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.
or take my path, marry wealthy heiress's!
"On 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 us don't, us get stuck in Iraq."
He also has the dubious honor of incurring the wrath of the non-college-educated American voter, blue-collar and white-collar alike.
He has certainly verified to the unwashed, that 'a college degree' is no measure of intelligence. Maybe he just bought his.
John Vichy Kerry: Our troops are stuck in Iraq and I am stuck on stupid!
My basic was in Lackland also. Damn, that first morning in boot camp was a real shock for a country boy. Great experience for most of us.
Personally, I have always thought he has a hairpiece on to enhance his hair. I used to work in an oncology practice and I have seen a lot of them.
"Regardless, the F-102 was still far more dangerous to fly than today's combat aircraft. Compared to the F-102's lifetime accident rate of 13.69, today's planes generally average around 4 mishaps per 100,000 hours. For example, compare the F-16 at 4.14, the F-15 at 2.47, the F-117 at 4.07, the S-3 at 2.6, and the F-18 at 4.9. Even the Marine Corps' AV-8B, regarded as the most dangerous aircraft in US service today, has a lifetime accident rate of only 11.44 mishaps per 100,000 flight hours. The F-102 claimed the lives of many pilots, including a number stationed at Ellington during Bush's tenure. Of the 875 F-102A production models that entered service, 259 were lost in accidents that killed 70 Air Force and ANG pilots. "
Kerry thought the reserves would keep him out of Viet Nam and he got a short straw. Bush tried to volunteer twice to go to Viet Nam as a fighter pilot, and was turned down because he had not yet accumulated enough hours.
BTW, did anyone catch that Lurch blamed his piss-poor college freshman grades on learning to fly?
I got medic training at Ft. Sam Houston.
I think that was in PA (where he got in the faces of the two soldiers who looked like they wanted to deck him). In Iowa he was waving ears of corn around.
Somehow, I doubt that. I suspect that particular "regular guy" jacket went to Goodwill a loooooooooong time ago...
I remember being shocked to read of the high number of deaths among those pilots. It was dangerous, and the planes were somewhat outdated, weren't they?
Thank you for serving, billhilly, and God bless you. I appreciate your service.
'Twas many moons ago. I was drafted July '69. While in basic training the lottery started. I had a high number, but alas, I was already E-1. The all volunteer army started in '71. So Uncle Sam let me out 1 month early. When I signed up for Veterans burial, the volunteer at Veterans Memorial Cemetery, Boulder City, NV wondered how I got an honorable discharge with less than 2 years active duty. Course I had the obligatory 6 yr hitch (including reserves). Back in those days I never heard from Uncle Sam again until I got my DD-214. Was I AWOL for 4 yrs? Nope. When I was mustered I asked where I report for reserve duty. I was told to do nothing until I heard from Uncle Sam.
Guess Uncle Sam did the same with about 2 million other military guys, including GW.
yitbos
Wonderful! Thank YOU, too! God bless you.
WOW...Fabulous link!! It's got all the information needed to shoot down the leftist msm lies. I wonder if they've ever seen it in their tireless quest for facts? /sarcasm.
God bless you for your service. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. God bless you!
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