Posted on 11/01/2006 4:52:11 PM PST by Pokey78
The first time I met Senator John Forbes Kerry was shortly before 9/11, when I was sitting in the office of a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee talking to a young staffer about European defence.
Suddenly, the Massachusetts senator strode into the room and plonked himself, hands on hips, between us. Then he just stood there, clearly expecting us to jump up because he had graced us with his hallowed presence.
He turned his back on me and I studied his perfectly arranged thatch – this was a man who has spent some time on coiffing his hair that morning (or maybe he had someone to do it for him) – as he barked questions and demands at the astonished aide.
Many people in Washington have similar DYKWIA – Don't You Know Who I Am? – anecdotes about Kerry that reveal his narcissistic conceit that it is all about him, all the time. This trait is the key to the kerfuffle over Kerry's comment at a California rally that: "Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
The words were clumsy and, yes, an insult to American troops. I have no doubt that he didn't mean to say that US soldiers in Iraq are dumb cannon fodder but that's what came out. He was trying to say that Bush was stupid (though the Texan's grade-point average at Yale was higher than that of Kerry) – a jibe that plays well in Europe but not in much of Middle America.
It would have been a minor blip in the final week of the campaign if he had apologised immediately and unequivocally and got the hell off the airwaves.
Instead, he wriggled and huffed and hit back and compounded his mistake with intemperate bad-mouthings of Republicans as "assorted Right-wing nut jobs" and "hacks who've never worn the uniform of our country are willing to lie about those who did". Having been, in his view, misrepresented by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in the 2004 presidential race and berated by his own party for not hitting back hard enough, Kerry went for the jugular. But his desire not to be "Swift Boated" (the attacks were so successful they coined a verb) and lack of political judgment meant that this time he overreacted.
To the delight of Republican strategists, as dawn broke across America yesterday, there he was on the Don Imus radio talk show quibbling about his "botched joke". This time, it wasn't so much what the meaning of "is is", as Bill Clinton famously ventured during the Lewinsky scandal as what the meaning of "us is". According to Kerry, "I left out the word 'us'. 'They got us stuck.' Instead of that, I said, 'They got stuck', and they're taking advantage of it." They are indeed taking advantage of it. With a week to go before the mid-term elections and Democrats poised to win the 15 seats they need to win back the House of Representatives – and perhaps even the six to bag the Senate – Republicans were praying for an "October surprise".
Kerry left it late, until Halloween, but the Grand Old Party was not about to look this gift horse in the mouth. On the 2000 campaign trail, Bush told me that politics was "like judo – you use your opponent's energy to your advantage". A gaffe by a politician only has real legs when it reinforces an existing perception. And so it has been in this case. Kerry has long had a reputation as a haughty Boston Brahmin, a privileged, elitist, condescending careerist who cannot relate to ordinary Americans.
In contrast, on the stump this week Bush has shown that whatever his faults – and there are many – that he still has that indispensable political gift of speaking simply to ordinary people rather than talking down to them.
Kerry served with some distinction in Vietnam. It is a question mark over the character of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that they chose to circumvent the draft rather than serve their country in combat. But Kerry's persistent attempts to capitalise on this have become unseemly.
US servicemen are revered in a way that the British squaddie can only dream of. Soldiers travel in uniform and are routinely ushered to the front of queues and given upgrades to business class with no questions asked. On an American Airlines jet from Dallas last Sunday, a flight attendant made a spontaneous announcement about "the sacrifice our young men and women are making to keep us safe". The whole plane applauded her.
This is not just rah-rah jingoism. The aching reality of war is also apparent. At Houston airport on Wednesday night I pulled up behind a white hearse with two soldiers in dress uniform inside it. "That's one of our boys coming home from Iraq," said a sombre Avis representative, waving me past.
As Kerry has found out, you try to exploit this sentiment for political gain at your peril. The military is the most integrated sector of American society. Poor youths with a bit of get up and go about them use it to get funding for college to pull themselves up a rung on the economic ladder.
I have sat in Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles with black sergeants from Alabama, marines from Mexico and good ol' boy snipers from Kentucky in places like Fallujah and Ramadi as they described their hopes with an affecting optimism that belied the mortal danger they were in. In many ways, they embody what is great about America.
Yesterday, Democratic candidates from Montana to Iowa and Minnesota to Tennessee were cancelling campaign rallies with Kerry and demanding he apologise. Preposterously, the senator was claiming that he was returning to Washington "so that I'm not a distraction".
Those ruing his intervention the most were the candidates he'd appeared with, such as Patrick Murphy, an impressive 33-year-old Iraq veteran poised to pick up a House seat outside Philadelphia. Kerry went there recently to attack Republicans who "think they've served because they played with GI dolls".
In tight seats like that, Kerry could tip victory into defeat. Even if his party overcomes this late setback and prevails on Tuesday, Kerry's hopes for the White House in 2008 are disappearing faster than Democrats can run away from him.
I am having so much funny watching that a-hole's political career die by his own hand. How ironic that he first gained prominence by bashing the soldiers, and that's just how he's going down. Jackass!
Democrats who lose the presidency (e.g., Carter, Gore, this doofus Kerry) seem to lose whatever feeble grasp on reality they had.
That still makes no sense. I thought he said "you" will get stuck in Iraq?
Great pun.
"Kerry's hopes for the White House in 2008 are disappearing faster than Democrats can run away from him."
Gone.
Well said.
This guy "gets it", doesn't he? Must read more of him. Thanks for posting.
Kerry, I beleive, majored in a fluff subject like political science while Bush earned an MBA, a moderately difficult degree.
After watching his presser yesterday I was laughing out loud at his words "crystal clear" and he will remember them for many years but not be laughing about them. Those two words cost him any hope of another nomination.
I often hear regarding whomever: "He'll get his. Maybe not on earth, but he'll get his." That can make you feel a little better but it's not very satisfying. For once, I've wanted to witness someone getting there's. John Kerry is being shown to be the pompous ass we always knew he was. Just recently Kerry was only too happy and willing to throw Lieberman under the bus. Lieberman has to be chuckling tonight. I know I'm chuckling. This couldn't happen to a better pompous ass--well, maybe only if it happened to Hillary.
I don't think Cheney was eligible for the draft, and John Kerry volunteered for the Navy only because he drew a low draft number and knew he would be drafted. He chose to volunteer for the safer Navy, and concocted Purple Hearts to get out as soon as he could.
But even this sympathetic article to Kerry still gets the gist of Kerry's blunder. He revealed again exactly who he is.
Does this rank up there with ". . . nattering nabobs of negativism"?
yitbos
" How ironic that he first gained prominence by bashing the soldiers, and that's just how he's going down."
There is a nice symmetry to it, isn't there?
I have enjoyed the many posts I have seen on this subject! I'm sure everybody saw the soldiers' hilarious response on Drudge. I have to stop and shudder, though, that this man could have been our president. He's a million times the idiot that President Bush is painted as.
Let's get a show of hands. How many of us nutcases wore the uniform.
Let me start. I did.
P.S. Happy belated B-day.
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