SwiftVets.com

[SBD]

No wonder Senator Warren and John Kerry are so chummy, and here I thought it was just about the Purple Heart. They both married up twice to get ahead in politics and ended up in the senate. Isn't that special!! FYI, I had no idea Warner was Mr. Liz Taylor.

The Washington Post
November 2, 1978, Thursday, Final Edition
SECTION: Metro; C1

HEADLINE: Many Images of Warner;
Warner: Enthusiastic and Ambitious;
His Qualities Both Blessing, Curse
BYLINE: By Ken Ringle, Washington Post Staff Writer

When John William Warner got out of law school in the early 1950s, he wanted to work for Judge E. Barrett Prettyman of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals but did not have the necessary credentials: his law school grades had not been outstanding. So the ambitious young attorney employed what he calls "a very good memory" and memorized every opinion the judge had written. Then he challenged Prettyman to quiz him on what he knew. Warner got the job.

Today as he stumps for Virginia's junior seat in the U.S. Senate against Democrat Andrew P. Miller JohnWarner faces a somewhat similar test.
Lacking the sort of state experience that has traditionally paved the political way in Virginia, he is challenging the voters to quiz him on how well he knows their mind. Across the state at the ox roasts and barbecues that fuel that autumn rituals of election, the graying former Navy secretary tells voters: "It's important for you to know all about me and what I stand for . . . Ask me anything . . . anything at all."

On the surface Warner would seem to have this job won as well. Said one GOP official in introducing him to a recent campaign luncheon crowd: "If you set out to design a perfect candidate you couldn't do better than John Warner." Polished, handsome and rich, he stands in his custom--tailored suits and speaks confidently of helping guide the nation through "perilous days" and of negotiating with the Soviets "eyeball to eyeball."

From the relatively humble beginnings as a Depression--era doctor's son he has worked his way through careers as a sailor, student. Marine combat officer, lawyer, businessman, political advance man and subcabinet appointee and -- to top it all -- he chaired the agency that spearheaded America's 200th birthday party. The graphics of his campaign say it all: one arm of the "W" in his name ends in an eagle's beak from which streams the red and white of the stars and stripes.
"Warner," the banner says "Listening to Virginia." Warner -- and the aides who brief him -- have been listening well. He is, as Gov. John N. Dalton puts it, "talking the sort of language Virginians want to hear."
He talks of cutting taxes and trimming spending, ending inflation and balancing the budget, beefing up defense and getting tough with the Russians -- the blunt, no--nonsense themes that endure year--in, year--out in the Virginia conscience. Warner is, moreover, the heir of an aggressive Virginia Republican Party, which in 10 years has vaulted from nowhere to become the dominant political force in the state. It is a party heady from its victories and thirsty for more.

Warner and his campaign, however, are laced with contradictions and ironies. He was not the first choice of his party (the original nominee, former GOP state chairman Richard Obenshain, died in an Aug. 2 plane crash) and a number of Republicans working hardest for him are quick to say, off the record, that they do not like him. His strongest claim to national stature -- his years as secretary of the Navy -- have become one of the major sources of controversy in the campaign. Most of all, there is his image, which serves simultaneously to enhance him and to undermine him in many voters' minds.

At age 51 Warner, as one Richmond Republican ruefully acknowledges, "is really a creature of Washington" -- its drawing rooms and embassy parties, its limousiness and glitter. Husband first of an heiress (Catherine Mellon) and then of a movie star (Elizabeth Taylor), he exudes a kind of high-- priced charisma that a glamor--hungry housewife in Springfield might find compelling but a Tappanhannock farmer might
not.

Warner works hard to emphasize his family ties to Virginia. He never mentions his Georgetown town house or his boyhood in Washington's now--fashionable section of Cleveland Park, and he almost apologizes for being born in the District of Columbia. At one campaign appearance, his octogenerian mother stood up and declared that if she had known her son would run for the Senate from Virginia, "I would have crossed the river and had him under the trees." Warner also works at cultivating a folksy image. On a Danville radio call--in show last month he referred to himself as "a farmer . . . a cattleman" and his 2,100--acre Fauquier County estate where he goes foxhunting as "a real nice spread."
"And I love country music . . . it's real culture," he added. "You know, overseas country music ranks right up there with Beethoven. . . "

John Warner, however, remains essentially the farm boy from Cleveland Park. Those who remember him in college at Washington & Lee remember him as a rather "social," hard--working youth who "became a little more flam--boyant" only after his 1957 marriage to Catherine Mellon, -- a marriage that turned him into a millionaire over--night.
Much has been made in the current campaign of the role of the Mellon money in Warner's political ascendancy, but most of those who know Warner well believe he would have been successful even without it.
They point out out that he won the clerkship with Prettyman on his own and was a competent prosecutor in the D.C. court system afterward.

