2004 3-June to August

Week of 8-30-04

Election 2004: Salon ... The widow of a Bush family confidant says her husband gave the future president an Alabama Senate campaign job as a favor to his worried father. Did they see him do any National Guard service?"Good lord, no." Linda Allison's story, never before published, contradicts the Bush campaign's assertion that George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama National Guard in 1972 because he received an irresistible offer to gain high-level experience on the campaign of Bush family friend Winton"Red" Blount. In fact, according to what Allison says her late husband told her, the younger Bush had become a political liability for his father, who was then the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and the family wanted him out of Texas.... 60 Minutes plans on airing an interview next Wed. with former speaker of the Texas state House, Democrat Ben Barnes, who says he pulled strings to get W into the National Guard. Bush I is denouncing the charge.

Election 2004: Douglas Brinkley says Kerry is free to release his Vietnam diary."I don't mind if John Kerry shows anybody anything," he said."If he wants to let anybody in, that's his business. Go bug John Kerry, and leave me alone." The exclusivity agreement, he said, simply requires"that anybody quoting any of the material needs to cite my book." The Kerry campaign has refused to release Kerry's personal Vietnam archive, including his journals and letters, saying that the senator is contractually bound to grant Brinkley exclusive access to the material. Brinkley's book has now sold nearly 100,000 copies--his first bestseller. He says there will be minor revisions in the paperback.

Election 2004: U.S. President George W. Bush must overcome 48 years of history to win re-election over Democrat John Kerry. Since 1956, none of the three presidents who trailed in a Gallup Poll after February of a re-election year won a second term. Bush and Kerry are in a dead heat in the latest ABC News Washington Post poll released Monday as Bush prepares to accept his party's nomination at the Republican National Convention in New York. Because most undecided voters typically back the challengers, Bush must open enough of a lead to withstand an election-day shift to Kerry, said Frank Newport, the Gallup poll's editor in chief.

OAH Call for Action: From the Organization of American Historians ... The future of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission is in jeopardy and we need your help to restore funding to this important historical federal agency. We are sending this email to OAH members in the states whose U.S. senators sit on the Senate Transportation, Treasury, and Genera