Posted on 02/11/2004 7:08:43 PM PST by 11th_VA
Harold Wilson, that British politician more canny than admired, usefully reminded his audience that things can change very quickly in politics.
"A week is a long time," he said, in politics, and we have seen this over and over in the American scene these past months.
After all, only nine weeks ago former vice president Al Gore blessed the insurgent campaign of Howard Dean and most pundits thought the race was over. All that was needed was the anointing of the former Vermont governor as Democratic party standard-bearer to take on US President George W. Bush in November.
Overnight Senator John Kerry, whose campaign had almost imploded late last year, turned the race upside down by winning big in Iowa's caucuses and then the weeks following in New Hampshire, Missouri and other primaries -- not only showing he has the "Big Mo" (or momentum) essential for winning in America, but a hammerlock on the nomination.
Or so it looks. After all, Senator Joe Lieberman has withdrawn, Wesley Clark's hopes are forlorn and John Edwards is resting his case on a single win, in the state of his birth.
But can it happen again? Dean's hold looked airtight until folks actually went to the polls. He had money to burn and endorsements from across the country, and now he is barely maintaining viability as a serious candidate. What could go wrong with Kerry's campaign at this point, and are there any implications for Asia?
Not a lot, but no one yet considers it over. The lanky and experienced Massachusetts senator has money to burn. No one wants to say it, but his wife's near billion-dollar fortune at the very least permits him to spend all his own, more modest, fortune to smooth his way. She can't shovel money directly into his campaign, but the mere fact of her fortune gives confidence to other contributors or lenders that they're backing a winner. He has seemingly unlimited self-confidence, despite many trip-ups in his long career.
But no senator has won the keys to the White House since John F. Kennedy.
There's a reason why senators don't tend to win. They've been on the record for too long on too many issues. There are too many interest groups they have had to cultivate and satiate to stay in politics. Sam Nunn, a powerful senator from Georgia who didn't even have to face serious re-election opposition, left the Senate in 1996 because he tired of spending his evenings entertaining his major supporters and running over to the Senate to vote. At the prime of life, he wanted to rediscover his family.
The real issue that Kerry must resolve is, however, character. Now that he is the front-runner, he must not only answer to all the charges of serving special interests that have risen and will still rise, he has to satisfy the public that he is, not to put too fine a point on it, an honorable man. There are questions.
Kerry has managed to straddle many issues and so it is difficult to discern his real beliefs -- other than in himself. He votes for the war in Iraq so he doesn't look "wet" and then votes against Pentagon budget rises, so he can please the liberal Democrats, who give him one of their highest ratings. When he looks at an acquaintance, he always seems to be looking just past, to see if someone more important lurks behind his interlocutor. Of course that's just standard politics. But people want something more.
He now makes much of his decorations from the war in Vietnam, to appeal to centrists and conservatives, without reminding those audiences that he for long was a leader of Vietnam veterans against the war. Indeed, assiduous searchers, looking for his vulnerabilities, will find much of interest in that period of his life.
For example, the fabled and distinguished chief of naval operations (CNO), Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, told me -- 30 years ago when he was still CNO -- that during his own command of US naval forces in Vietnam, just prior to his anointment as CNO, young Kerry had created great problems for him and the other top brass, by killing so many non-combatant civilians and going after other non-military targets.
"We had virtually to straight-jacket him to keep him under control," the admiral said. "Bud" Zumwalt got it right when he assessed Kerry as having large ambitions -- but promised that his career in Vietnam would haunt him if he were ever on the national stage.
It is that sort of thing that senators don't have to worry about. But if they become a front-runner for president, the whole ball-game changes. Their past is scrutinized with a fine-tooth comb. In Kerry's case, for example, he has shown precious little interest in Asia since his tour in Vietnam, and there is little doubt that he will follow the standard Democratic party, pro-Beijing, line. But every word he's ever spoken on it will be scrutinized.
That is why it is not only true that a week is a long time in politics. But, as they say in American politics, "It ain't over until the fat lady sings."
W. Scott Thompson is an adjunct professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Boston, and a former assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration. He has visited Taipei eight times and now lives in Bali.
That quote falls into the "too good to be true" category, if you ask me. Unless we can find other verification of Zumwalt saying the same thing to somebody else, we probably shouldn't go around spreading this quote as gospel.
This was taken from this thread, and came from http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnkerry.com/ originally.
I was not in the delta, but friends who were describe these boats as fearsome gun platforms that could chew up the shoreline and landscape as they cruised the rivers and waterways. Consider that in a primative environment, villagers go down to the river for any number of reasons and major trails would often track right alongside the river.