In the Washington law firm of Hogan and Hartson, which he joined in 1960, Democratic lawyer remembers him as a good attorney, who was being groomed to succeed one of the senior partners as the firm's expert on banking law. Those who know Warner say that, rather than with raw brain power, he has won friends and achievement with a combination of enthusiasm and ambition -- qualities that have also caused him problems with both large matters and small. Several neighbors of Warner in Fauquier County say the same qualities led Warner to be "overmounted" frequently in the hunts and races of the Virginia horse country: riding a larger and more powerful horse than he either needed or was able to control.

Enthusiasm and ambition are also blamed by many ofWarner's friends for the candidate's propensity to say things that
do not quite jibe with the facts. Warner, for example, likes to tell rural audiences he "was raised on a farm." Questioned closely about that assertion the candidate says that his father, a Washington gynecologist, had patients who lived near Middle--burg, and he would
visit them in the summer. Statements like that have plagued Warner throughout the campaign. Last week at a fund--raiser in Charlottesville, asked to comment on Vietnam veterans, Warner said he believes "they ought to be treated the same way this nation has treated every other veteran which in most cases has been pretty shabby."

At a dinner in Newport News, later in the week, he encountered Lewis Puller, the quietly intense, 1st District Democratic nominee for Congress, who lost both legs and part of both hands in Vietnam. Warner bounded up to Puller's wheelchair, clapped him on the back and boomed: "Whaddaya say, tiger!" Warner's enthusiasm, however, is also one of his most appealing qualities. Even the severest critics of his Pentagon years concede him boundless energy, and the ability to bounce back in the face of any problem. Last week in Hopewell, Warner encountered a voter who told him, "I don't think I like you but I'm going to vote for you."
"I don't think I like you either," Warner replied sunnily, "but I accept your vote."

The wearing pace of the campaign, however, drains even the most resilient, and at the end of a 16--hour day, when crowds are gone and dinner is a hamburger grabbed from a fast--food restaurant where nobody knows his name, John Warner shows the numbness of fatigue and wanders off to call his wife like any lonely husband on the road.
Then he boards his chartered plane and, as he wings through the night toward Suffolk, he dons his metal--rim reading glasses and struggles to focus his mind on a stack of clippings and papers from his staff. Tomorrow will be another test and John Warner will need to know the right answers.

SBD

[Stevie]

I knew he'd been married to Liz Taylor, but not the other heriess....
plus all his truth strrrrrrrrreeeeeeeetching -

no wonder he covers for Kerry.... think that's what I'll email to him...
_________________
Stevie
Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage
morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should
be arrested, exiled or hanged.

[Wescoot2]

[Tom Poole]

[SBD]

It almost made me sick to read about the foolish Dems parties for Carter. It would have been funny if his presidency wasn't such a disaster. The Media and the Hollywood types never learn do they??

Copyright 1976 Newsweek
July 26, 1976, UNITED STATES EDITION
SECTION: NATIONAL AFFAIRS; Pg. 34

NIGHTS OF THE PEANUT
MAUREEN ORTH with LISA WHITMAN

The first thing that the posh New York restaurant 21 did in honor of the Democratic National Convention was to take the pretzels off the bar and replace them with unshelled Georgia peanuts. The invitation to the Arthur Schlesingers' party for the Old Guard had a small note at the bottom that said, "Peanuts will be served." The panache of any party last week depended on the number of people who showed up wearing solid--gold peanut pins, the symbol of the Carter inner circle. But at Jimmy Carter's own party for the delegates, his brother, Billy, had to admit that the goobers served were not Georgia peanuts. "They're Spanish raw, ma'am."
It hardly mattered. The Big Apple ushered in the era of peanut chic last week, and for most, the combination was tasty. New York went out of its way to lay on some down--home Southern hospitality was fancy lunches, fashion shows and fund--raising galas. Carter himself stayed close to his hotel suite, sending out his numerous family and staff members to almost every function. But the novelty of the Carter crowd -- coupled with the predictability of the covention -- turned the social sideshow into a hotly contended main event. "The real action has been at parties this week," said actress Shirley MacLaine, who managed to show up at many of them. "Everybody is talking about who got into what party and who got
lef out."

New York society is not familiar with the Carters of Plains, and for the first time many of the town's gadabouts, showbiz celebrities and political groupies found themselves sidelined at a convention -- sometimes socializing among themselves without a political insider in sight. Whenever the Gothamites did meet the Georgia contingent, the pecking
order was in serious disarray. At one reception, Gloria Steinem made a beeline to meet Miss Lillian, Carter's mother, while Miss Lillian and the other Carter women were waiting in line to meet Barbara Walters. The few people who had connections to the Carter crowd suddenly became the power brokers, giving radical chic a cracker twist. A party given
by the formerly anti--Establishment Rolling Stone magazine, which came out early for Carter, turned out to be the party -- and the crush at the door was so hysterical that VIP's like Lauren Bacall and Theodore White couldn't even get in.

