winterbadger | many thanks to Daniel Schorr and Salon

The central question is not whether they did anything illegal to avoid military service. It is how they justified their avoidance in the first place. That so many leaders have given so few answers to such important questions must set some sort of record for a democracy. If so, it's one we shouldn't be proud of.

from this article

This, and Daniel Schorr's recent essay on NPR (I'll try to find a link to it) really highlight what, to me, is the big issue in the president's record: not that he may or may not have illegally taken time off from his National Guard service, but that he had arranged service in the Guard through his father's influence, instead of volunteering for active service. Aren't our leaders supposed to hold themselves to a *higher* standard, not a lower one?