Even in a "free fire" zone, a leader was expected to prevent senseless slaughter. We would see kids all the time in these areas in my AO when on patrol. Just because we saw them, didn't mean we were supposed to shoot them, but the accusation seems to be that JFK did.
"We had virtually to straight-jacket him to keep him under control," the admiral said. "Bud" Zumwalt got it right when he assessed Kerry as having large ambitions -- but promised that his career in Vietnam would haunt him if he were ever on the national stage.
Sheesh, Kerry sounds like a real psycho.
I'm sure if Zumwalt said this, he was talking about John Kerry. They are both Navy, plus Zumwalt & Kerry are linked in his Vietnam war bio. Kerry met with Zumwalt to complain about the free-fire zones according to the Boston Globe background stories by Mike? Kranish? After hearing this Zumwalt story, I am beginning to think the meeting was about Zumwalt dressing down Kerry for abusing the free-fire zone policy, and NOT Kerry complaining to Zumwalt as he told the Boston Globe.
Admiral Zumwalt was routinely listed as a minor contributor to Senator Bob Kerrey's election campaigns for Senator and President. Kerrey was a Medal of Honor winner. I am sure Admiral Zumwalt knew to which Senator he was referring.
Regards,
TS
I flat don't believe this. If Kerry created problems for his commanders, it would have been many layers below Zumwalt's notice; and those much lower commanders would have had no trouble at all shipping a 'killer' Kerry back to the States ASAP 'for the good of the service'.
Going up and down the rivers, it would be easy for him to order his men to shoot civilians fishing or farming on the banks.
Gotta hand it to Kerry - with the Republican base on the verge of splintering into a million squabbling fragments, he manages to do the one thing that not only fires up and starts to unite the conservatives, but also totally exposes his most vulnerable flank. And he's made sure that we will absolutely relish every single minute of digging up every single piece of dirt we can find and pounding him into lumpy red spaghetti with it.
You really thought they would have learned after going so overboard on smearing Schwarzennegger during the California recall, but they didn't learn squat. Making them pay for their ignorance is going to be so much fun.
Half a dozen independent barrier operations comprised the SEALORDS initiative. The intent was to block a Viet Cong supply flow estimated at 175 to 200 tons per month. The Americans had great success, but their overall impact remained difficult to gauge. In one of the operation's deemed most successful, Giant Slingshot-an attempt to isolate the Parrot's Beak section of Cambodia, phased out in May 1970 after the invasion of that country, an enormous effort was made by fifty or more PBRs. A typical sailor assigned here logged 172 ambush missions during his Vietnam tour. Total seizures in Giant Slingshot came to 150 tons of ammunitions and 400 more of other material, compared to an estimated Viet Cong supply flow (November 1968 to May 1970) of 3,300 to 3,800 tons. Lt. John F. Kerry, a Swift boat commander at Phu Quoc Island in 1968-69, recalls, "You'd randomly stop a boat among the dozens that were going up and down. But for the one or two you stopped, hundreds of others went by, and you knew weapons were slipping by you."
See Viet Vet Urges Kerry To Come Clean for more details:
When challenged last week to repudiate his previous testimony, after I faxed to his office for review, a spokesman there abruptly terminated the call saying if Senator Kerry testified to it, he stands by it. The Senator recently condoned the alleged atrocities, war crimes, committed by a fellow Democratic Senator and Vietnam Veteran, Robert Kerrey. He said the operation should not be investigated because it allegedly happened all the time in Vietnam. Further, on the Sam Donaldson show, Kerry short shrifted the program, Phoenix, under which the atrocity allegedly occurred, saying he personally helped conduct similar anti-infrastructure operations, ferrying SEALs. This, apparently is part of the source of the Senator¹s alleged first hand knowledge he testified to before.
The Senator, as a former officer, knows his obligations were to avoid participating in war crimes and reporting them when knowledge of them occurred. Instead, the Senator broad brushed veterans of the war as crazed killers forced to be that because of governmental policy. As a US Senator now, when faced head on with an allegation that a member of his party, his Senatorial Fraternity, Robert Kerrey helped cut a civilian's throat and possibly commanded an operation that killed over 20 civilians without provocation, the Senator Kerry reverted to the 1971 allegations that everyone did it. He ignored the formalized eyewitness allegation by a veteran of that operation who belatedly lived up to a responsibility to report a crime. Murder in a war zone has no time limits for investigation or prosecution.
I agree with you but it sure makes sense. I find that Democrats often use public forums, from protests to policy, as a way to cleanse their souls and make up for their personal failings.
That will be impossible
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