I've always been singularly unimpressed by Douglas Brinkley--he's always seemed like a Democrat shill to me, but this affair has to really damage his credibility as a professional historian. It will be interesting to see how he manages to clarify, and validate, the current Kerry Cambodia claims. Hugh Hewitt points out, rightly, that there's absolutely no evidence that Kerry was ever in Cambodia. Errrr...except that he says he was...

I wonder how long Kerry's going to continue to avoid the press? I don't know what he's so worried about--they seem to be quite uninterested in the subject, so far.

Coincidentally, I heard Douglas Brinkley interviewed by WWL Radio in New Orleans at about 10:00am on September 11th, 2001.

Douglas Brinkley's connection to New Orleans is that he is a bit of an "heir" to the great historian Stephen Ambrose who wrote so much about WWII. (Whether Brinkley is a faculty member at the University of New Orleans--as Ambrose was--I do not know.)

At any rate, Brinkley was talking live on the radio to WWL's morning person, Andre Trevigne. By 10:00am central time, both towers had collapsed, and the word was that between 10,000 and 20,000 people would likely be dead.

So, what was Brinkley's take on this unfolding tragedy with a death toll as high as 20,000? The first observation I heard him make was something like this: with Bush just ending an extended vacation at the Crawford Ranch, this terrorist event would be politically damaging to him.

That was it. As many as 20,000 people had just perished (as far as we knew), and Brinkley wanted to talk about the political ramifications of Bush's vacation.

Ever since then, I am always revulsed whenever I hear Brinkley's name. I will never take him seriously. (And can you imagine the great Stephen Ambrose ever making an observation like that?)

---Tom Nally, New Orleans