Posted on 07/21/2004 7:16:58 PM PDT by Dan from Michigan
Kerry Persona: Hard-driving, competitive
By NANCY BENAC
The Associated Press
7/21/2004, 3:17 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vietnam, anti-war protests, the rigor of politics were still years in the future. In 1963, John Kerry was just a college kid looking for adventure on a summer abroad. Traveling on better wheels than most, there were Kerry and a buddy exploring Europe in a low-slung Austin Healy, racing against an Alfa Romeo on the twisting road to Nice, chasing a Porsche across Italy.
The gendarmes caught him in Monte Carlo: Kerry, so intent on retracing the course of the Grand Prix that he headed the wrong direction on a one-way street.
"John had to do those types of things," says his travel companion and longtime friend Harvey Bundy.
Even the youthful hijinks of John Kerry had an extra element of intensity about them.
Now, at age 60, Kerry is pursuing the American presidency with the same doggedness and focus that are lifelong traits for a son of privilege who nonetheless had to fight for much of what he got. The impatient young man whose first two tries for Congress fizzled, who waited another 15 years for the right entree to Congress and two more decades for a good shot at the White House, is right where his stars seemed fixed from the beginning.
"He's always been the kind of guy who knew his place in history," says Daniel Barbiero, a friend since prep school and college roommate.
Kerry winces at any such hint of destiny.
Life, he says in an interview in his stocking feet aboard his campaign plane, offers too much "twist of fate" to think in such grandiose terms.
"When you lose Robert Kennedy, you lose John Kennedy, you lose Martin Luther King, you lose your very closest friends, you lose both your parents ... you just know every day is every day. You take 'em as they come. And it's up to others later on to make judgments about how it all fits."
Even as a child, Kerry was always "the most politically attuned," says his younger brother Cameron. "He was always the leader of the pack in the neighborhood among the cousins, the quarterback at touch football."
His drive and competitiveness, says Cameron, are "just hard-wired."
They are still there in adulthood, as Kerry windsurfs Naushon Island in a full-on Northeastern gale or silences a campaign heckler by declaring: "I never run away from anything, especially George Bush."
William Stanberry, Kerry's debate-team partner at Yale, says Kerry's interest in the presidency was clear even in college.
"I couldn't help admire the gall, in a way, of someone who had such a clearly stated long-term objective," he recalls. "To some extent it was impressive, and to some extent almost ridiculous."
Blakely Fetridge Bundy, the girlfriend, and later wife of Harvey Bundy, one of Kerry's college roommates, remembers his pals presenting Kerry with a telegram and a red, white and blue cake that said "Yippee!" in May 1964 when he was elected president of the Yale Political Union, a college debating society.
She wrote in her journal at the time: "We decided that for all further successes — especially when he's elected president of the U.S. — that we'll send him a Yippee! cake."
Always a leader, always an achiever, Kerry, a four-term Massachusetts senator, nonetheless sketches a less scripted life plan for himself, one driven by a desire to serve more than an ambition to climb.
Early on, he says, thoughts of the presidency were only "a hazy possibility."
"I don't think you think of it in real terms," he says.
He decided to run, he says, because the Democrats "had no voice." The Republicans, he felt, were reducing national security issues to political slogans.
He wanted to offer people a "360-degree view of where America is today," as he wrote in his campaign book.
That panoramic perspective is trademark Kerry.
Where supporters see a refreshing openness and an ability to think through complex issues almost three-dimensionally, his critics find waffling and ambivalence.
"He has this good and bad characteristic to describe at length the things that he sees," said former Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., who served with Kerry in Congress. "Sometimes he can give you the impression that he's on two sides of an issue. He's not."
Ever was it so.
As a 27-year-old war protester who captured the attention of a nation, Kerry told a "60 Minutes" interviewer in 1971 that when he went to Vietnam, "I was gung-ho in a certain sense but had doubts in another sense."
He came home from war, he said, with "a tremendous amount of hope" but also "a certain depression."
Watching Kerry debate an issue can be "a little bit like at a tennis match, watching the ball going back and forth," says David Leiter, his former chief of staff. "He is curious. ... He's engaged and thoughtful. He always struggles to get it right."
The nuance that typifies Kerry's public statements is there as well in his life portrait, which is painted with blended colors and dappled brushstrokes rather than sharp lines.
