Posted on 01/02/2005 7:48:43 AM PST by flixxx
KERRY SPEAKS: WHAT WENT WRONG Sun Jan 02 2005 10:35:31 ET
New York-In an exclusive interview about his presidential campaign and his life now, Sen. John Kerry tells Newsweek, "I'm not going to lick my wounds or hide under a rock or disappear. I'm going to learn. I've had disappointments and I've learned to cope. I've lost friends, a marriage: I've lost things in life."
Kerry has not given any formal interviews since his defeat. But on Nov. 11, he summoned a Newsweek reporter to his house on Boston's fashionable Louisberg Square. He wanted to complain about Newsweek's election issue, which he says was unduly harsh and gossipy about him, his staff and his wife. (The 45,000-word article, the product of a yearlong reporting project, is being published next week as a book, "Election 2004," by PublicAffairs.) Details from that interview appear in the January 10 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, January 3). Kerry talks with Newsweek about the campaign, why he lost and what's ahead for him. He did not wish to be directly quoted touting himself, however; he did not wish to appear defensive or boastful.
When asked why he lost the election, Kerry points to history and, in a somewhat inferential, roundabout way, to his own failure to connect to voters-a failure that kept him from erasing the Bush campaign's portrait of him as a flip-flopper, reports Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas. Kerry said that he was proud of his campaign, that he had nearly defeated a popular incumbent who had enjoyed a three-year head start on organizing and fund-raising. Sitting presidents are never defeated in wartime, he insisted (true, though two, LBJ and Harry Truman, chose not to run for another term during Vietnam and Korea).
While he quarreled with descriptions of his speaking style as "soporific," Kerry tacitly acknowledged that he failed to connect with enough voters on a personal level. Jose Ferreira, Kerry's nephew, told his uncle, "Some people are saying that your candidacy was driven by ABB [Anything But Bush]." Kerry replied: "Do you think so?" Ferreira said that once people got to know Kerry, they were intensely loyal. "Those are the people I let down," Kerry said, falling silent. In conversation with
Newsweek, Kerry seemed particularly interested in trying to find a way to speak to ordinary voters that didn't sound too grandiose or "political." Though Kerry did not directly criticize his friend Bob Shrum, it's clear he did not feel well served by his message makers and speechwriters.
The deeper problem may be Kerry's personality, which may be too distant or reserved to win mass affection. As Thomas left Kerry's house in November, Kerry called out and followed him down the street. Kerry wanted to show a letter from a schoolgirl that had been left on his stoop. The letter read, in part, "John Kerry, you're the greatest!" Kerry looked into the reporter's eye. "The pundits have never liked me," he said. "Is it the way I look? The way I sound?" He seemed vulnerable for a moment, then caught himself, smiled and walked home to his empty house.
In the heady days before the election, Kerry's top aides sat around picking a cabinet. Nowadays the foreign-policy team still meets on the assumption that it could be reconstituted for '08. But the reality is, "it's mostly sitting around some lawyer's office and asking each other if we've heard about jobs," says a member of the team. As for Kerry, says this adviser, "he thinks he's the frontrunner for '08 without recognizing that he needs to do some soul-searching. If he wants to come back, he'll have to come back as a different candidate, not the stiff who plays it safe and takes four sides of every issue."
Developing...
W and Laura are in love. sKerry and teresa have an agreement.
No, you East Coast, gigolo Brahman, the "pundits" and an American Majority never liked you because of your despicable Communist, anti-American values and your robust support of the welfare state.
By the way, the vast majority of MSM punditry loved you and your socialist agenda. It was only after your campaign that some, like at Newsweek, turned like jackals to feast on your bleeding carcass.
LOL!
LVM
Within six months they will be stacked 50 high in the cutout bin at the dollar store. Right next to Earth in The Balance, It takes a Village and the Y2K survival guides.
-"I'm not going to lick my wounds or hide under a rock..."-
Hide? You LIVE under that rock, pal.
It's disgusting. Obscene.
Someone posted these pictures during the campaign. They sit in California to Boston, New York, down south and the one is in England, if I am correct.
Just obscene.
Both of them are obscene.
There was a picture of her on the campaign trail I wished I had saved.
She was worming herself through the crowd, in a white shirt and tan pants and she had three bottles of beer in one hand. I sure wished I had saved that.
Lots of class, let me tell you! (not)
He didn't lose the marriage, he dumped it.
"your wife is a toad"
Funniest line of the year.
LOL!They would definately have besmirched the class and dignity the Clintons brought to the Office.
This is Kerry fighting irrelevancy tooth and nail. Too late. He's toast.
It will be amusing to see how he tries to outrun his history again in '08. He's like a cockroach, and if the Swifties don't stomp him again, Hill will.
It was reported many of the Kerry supporters had visited a therapist for severe mental problems prior to the election.
Mental problems prior to the election?
For this they needed to pay a therapist?
As was frequently posted on FR.......at no charge..... ..people supporting Kerry had to be nuts.
Come to think of it, b/c of their mental state, maybe Kerry supporters should think about their financial fitures and should invest in some really good money-makers.....maybe selling freezers to Eskimos, or buying shares in the Brooklyn Bridge, or maybe buying property on planet Jupiter.....good solid stuff like that.
"Imus returns from a two vacation tomorrow morning. Guess who his two guests are?
Alter and Fineman. Don't they both work for Newsweek?"
Those two dorks are in constant rotation on the Imus show.
You'll hear more criticism of the dems from John Kerry than these two sycophants. Topic one will be: "Bush waited too long to publicly speak of the Tsunami victims and how dare he only commit 35,000,000 bucks. It will be another blame Bush-fest.
Hmmm, TerAYsa doesn't believe in divorce, and Kerry doesn't believe in poverty, so he'll be taking good care of his meal ticket.
Well, I won't forget, will you? So it's up to us to live until then at the very least.......LOL.
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