Swift-boating.

So damaging was the smear campaign against Democratic Sen. John Kerry - and his poor handling of it - in the 2004 presidential campaign that it has been permanently ingrained in the modern political lexicon.

Asked recently about his failed Swift-boat response strategy, Kerry said that he lost the presidential election not because he didn’t respond with the truth about what happened - “We did,” he said. “But we just didn’t do it right.”

The question is whether Sen. Barack Obama can avoid a similar fate. If he feels the best reaction is to simply keep answering back, he may end up like his predecessor, back in the Senate and wondering where he went wrong.

Ultimately, Kerry did respond to his swift-boat accusers. But his real mistake was making Vietnam a key part of his campaign in the first place.

He even took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Boston with the introduction, “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.”

His Vietnam record thus became fair game - resulting in the intense scrutiny of personal events 30 years ago, which resulted in conflicting accounts, half-truths accepted as fact, faulty memories and lost electoral votes.

Sens. John Kerry and Barack Obama are the Democrats’ most recent nominees for president. Can the latter avoid suffering the former’s swift-boated fate.

The lessons for Obama - ones he has failed to learn so far in two pseudo-scandals that flared up during the Democratic race - are twofold:

1. Avoid categorical denials about the past. During the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy, Obama said his pastor’s most offensive comments were “not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews.” True? Possibly. But it doesn’t matter if people - whatever their motivations might be - come out of the woodwork with different versions.
2. Simply apologizing can be great for closing the book on a topic. If done right — admitting fault , showing regret, but raising the level of debate - it can turn a scandal on its head. Obama failed to do so amid backlash from “bitter-gate,” responding indignantly to critics (if at all).

Without a doubt, the biggest flaw in Barack Obama’s campaign strategy so far is the insistence on portraying the candidate as the second coming when he is - believe it or not, at least sometimes - fallible and human.

Obama’s responses to criticism thus far have left the door ajar and invited even greater criticism of his past, keeping what should be absurd non-issues very much alive, and hurting his credibility in the process.

John Kerry let himself be swift-boated out of the presidency. If Barack Obama doesn’t learn from the past, he may be doomed to repeat it.

With the Democratic race officially over and Barack Obama the nominee, we’ve been reflecting on just how this incredible upset took place.

Obama is, in our opinion, the one, clear choice to be our next Commander-in-Chief. But how did such a relative unknown ever get the chance?

The postmortem on Hillary Clinton’s stunning loss reveals a litany of mistakes, miscalculations and turmoil within her campaign.

The early mishaps are well documented. Among them:

• A flawed message that focused on inevitability, rather than how she planned to deliver the monumental change that needs to occur in this country
• A strategic miscalculation about the importance of Iowa, the first election on the calendar, and all the caucus states thereafter (Obama won 14 out of 15 presidential caucuses; only half the primaries)
• The decision to punt February after Super Tuesday, when the race was still more or less tied, effectively conceding 11 straight races to Obama
• The inability to control Bill Clinton, who intruded and overshadowed more than he aided his wife’s campaign

NIGHT AND DAY: For months, not even Hillary Clinton seemed to know what the Hillary Clinton campaign’s central tenets were from one race to the next.

While the vultures weren’t circling until late May and early June, it was stretch between February 5 and March 4 when Obama ran the table by huge margins and Clinton’s fate was likely sealed.

A political insider who worked on John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004 tells Donkey Dish exclusively:

“If [Clinton] competed harder during that time, she may have done better in the delegate count even if she lost most of those states, and in the end, may have prevented the momentum Obama picked up from those contests and kept the race closer, making her argument to the superdelegates more compelling … It’s funny, Clinton won most of the major contests from March 4 on, but by then the race was already over, at least in many people’s minds.”

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Within minutes of publishing the video of Michael Pfleger mocking Hillary Clinton for crying on the campaign trail earlier this year, we received endless comments.

The responses ranged from comparing Barack Obama to the devil (citing Satan’s deception in the Garden of Eden) to focusing on the role of religion in politics. We appreciate all points of view and encourage them across our site.

With that in mind, this writer would like to chime in:

It’s fair to consider those with whom Obama surrounds himself. But voters that are quick to judge the candidate based on words do not leave his mouth need to step back and ask themselves a vital question:

How will this affect Barack Obama as President of the United States?

Respond to Michael Pfleger’s remarks on Hillary Clinton however you please; then, ask yourself how they’d practically affect Barack Obama as president.

With a mocking tone that runs counter to the unity themes preached by Obama throughout this campaign, Pfleger acted irresponsibly.

It’s impossible to fathom what he thought he was accomplishing by even bringing up Hillary Clinton’s tears during a sermon.

So it’s fair to criticize the priest, but it’s equally irresponsible of voters to not consider follow-up questions such as:

• Does Barack Obama’s association with men such as Jeremiah Wright and Pfleger have any practical impact on his presidency?
• Do words - again, not even said by the candidate himself - affect the economy?
• What about the war in Iraq?

The point, I hope, is obvious:

As Obama himself admitted in his ground-breaking speech on race, it’s important to raise issues and to ask questions. Let’s keep a dialogue going.

But let’s also not lose sight of the bigger issues facing the country, issues that are responsible for thousands of troops dying and millions of people losing their homes. No matter what you think of Michael Pfleger’s remarks, I challenge anyone to tell me how they affect those who cannot pay their mortgage.

Isn’t that what this election should be about? What it has to be about?

There’s one more point to be made, regarding the practical implications of what priests say…

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