Posted on 10/06/2004 6:29:13 AM PDT by xsysmgr
One of the biggest problems that John Kerry has is that he is still an enigma to most people. We all know more than we want about his service in Vietnam, but very little about what he has done between then and now. In particular, his 20-year Senate career is a blank.
For this reason, I found of great interest the new book by former Senate staffer Winslow T. Wheeler, The Wastrels of Defense: How Congress Sabotages U.S. Security. Wheeler spent 31 years working on national defense issues for both Republican and Democratic senators. The main point of his book is that the defense budget is no less prone to pork-barrel spending than any other part of the budget. He writes about his frustration at having spent so much of his time working on pet projects for his bosses that added nothing to our national security and served solely to advance their re-elections. Unfortunately, in many cases, these pork-barrel projects came at the expense of critical defense needs, such as operations and maintenance.
Toward the end of his book, Wheeler makes some very interesting observations about Kerry that are relevant to the presidential race.
Wheeler starts by noting that there were certain senators that he always knew would be major players on defense issues. Whether he agreed with them or thought they were dreadfully wrong, the views of certain senators always commanded respect. They came to the Senate floor well prepared for serious debate, commanded facts and analyses supporting their positions, and always contributed something meaningful to every issue they engaged in.
“But then,” Wheeler writes, “there was also another type of senator I would run across in the elevator or see in the chamber — the ones I could never associate with any deed or even articulated thought that had any lasting effect. The thought would dash through my head, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s a senator too; forgot that he was even still around here.’ John Kerry was such a senator.”
Kerry should have been a major player on foreign policy and defense issues, Wheeler thinks. He is a long-time member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, one of the most prestigious in the Senate, and clearly has the intellectual ability to understand the nuances of complex issues. But instead of being a player, Wheeler calls him a “ghost senator.”
Says Wheeler, Kerry “had all the physical trappings of a senator: the mane of graying hair, the deep, rich voice, the intent stare, and the appropriate physical posture. But, Kerry never seemed to make a difference. It was almost as if he was both a member of the Senate and yet not a member, at least not one that mattered. He was a ‘ghost senator’; he had all the form, but none of the substance.”
Lest one think that Wheeler is just engaging in partisan snipping, his greatest frustration with Kerry is that he did not oppose the Iraq invasion, which Wheeler feels was a mistake. He quotes at length Kerry’s words on the Senate resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq and has a hard time believing that Kerry had any idea at all of what he was talking about.
Says Wheeler, “One wonders if Kerry had read either the text of the legislation he was voting for or the White House document proclaiming the preemption doctrine, especially how it defined ‘imminent.’ If Kerry had read these documents, one then wonders if, to him, words in print have any meaning other than what a U.S. senator wants to pretend they mean.”
We may now have a better idea of why Kerry almost never refers to anything he did in the Senate in support of his election to the presidency. There is simply nothing there.
I quit working in the Senate in 1984, the year Kerry was elected, and so I never had a chance to see him at work. But I know from experience that congressional staffers are among the most penetrating observers of which members of Congress are hard workers, which ones are lazy, which ones are publicity hounds, and which ones have Jekyll-and-Hyde personalities.
Among themselves, congressional staffers are brutally honest about their bosses and other senators. They have to be. Oftentimes, critical legislative strategies depend on whether you think a staffer can deliver his boss for a key vote, committee hearing, or floor debate. You can’t afford to depend on a staffer who is delusional about his boss’s abilities or dependability.
Of course, a thin Senate record is no guarantee that one will be a bad president. John F. Kennedy’s Senate career was nothing to brag about. Nevertheless, it is revealing that Kerry was essentially absent without leave on national security issues during his entire time in the Senate according to someone in a position to know.
— Bruce Bartlett is senior fellow for the National Center for Policy Analysis. Write to him here.
Neither was his presidency.
So many votes, so little time, except for windsurfing and skiing.
He was a ‘ghost senator’; he had all the form, but none of the substance.”
