Posted on 05/02/2004 11:41:21 AM PDT by wagglebee
WASHINGTON – Most of us working stiffs can only dream of owning an oceanside vacation home, but Sen. John F. Kerry’s family has an entire vacation island to call its own.
Naushon Island stretches for seven pristine miles, a glittering jewel of land off the coast of Massachusetts where Kerry, under the arcane rules of a Forbes family trust, can spend time each year hunting, sailing, horseback windsurfing, vegging out or whatever else moves him.
The bucolic island is essentially a private Forbes-owned family preserve with a few dozen cottages and a mounted caretaker on patrol to toss off interlopers – and you can expect to hear more about it as the sharp elbows start flying in Kerry’s presidential race.
The retreat, the largest privately owned island in Massachusetts, seems lifted from a page of “The Great Gatsby” – making it prime fodder for Republicans seeking to morph Kerry’s image into a “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” episode.
Kerry uses the island as a showcase when big-foot political journalists like Joe Klein cozy up to write long profiles. The senator hosted the Clintons on Naushon twice back in 1993 and ’94.
Motor vehicles are banned on the island. Horses and antique carriages are the favored modes of transport.
“They’ve got a guy out there on horseback who rides around and guards the island for them,” one gleeful Republican operative, who had obviously done his homework on the island, told me over lunch a few weeks ago.
The Bush campaign and its allies have already targeted Kerry’s lavish lifestyle in a big way. It’s obviously a strategy dripping with hypocrisy since President Bush [related, bio], like Kerry, is a son of privilege with an Ivy League pedigree.
But Kerry seems to have a curious knack for taking the GOP bait. Presidential politics is all about image – particularly for someone new to the national stage like Kerry.
When the senator opted to vacation at his wife’s Sun Valley ski retreat rather than on a beach in Florida, a key swing state in the 2000 White House contest, Bush operatives were all but dancing in the streets. Kerry went snowboarding wearing cool shades – not exactly courting the NASCAR-Bubba vote he so desperately needs.
The senator, who is fluent in several languages, cursed out a Secret Service agent who veered into his path and made him wipe out.
Republicans smell blood. Make that blue blood.
They’ve pumped up stories about Teresa Heinz Kerry’s failure to release her tax returns, Kerry’s gas-guzzling SUVs and Kerry’s $175,000 profit from the sale of a seascape painting by a 17th century Dutch Master. Republicans have mocked Kerry for looking French. They circulated emails to reporters with his wife’s quote comparing the senator to a “good wine.”
So rest assured that as the volume gets cranked up in this already-rancorous presidential race, the public can count on hearing a lot more about Kerry and the precious joys of life out on Naushon Island.
My Republican lunchmate even joked that he’d like to run boat tours to Naushon for the hundreds of national political reporters converging on Boston for the Democratic National Convention in July.
He was kidding, I think.
Speaking as an ACTUAL blue blood, I find Kerry's rich snobbery to be laughable.
What this author apparently doesn't grasp is that it is how you ACT that makes you appear entitled. Bush likes doing things most Americans like ... Kerry appears caught up in privilege.
He has one thing in common with me: Our Federal taxes for 2003.
Kerry's first Federal income tax return for 2003 had him paying a little less tax than I did and his second 2003 ammended return had him paying a little more tax than I did for 2003.
How come he has so much more than I do for paying the same amount of Federal taxes?
Whatever happened to "I Want to Make the Rich Pay their Fair Share of Taxes"?
Blindness is one of the necessary characteristics of the new American left.
Book Review - Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children
Bill
Meaning I'm a descendent of medieval royalty. Norwegian, to be specific.
You would never know it from talking to me. I'm just an ordinary American. :)
What a great country. :)
Why don't these folks get that the issue is not wealth, the issue is integrity, or being what you appear, or try to appear, to be. Our President is a wealthy man who is comfortable in his own skin and is who he appears to be. Since he is comfortable with his wealth, he believes in policies which will make wealth possible for others.
John f'n, on the other hand, is a phony and a gigolo whose policies don't line up with his personal life. The left requires large pools of "disadvantaged" voters depending on them for salvation, so their policies are necessarily designed to keep down as many as possible. The hypocrisy is in those who (ten times richer than the republicans they decry) live lavishly while promoting poverty as a virtue.
Landslide in '04 !!
Gee, how long to you think it takes to train the horses to do that?
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