issue during the Presidential race of 2000. Bush and Al Gore, who served in Vietnam as an Army journalist, had a sort of unwritten understanding that their military service during the Vietnam war would not be a subject of campaign debate. Both had been accused of using their fathers' influence to avoid combat in the war. Gore's father was a senator, Bush's father was a Congressman. |  |
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The Washington Post reports that Bush joined the National Guard 12 days before his student deferment would have expired, and that in spite of his low score on the pilot's aptitude test (25, the lowest score allowed), and in spite of the waiting list that some kids spent years on, Bush was sworn in as an airman the day he applied. Indeed, so giddy was Bush's commander, Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, that he later staged a special ceremony so he could have his picture taken giving Bush the oath, instead of the captain who actually had sworn Bush in. Bush spent two years learning to fly airplanes in his home state of Texas. |
As the 2000 Presidential campaign
moved along, angry veterans in Alabama claimed that
George W Bush never performed any military service in that state, as
stated on his campaign website. They offered a reward of
$1000 (which rose to $3,500) to anyone who could prove that he had.
No one came forth with any proof.
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