Even when someone battles hard, there is an equal portion for one who lingers behind, and in the same honor are held both the coward and the brave man. Homer, The Iliad

The world is upside down. In an election in which one of the critical issues is the merits of a war justified by lies, whose described successes are lies, being waged by a commander in chief whose swagger conceals his lies, it appears that the election has been affected, if not swayed, by corrupt ads attacking his opponent’s military service.

In a normal world, if two candidates were running for office, one of whom served honorably as a military officer in an unpopular war and was decorated for his service and the other used family influence to get a position in an organization that insured he would risk neither life nor limb in defense of his country, the honorable record of the candidate who served with distinction would redound to his benefit and not to the benefit of the demonstrated coward. That is not how it works in the United States of Gullible Americans. Indeed, two things stand out in the swamp of this election. John Kerry served honorably during the Viet Nam war and George Bush did not. That makes George Bush the favorite son of the electorate, most of whom can apparently understand the motivation of a man who lets others die and lose limbs in his stead.

Having used family connection to enter the National Guard, Mr. Bush relied on those same connections to treat his required military service cavalierly. None of that is disputed and that, by itself, should end any discussion of which candidate served more honorably. It has not. Thanks to lies spewed from the mouths of those intent on maintaining control of the reins of government, the tables have been turned. John Kerry’s military service has become a weapon used against him and George Bush’s cowardice has become his strong suit. (In fairness it should be observed that Mr. Bush’s cowardice has been somewhat compensated for by the courage he has shown in sending other young people off to do what he himself was afraid to do. (Although he has had the courage to send others off to do what he was afraid to do, it should be noted that he has not yet had the courage to greet the coffins of his returning emissaries.)

The madness of the world does not end with the Swift Boat results that have sunk Mr. Kerry’s military service. It continues with the mindless assault waged on CBS news because of its poor reporting on "Sixty Minutes." The CBS report was an embarrassment to journalism. The proper response to the poor reporting for those not in journalism is: "So what." Lousy reporting may well mean those responsible will lose their jobs and certainly results in the diminished reputation of those responsible. It has nothing to do with George Bush’s military service about which all that needs to be known is already known. Whether or not CBS relied on forged documents does not change the facts about George W. Bush. The facts were the same before the report as they were after the report. But in an upside down world, the poor reporting became the news, comparative military careers were removed from the front pages and the only thing that mattered was that CBS had made a mistake.

No where was the absurdity of the frenzy surrounding CBS’ fiasco more obvious than in the New York Times’ op ed pages. William Safire, is one of the country’s more pompous and self-important pontificators. His columns frequently include references to the important people for whom he has worked thus giving the impression he has greater wisdom than the words he writes would otherwise suggest. Commenting on the CBS embarrassment, he says that what occurred was not simply a "dirty trick" but might have been a violation of the U.S. criminal code. He solemnly pronounced that had the skullduggery not been discovered by "sharp-eyed bloggers, a national election could have been swung by a blatant falsehood." If Mr. Safire had been awake during the months preceding the CBS debacle he might have noticed that there have been many "blatant falsehoods" during this campaign, most of them coming from his friends on the right and the far right. Mr. Safire is either naive or completely disingenuous in his concern about the CBS report.

The last words in Mr. Safire’s columns were: "[N]obody gets away with trying to corrupt American elections." He was of course referring to Democrats. He doesn’t care if Republicans do it in 2004 or did it in 2000. That’s too bad. He should care. So should the rest of the country. On November 2 we’ll learn if it does.