John Kerry: Stuck in a Vietnam-era time warp

Obviously, it has given him a great political advantage in past campaigns, and he hopes it will do the same in his race for the White House.

But there might be another reason. Perhaps more than any other presidential candidate in recent memory, Kerry seems to be living in another time, playing a movie of Vietnam over and over in his mind.

In fact, he is often playing an actual movie of Vietnam over and over on his television.

Consider this scene from a remarkable profile of Kerry published in the Boston Globe in October 1996, when Kerry was in a tough re-election battle.

Kerry told reporter Charles Sennott the oft-repeated story of the February 1969 firefight in which Kerry attacked the Viet Cong who ambushed his Swift boat.

But the story wasn’t about the firefight itself. It was also Kerry’s reaction to it.

The future senator was so “focused on his future ambitions,” Sennott reported, that he bought a Super-8 movie camera, returned to the scene, and re-enacted the skirmish on film.

“I’ll show you where they shot from. See? That’s the hole covered up with reeds,” Kerry said as he ran the tape in slow motion.

Kerry told Sennott that his decision to re-enact the fight on film was no big deal — “just something I did, no great meaning to it.” But it’s clear that the old movie is a huge deal.

“Through hours of watching the films in the den of his newly renovated Beacon Hill mansion, it becomes apparent that these are memories and footage he returns to often,” Sennott wrote.

“Kerry jumps repeatedly from the couch to adjust the Sony large-screen TV in his home entertainment center, making sure the picture is clear, the color correct. He fast forwards, rewinds and freeze-frames the footage. His running commentary — vivid, sometimes touching, sometimes self-serving — never misses a beat.”

In John Kerry’s home entertainment center, it’s always 1969. It’s sometimes that way in his campaign, too.

Is Kerry’s the only campaign to play Jimi Hendrix — specifically, “Fire” from the 1967 album “Are You Experienced?” — at rallies?

Other candidates — like John Edwards, with his theme song, John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” — aren’t exactly cutting-edge, but they have chosen somewhat newer stuff.

And what about the music on Kerry’s bus? Before the Iowa caucuses, Washington Post reporter Ceci Connelly described the candidate hanging out on the bus with Peter Yarrow, his old antiwar friend from Peter, Paul, and Mary.

“Pedro, sing us a song,” Kerry ordered one day. Yarrow picked up a guitar and began to play and sing — and later waxed nostalgic about the antiwar rallies he attended way back when with Kerry and Sen. Eugene McCarthy.

Earlier, Connelly wrote, when Yarrow sang “Puff the Magic Dragon” at an event in a private home in Ames, Iowa, “Kerry lifted his fingers to his mouth for a quick toke on an imaginary joint. You can almost see his thick mane of silver hair returning to the shaggy brown do of those days.”

Even Kerry’s latest sound bite, the speech in Ohio on Tuesday in which he described President Bush as a “walking contradiction,” was apparently a reference to the old days.

In this case, it was Kris Kristofferson’s “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33 “ from 1970, with its line, “He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.”

This man is living in a time warp. No wonder Kerry sees any conflict — Gulf War I, Afghanistan, Gulf War II — as a potential Vietnam. In Kerry’s world, Vietnam is running on a continuous loop on that big-screen TV — with Jimi, Kris and Peter, Paul and Mary singing in the background.

Some people become stuck in the time period in which they had their most intense experiences.

Others, perhaps with more mental or emotional flexibility, move on. Kerry seems to be the former.

At 60 years old, Kerry seems to be obsessed with the past in ways that the 57-year-old George W. Bush isn’t.

And Kerry seems far older than, say, the 71-year-old Donald Rumsfeld — a man who is always moving ahead, not inclined to lecture about the way things were 30 or 40 years ago.

Kerry’s penchant for looking back would not a good trait in a president who will have to deal with a distinctly 21st century, post-Sept. 11 world.

America faces threats that were unheard of in Kerry’s formative years. While those threats build, Kerry is turning on Hendrix, toking on an imaginary joint and telling you about Vietnam.

And just imagine the inauguration. The new president delivers his speech, waves to the crowd, and cries ...”Pedro, sing us a song!”

Byron York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week. E-mail: byork@thehill.com

“Liberofascists always look back fondly to Russia in 1917, when the communist socialist state was born. They forget about and even defend the horrific suffering the system imposed upon millions, and the twenty million it murdered.”

