Kerry has always been an opportunist and a joke. He spent much of the 1970s moving his family around Eastern Massachusetts looking for a congressional seat that he could win.
It's possible to respect someone who stays where he or she is and tries to achieve something, or someone who takes on a difficult battle and stays with it, win or lose, but Kerry's opportunist hustling and relentless self-promotion have always been hard to take.
It's not surprising that someone like Kerry, a child of divorce, a poor relation in a rich family, a hanger-on at elite prep-schools and universities, developed delusions of grandeur. What is surprising is that he found other people to believe them.
BD was actually Brian Dowling, leader of the undefeated 1968 Yale football team, together with Calvin Hill. They were nationally ranked, along with Harvard, to whom they "lost" the infamous 29-29 tie game at the end of their senior seaon. That would make Trudeau class of 69 or somewhere thereabout. There are not many Billybobs who are sons of Eli.