He would make the same type of president
He had his high points and his low points. The tax cut and the Cuban Missile Crisis were his high points. Bay of Pigs and Vietnam were low.
Calvin Cooledge did 10 times more. Was a far greater President, but he wasn't wacked, so he can't reach sainthood like Kennedy; the most overrated President in history!
Don't know if Coolidge did more, but I agree with your assessment of Kennedy. Of course, history may judge him differently from the media. I was only 5 when he was killed, so I don't have too much recollection of his Presidency, except what I read in the liberal media. On the other hand, I remember when I was in highschool, I took a course on American history, and my teacher told us about how he'd worked for the Kennedy campaign. He admitted, though, that Kennedy was not wildly popular while he was President. It was only after he was assassinated that he became godlike.
John Kerry says he can do a better job than President Bush.
Oh really?
What is Kerry’s record during his 20 years in the Senate?
• Kerry voted against most of the major weapons systems that our troops use today.
• Kerry voted against the $87 billion for support of the troops, after he voted for it.
• Kerry led the fight against President Bush's Department Of Homeland Security, voting against it six times and delaying it for 112 days.
• Kerry missed more than 75% of the meetings of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
• Kerry proposed slashing the intelligence budget by $7.5 billion after the first attack on the World Trade Center.
• Kerry has voted at least 350 times for higher taxes.
• Kerry has been able to persuade congress to pass only eight insignificant laws that bear his name, and most of those were strictly ceremonial.
• Kerry has proposed that use of force by the US must meet a “global test.”
• Kerry voted against the first Gulf War, after Saddam invaded Kuwait. By Kerry’s standards, Saddam would still be in power, and in Kuwait.
• Kerry says he has a plan. Custer had a plan, too.
Kerry can do a better job than President Bush? Oh really?
I don't recall how long Kennedy was in the Senate, but I'm reasonably sure it was nowhere near 20 years!
WHO YOU GONNA CALL?
GHOSTBUSTERS!
B/C '04
Kerry = Slacker and Undrachiever.
Senator Slacker!
The impression I got from Cheney's dissection (vivisection?) of Kerry and Edwards' Senate records was that these boys of unearned privilege think attendance is optional.
Despite the meager responsibilities they have in the Senate, a group that doesn't meet very often to begin with, they chose to blow off major votes, important committee meeting (membership on which we can only assume they fought to get), and simply attending to the business for which they are paid.
I know Kerry has blown off the entire past year, because my local paper reports him as "NOT VOTING" week after week when the Senate is in session.
Even as one in a hundred Senators, it is his duty to be there and do his job. The President was ridiculed for taking vacations in his first year that pale beside Kerry's record of nonattendance in the Senate.
Against his own benefit, the President was out comforting hurricane victims and assessing damage last week on the day of the debate.
What did Kerry do? He got a "man"icure. Nobody knows where Edwards was. Or cared.
I think we can see who is taking the job seriously.
Seven years - 1953-60.
OK, y'all, we all know that JOHN missed 75% of the senate intellegence meetings, but what has his attendance been for normal senate operations???? How many days attended per days the senate met??
And of course, we also need to know little johns' record for his four years also.
Kerry has NEVER done any heavy lifting...never run a small company....never even ran a Committee. PATHETIC.
You express my sentiments precisely.
Ping
The Ghost Senator: Kerry’s 20 phantom years in the upper chamberZERO !! 00
I was 2 1/2 when Kennedy was killed. Kennedy was looked at on the same level as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln by the press and public school teachers in the 1960s and 1970s.
I didn't know any better until I did a report on Kennedy's political life in my junior year in high school. I had my doubts on his greatness then. In my young adult life, I played a round of golf with a retired FBI agent who was assigned to the White House during the Kennedy administration. That's when I learned what can happen to a public image when it has been burnished by a fawning press.A lot of his stories seemed uncannily similar to what we've read and heard of the Clinton White House.
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