Amen to that! I took a month long trip to Russia several years ago and let me tell you it’s quite a place… It’s huge! While I spent some time in Moscow; the majority of time was spent east of the Ural Mountains in western Siberia… One day I wanted to drive to see the monument on top of the Urals divide; where Europe meets Asia to get a photo having one foot in Europe, the other in Asia.

While driving to the monument we came upon a HUGE and I mean HUGE cross by the side of the highway; it had to be several stories tall; it was simply gigantic… I asked my host what it was for and he told me it was a monument to the victims of the Stalin purges from the local area. I asked to stop and check it out. There was a large park with paths through the heavily forested area, it was beautiful, and it was serene… All along the many, many paths were short brick walls and on the walls were bronze tablets listing the names of thousands and thousands of the victims of Stalin… The paths went on and on and on through the forest and I walked for quite sometime before it hit me… All of these people had been murdered in 1937 and 1938… It was shocking and I’ll never ever forget it… Tens of thousands of names, victims all, and from just this one area… They are not forgotten either; relatives still place flowers in remembrance of their loved ones along the paths…

Hey '68 grunt - '68 Dustoff pilot here!

I know I have my own personal memories that will remain the rest of my days. Being a young 20 year-old and seeing death all around on a near daily basis will do that to you.

Reading some of the accounts of Lt. Kerry and his crews, and now to add data that he was then and is now compulsive about the events of one mission, brings home a truth that he never has learned the lesson, to accept the horror of war, and move on.

Evidence seems to support that he either personally shot or at least witnessed the death of a young VC who had engaged his crew with hostile intent. Normally raised American boys were not ready for the violence of that war. They did not have in their gut something that helped them to understand the emotions of the time and culture that resided in the inner civil conflict of the two VietNams, North and South.

The closest thing we have here is our own hisory to a war like that was of a war that preceded VietNam by about 100 years, but aside from history class and possibly some precious family stories and traditions of brave and excellent service by Civil War Grand-Daddies and Uncles, many of our boys just could not get a handle on the war. This was not the service of WWII that we were raised to honor. This was not a reaction to an attack that woke a sleeping giant.

This was a civil conflict into which we had been engaged. What is the expression, I don't have a dog in this fight, Well, until you get shot at; your life becomes threatened, and you seek answers might you find within your inner being an answer to the question of self-preservation

For most of us that meant a 12-13 month tour of duty - Duty, Honor, Country, all before God Himself. Do the right thing. whether you enlisted or were drafted; nonetheless,a higher power over your life was engaged.

Young civilian Kerry's actions after the war seem to indicate a young man with inner conflict. Throwing away medals, real or otherwise, 'earned' in a mission that you still dwell over is proof of that inner conflict.

His liberal voting record on defense issues and spending seems to show he lacks any knowledge or wisdom of what our constitution requires in providing for a common defense.

I rehearse in my head some of the most difficult missions I was on, and I always return to a deep appreciation that the prayers of a devoted Mom at home and the guidance of a Loving God kept me focused on the mission of getting in, getting the wounded on board and getting them back for medical care.

No heroism there, I was very focused on my own survival each and ever mission. I just understood we could not say No! to the wounded. No!, it is too terrible to try and get you right now. Someone might get hurt. Well, someone was already paying the price, and if we stayed focused on the mission, we might all get the opportunity to last to the end of our tour, and go home.

If Mr. Kerry is so enamored with his three superficial 'injuries' that 'earned' him purple hearts that supposed gave him the right to request an early release, Maybe he should just take some time and reflect at what might have been, had he stayed with the mission that his country had given him.

I can understand if he had said he was scared, many of us were scared. I can understand if he said he disagreed with the war. I served with honorable men everyday who were drafted, trained and sent to do things they may have never asked to do, but they served with honor and distinction.

The guys I saw that came home early, came home in body bags, or with signifant portions of their flesh left behind on the battle-ground and in hospital surgery rooms.

I am so concerned that a large portion of our nation has projected onto Mr. Kerry their own narcistic sense of self-preservation at all costs to the needs of others and our nation as a whole. I do not ever again want to see someone in our nation's executive office that puts personal needs before the needs of the nation.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, borne the shame, hated it the whole time.

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