How a candidate's military service can help or hurt their campaign

By most measures, the new Democratic ticket has had an impressively smooth launch.

But there is one caveat to that — controversy over how Tim Walz has described his military service.

In a video from 2018, Walz, who served for 24 years in the National Guard, made a comment that sounded like he had been TO war.

A spokeswoman for the Harris-Walz campaign has said in a statement that the Democratic vice-presidential nominee "misspoke" when talking about his military service.

Walz's Republican opponent, JD Vance, pounced on that comment to accuse Walz of "stolen valor" – just about the mosst serious charge possible in veterans' circles.

Combing through the past.

In the video, Walz was discussing gun violence in the U.S., and keeping assault rifles off of American streets. At one point, he says:

"We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at."

That is the point that Republicans like Vance have used to accuse Walz of misrepresenting his time in the armed forces.

And that isn't all they're saying.

According to the Minnesota National Guard, Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit alert order for mobilization to Iraq in July of that same year.

Nothing new in politics.

All of this focus on Walz's military record has gotten people looking back at another moment in American politics where a Democratic nominee's military resume was questioned, and even attacked.

Back in 2004, then presidential hopeful John Kerry had his own service questioned by opponents who claimed his heroism was a lie.

NPR's national political correspondent Don Gonyea, reported on that campaign back in 2004.

He recalls John Kerry's tenure as a U.S. Senator and a Vietnam veteran – a former commander of a small watercraft known as a Swift Boat.

"During the war he earned 3 purple hearts, a silver star, and a bronze star for actions during combat," said Gonyea.

And at the Democratic Convention that year, he made his military service a focal point of his acceptance speech.

"But within a week, the attacks on his military service began – they came from an outside group known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Involved with that group was Chris LaCavita, a present day Trump advisor," Gonyea added.