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.
Yo Mama is the one who botched things. A good douche might have saved the day for the rest of us.
Hello brother.
Our ranks swell.
Yeah - but here's the incredible part, given Kerry's imprecision with words and his numerous complex verbal gaffes, he was the debate team captain at Yale and was Senior Class Orator at graduation. What explains this but deep brain trauma or senility?
In the blunder on Sunday night - the part that is not believable is the idea that he was speaking about Bush. The majority of the offending remark was clearly addressing those who were studying, enhancing their knowledge, applying themselves at school in the present tense. Bush is not particularly likely to become a student after he leaves office - the preface about working hard, doing well, etc. has no meaning when applied to Bush. He had to be referring to the student body at large, emphasizing if you do not do well in school, and are third rate, you will have to join the military and serve in Iraq.
"Does this rank up there with ". . . nattering nabobs of negativism"?
Good old Spiro Agnew. He upheld Maryland's traditions for graft, but it was hard to argue with his impression of the media.
Me also, in fact I was at the same base as George was, but I left a couple of years before he got there.
Ellington AFB Houston.
You haven't been zinged till you've been zinged by a Brit.
Burrrn!
For his sake, it should be fire-retardant.
Not more than two days ago, I saw Obama in this pose. Could we call it the nose pose?
Happy Birthday!
Wow! So Kerry's Freudian slip was seen all the way across the ocean in Britain, eh? Man, if the telegraph can peg it this well, there's NO WAY Kerry's in the cards for '08! And I'm sure a few House and Senate seats were made that much more secure for Tuesday!
Now, get out there and VOTE!!!
Excellent point!
Rally good article Pokey, excellent post. This fellow has really laid out the whole situation for his Brit readers.
Let me put it this way. Does it take more brains to fly a Combat Aircraft, or to steer a boat away while your Buddies are being fired on.
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.
Reminded me that about a year ago, one of my local morning radio jocks, Jim Parisi, spoke of covering as a young reporter Hillary! on the Klintons' first Presidential campaign. He described her as "the meanest woman I've ever met, always yelling and swearing", and credited her with changing him from a Dem to a Republican.
So, who are all these minions who support such abusive and arrogant people on their campaigns? Codependents who think they deserve abuse? Taking one for the cause?
Contrast it with stories you hear about Reagan and the Bushes, on how grateful they were and respectful of the hired help they are, or were.
It seems the Kerrys and Clintons of the world are not quite as "for" the little guy as they would like their voters to believe.
Texas got a lot of us started in the military. Mine was Lackland AFB. We were just boys then. It was 1956, and we were mostly poor white, black, Mexican and Puerto Rican. We learned a lot about friendship and understanding in those days.
Wonder how much it cost John Kerry to buy his Senate seat.
It might be funny to mindless liberal college students, I suppose. Based on Kerry's past few decades of denigrating the military, it makes more sense as a Freudian slip.
Kerry was in the Navy before the draft lottery started (the first drawing was near the end of 1969), so whatever his number was wouldn't have mattered.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.