He is the promising young man of Brahmin bloodlines who managed to attend an elite prep school only through the largesse of a generous aunt. He is the decorated war hero who evolved into a shaggy-haired protester. He is the politician who speaks of core principles yet is known for his cautious pragmatism. He is the candidate who can't seem to warm up to people yet whose friends speak of his uncanny ability to connect. He is the fabulously wealthy success story who will eat anything and wolfs down peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches from an emergency stash kept by his personal assistant.
The first thing that people must come to grips with when they consider John Kerry, even before they begin to parse his words, is his appearance. He is so long, so thin, he looks deceptively fragile. One's head must scan up, then down to take in his full 6-foot-4 frame. His wingspan, when he gestures with his arms, seems to stretch to the walls.
His face, too, is long and thin, suggesting a deceptively sad demeanor. Comic Billy Crystal jokes that someone needs to let Kerry's face know that he's having a good time.
His lanky body only serves to accentuate the thick mass of silvery hair atop his head. "In the event of an emergency, my hair can be used as a flotation device," Kerry once joked on his campaign plane.
That funny, self-deprecating side of Kerry, and his warm, generous side — which friends say are his true persona — doesn't always come across in public. Voters too often see him as remote, standoffish.
"Have you had a beer with me yet?" Kerry protested when a local reporter once asked about his reputation for aloofness.
What would someone learn about him if they did go out for that beer, he is asked later.
"You just have to do it," he insists. "You just have to have fun, let your hair down, relax, laugh, kick some jokes around, have a good time — talk about something other than this."
Kerry's daughter Alex, 30, says her father sometimes can get so focused that it "precludes having a lackadaisical moment." But she says he can be witty and silly, even goofy, in more relaxed settings.
His younger daughter, Vanessa, 27, offers four words to sum up her father: dedicated, curious, intelligent, playful.
"I like playful above all," Kerry says, when offered his daughter's list.
Then, somewhat reluctantly, he comes up with his own quartet: romantic, passionate, idealistic, engaged.
Friends speak of small, frequent acts of generosity, and loyalty built up over decades.
Tracy Droz Tragos, whose father served with Kerry in Vietnam and was killed there, remembers how Kerry took time to make rubbings of her father's name from the Vietnam War Memorial to send to her grandparents in small-town Missouri.
"That relationship meant the world to my grandmother," says Tragos.
Kerry, whose service as captain of a swift boat in Vietnam brought him three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star for heroism, still has a piece of shrapnel embedded in his leg. There is a scar, he says, but the wound doesn't bother him.
"It's just there," he says, "part of my internal machinery."
In a much broader sense, too, Vietnam is always just there within John Kerry, affecting the way he approaches public policy and life itself.
Vanessa Kerry remembers poking around her father's desk as a child and coming across a B-40 rocket that had been aimed at Kerry's boat when he jumped ashore to chase down and kill a young Vietcong fighter who was pointing a grenade launcher at the Americans.
"Those are the stories I grew up with," she says. "... I think it has made my dad value every day. He's the first to say every day is extra."
Kerry went to war with doubts about Vietnam and came home with certainty that the war was wrong; he received early release from the Navy to run for Congress as an anti-war candidate. His candidacy fizzled because a more prominent anti-war figure was already in the race. But as a decorated veteran, Kerry quickly emerged as an eloquent spokesman against the war.
Bob Muller, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and a friend who has known Kerry since their war-protester days, says Kerry was the one who "put a good face on us," who tamped down the movement's extremes and offered a more moderate face of dissent.
"John has always been able to do an override on the emotions," Muller said, "to be pragmatic and to be effective."
Out of my price range. It was probably new too. I've never been able to afford a new car. The newist one I've had was 4 years old when I bought it.
had to fight for much of what he got
WHAT?
The impatient young man whose first two tries for Congress fizzled
You first ran before you were 30, for Pete's sake. Big Deal. Most are in their 40's when they win. You wern't an old Lt Governor either, so give me a break, "tough guy".
the quarterback at touch football
I coached defensive back and played safety and wide out. BRING it.
"I never run away from anything, especially George Bush."
No, you just will start World War III so you say that you aren't a girly man.
Kerry's interest in the presidency was clear even in college.
Another reason not to vote for him. Anyone that wants that job for 35 years I have to worry about.
the Democrats "had no voice."
Yeah they do. Terry Mac, Billy and Cynthia McKinney, Dennis Kucinich, Bob Alexander, Jim McDermott, and Henry Waxman.
He is the decorated war hero
BS.
