Posted on 03/10/2004 12:18:02 AM PST by kattracks
JOHN KERRY will be only the third Catholic in U.S. history to be nominated for the Presidency by a major party. The other two were Al Smith in 1928, who lost to Herbert Hoover, and John F. Kennedy in 1960, who defeated Richard Nixon.
I asked Kerry if sewing up the nomination has any special meaning for him as a Catholic, and he said: “Historically, yes; substantively, no. I subscribe completely to the speech Kennedy made in Houston in 1960 and believe completely in the separation of church and state.”
Kennedy’s speech made to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12, 1960 is eloquent, powerful, emotional and stirring. (And comparing it to the typical political speech today is profoundly depressing.) The most famous line is: “I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic.”
Kerry said of the Catholic issue today, “I really think Americans have ceased to think about these kinds of things. I don’t think people care. I think people are in a different place.”
If Kerry wins, he would become not just the second Catholic President in history, but the first with Jewish grandparents. And for decades, voters in Massachusetts assumed Kerry was Irish, as did members of his own staff — and newspapers often described him that way.
Oddly, Kerry never wrote a letter to the editor complaining and pointing out that he was Austrian on his father’s side and British on his mother’s side. This may have been because Massachusetts has more Irish-Americans than any other state.
But Kerry says he never lied about it. In any case, aside from not being Irish, Kerry is not a Boston Brahmin, either, though he is often described that way.
The phrase was coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to designate the elite WASP ruling class of Boston. Since you have to be a Protestant to be a WASP (that’s what the P is all about), Kerry isn’t one. All this is rendered moot, however, because Kerry really wants to be black.
Last week, Kerry gave a little-noticed interview to American Urban Radio in which he said: “President Clinton was often known as the first black President. I wouldn’t be upset if I could earn the right to be the second.”
When Nobel laureate Toni Morrison wrote that about Clinton at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in October 1998, however, Morrison was not talking about Clinton’s empathy with black people, she was talking about his being a victim.
“Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President,” Morrison wrote in the New Yorker. “Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime.”
What Clinton’s “blackness” earned him, however, according to Morrison, was to be persecuted and possibly “fired from your job, sent away in disgrace, and — who knows? — maybe sentenced and jailed, to boot.”
Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s campaign manager in 2000, a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention this year and an African-American, was somewhat taken aback when I read Kerry’s statement to her, but she quickly recovered.
“That’s a very steep hill to climb,” she said. “Clinton bonded with African-Americans and they never, ever left him. I saw some internal polls recently. Clinton’s favorable rating with black people was at 91 percent in 2000, 92 percent in 2002 and 94 percent this year. It will take years for John Kerry to build that kind of credibility with black voters. Clinton started in high school. He knew the verses at Baptist services. He knew the songs. He knew how to do the Electric Slide! Now, Kerry looks Presidential and acts Presidential, and African-Americans will be open to that. And if he can learn to dance and sway like Clinton, Kerry can get there.”
I have never envisioned Kerry dancing and swaying (the mind boggles), but he told me that there is a “new” Kerry, that the primary campaign has had a “profound impact” on him, that his speeches are “shorter and tighter,” and that his demeanor is “softer and easier.”
And, Kerry said, “I am having fun and letting it all hang out.”
Groovy.
Roger Simon can be e-mailed at WriteRoger@aol.com.
And Gore, the one with the charisma was...something?
Kerry's Apostolic Heather I believe.
The man with a thousand heritages.
No such thing.
Only if they let each of his ethnicities have a vote.
What heritage is Lieing Scum ?
Yep and when he gets in front of CAIR he will claim direct lineage to Mohammad. This man is dangerous.
If anyone cares to do a Clintonian disection of this excerpt, it seems as if he could be saying that frankly religion is not a concern of candidates anymore. Not "what religion" they subscribe to but even if they are religious at all.
Democrat
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