"Have you had a beer with me yet?" Kerry protested
No. I already heard "I'm a war hero" 6 million times.
This is the point where you get the barf bag.
To get this kinda gooey love, one usually has to leave money on the TV afterwards. Ugh.
Does he do ANY manly sports?
I'm NOT knocking RACING.....I love NASCAR.......but this guy is a perfumed prince and does "girlie men" sports, IMO!
Obviously doesn't play it much since he's got chickenlegs.
October 3, 1999
LIBERTIES / By MAUREEN DOWD
Cultural Drifter
WASHINGTON -- Here are some things you might not know about George W. Bush:
He hasn't gone out to see a movie in the last five years.
He likes Van Morrison.
The last actress who made his heart race was Julie Christie in "Doctor Zhivago."
He doesn't identify with any literary heroes, but is drawn to Paul Newman's defiance in "Cool Hand Luke" and Jack Nicholson's irreverence.
He loved "Cats."
In an interview about culture, W. gamely concedes there are yawning gaps. Baseball, he says, is his favorite "cultural experience." (Like his father, he views cultural questions as some kind of psychoanalysis.)
We're in a van on the way to Reagan airport after his speech to the Christian Coalition.
He has one word for opera: "No." He likes "nice, quiet jazz on the radio." He went to one ballet "and was amazed by the athleticism."
Although some of the Bushes are musical -- his uncle Jonathan was in a Bronx revival of "Oklahoma" in 1958 and his uncle Bucky plays the guitar and sings -- W. is not.
"I loved 'Cats,' " he says brightly.
He said he doesn't watch TV series, just news and sports. "Culturally adrift," he says, making a funny face. "Occasionally, I'll cruise into an A&E biography. The last one I saw was about me."
He avoids cable chat. "Now that I'm the subject, there's no telling what you'll hear about yourself. So I've just chosen not to listen."
He says he's usually asleep by Leno and Letterman, but adds: "They're actually very funny. Even at my own expense."
I asked if he and his wife, Laura, ever fight over the clicker. He says he's mostly doing work stuff or falling asleep. "We're both usually reading instead of battling over flickers."
He did not try to impress his librarian wife when they were dating by reading more. "Our first date was to go play putt-putt golf," he says.
As to literary preferences, he said: "I've always liked John La Care, Le Carrier, or however you pronounce his name. I'm mainly a history person." He's just finished "Isaac's Storm," a history of the Galveston hurricane of 1900, and reads Robert Parker's detective-for-hire stories.
Asked if he likes movies, he says: "Not too much. I like 'em O.K. I haven't been to a movie theater since I've been Governor. We occasionally rent movies. We've got a Blockbuster card the girls use more than Laura and me. The last movie I saw I really liked was 'Saving Private Ryan.'
"But prior to getting elected I did go to movies. Laura and I were talking the other day about the last time we'd gone to a movie. I think it was the day Ann Richards called me a jerk. It was 'Forrest Gump.' "
Has he ever censored his twin 17-year-old daughters' movie picks? "I can't think of anything. Uh oh, a giant hole in the net of censorship."
In an interview with GQ, the 53-year-old Governor said that when he was at Yale in the 60's, he did not share the musical tastes of the counterculture. He said he liked the Beatles before their "weird, psychedelic period."
I asked who was his favorite Beatle. "The first drummer," he joked. "As you know I was a fraternity man at Yale. I had parties. We had a lot of groups come in. I just was not, I mean, I like music. But I'm not a great aficionado of music."
Asked if he would set a cultural tone in the White House closer to Jackie's Pablo Casals or Bill's Kenny G, W. replied: "I imagine it would be eclectic. You know we've had Lyle Lovett come to the mansion to play. I probably won't be spending a lot of time making the list up. I'll delegate."
W. sometimes waggles his hips when he's on a stage. Does he like to dance?
"No," he said. "It's not a religious thing. I just don't dance. At the last inauguration, I did the box step for about 25 seconds and declared my dancing over for the year.
. . . I don't go to dances and I don't socialize very much."
Asked about Warren Beatty's Presidential flirting, W. asks something that probably hasn't even dawned on the Hollywood star: "The question is, Can he survive the Iowa caucuses?"
The Governor's perfect day would include running, fishing and watching sports on TV, followed by dinner with friends with Van Morrison playing in the background. Then, bed by 10.
Is this a great country or what?
http://www.stopjohn.com/movies/hanoi-john.htm
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