THE OUTER CIRCLE
The new outsiders were definitely not used to it. "Come visit us," Hubert Humphrey told a friend at Mayor Abraham Beame's picnic lunch. "We're set up in exile." At a party in philanthropist Mary Lasker's elegant white--on--white apartment, Teddy Kennedy joked that he couldn't even get into the covention. And the night Jimmy Carter was nominated for President, George McGovern opted for Regine's, the glittering new French discotheque. McGovern sat stone--faced with his wife while a frenzied Bastille Day party whirled around them. The crowd was more impressed by Elizabeth Taylor, who was dancing in a trance with John Warner, chairman of the U.S. Bicentennial Commission. Earlier in the
week, Eleanor McGovern admitted she felt "ambivalent" about the week's events. "I wish I were Mrs. Jimmy Carter right now," she confided, "but only as Mrs. George McGovern."

Mrs. and Mr. Jimmy Carter were clearly the ones to be near. Sunday morning, the Carters attended a brunch for party fat cats at 21, where a three--piece combo played such folksy tunes as "Take Me Home, Country Road." "There's no one left on the outside this year like in 1972," said Newark's black mayor, Kenneth Gibson. "After Miami, the party realized they needed everyone."

The next "reception for Jimmy Carter," a Halston fashion show at the Steer Palace inside Madison Square Garden, was typical of most parties in one respect: Carter never showed. The big attraction was ancient starlet Denise Darcel, who was dressed in full--length sequins for the afternoon affair, and the high--fashion models had to fight their way through an unappreciative crowd. "When's this fashion show gonna end?" asked one delegate in a ruffled shirt. "It's killing the party." Margaux Hemingway arrived with her husband, Errol Wetson, took one look and left. "We're not political," he allowed. The wacky tone of the week was struck at an "exclusive" cocktail party given by William Taub, who deals in oil. Jimmy Carter, Paul Newman and Prince Philip were invited to honor Flor Trujillo, the newly wed daughter of the late Dominican dictator, and Hermione Gingold, who confessed intense jealousy of Carter's teeth because "mine are so small." Carter, Newman and the Prince never showed but Taub was not daunted. Flor Trujillo, he declared, was a good prospect for Secretary of HEW.

At the Arthur Schlesingers', the elders of Camelot came out in full force, Jacqueline Onassis held court in a corner of the crowded downstairs garden, and the rest of the blue--chip crowd tried to figure out whom to hustle for passes into the convention. Carter was down at Pier 88, at his own party for 4,000 of his supporters. Fried chicken and beer were served, the South Philadelphia String Band, dressed as mummers, played "Dixie," and latecomer Telly Savalas was mobbed as if he were the Presidential candidate. Carter was wearing an electric "Elect Jimmy Carter" button that lit up every second. When Ron Kovic, a paralyzed Vietnam vet, came down the line in his wheelchair, Kovic grasped Carter's hand firmly and wouldn't let go while he complained about the conditions in VA hospitals. Carter never said a word and never stopped
smiling -- he just trying to pull his hand away.

Though the cocktails and conversation, a few new stars emerged, most notably Jimmy Carter's energetic and candid mother. "I think I'm secretly in love with Miss Lillian," Walter Cronkite confided at one point, and even Tom Hayden enthused: "She could be another Eleanor Roosevelt." She was in demand everywhere, but she clearly had her favorites. At one luncheon, she summoned reporter Carl Bernstein and was overheard telling him that she had read "All the President's Men" three times -- "twice because it was such a good book, and the third time because I know Jimmy's gonna be in the White House and I want to watch out for him." Twice, in the wee hours, Miss Lillian called Shirley MacLaine to the
Carter suite at the Americana Hotel. She had watched her on TV's Tom Snyder show and told Jimmy to invite her over. "They tracked me down at a restaurant at 1 a.m.," said MacLaine. "Jimmy told me they'd be up another couple of hours so we sat around and talked about life," MacLaine now plans to work for Carter. "He levels that 'charm' gaze at you," she said, "and you know why he got the nomination so fast."

THE CARTER GREEN LOOK
Psychically Jimmy Carter is already in the White House, according to his faithhealing sister, Ruth Stapleton. "I'm even seeing it," she said. "He has the image of a very strong leader." All week long, people had been coming up to her at parties and asking if they could be healed. The surprise attraction at many of the parties, however, was Cornelia
Wallace, whose good looks seemed to make her far more acceptable on the Democratic Establishment than her husband's ideology. Although she was coy about her own political plans to run for office, she managed to show up at almost every top--drawer event in her smartly tailored white suit. For most women, the uniform of the week turned out to be Diane von
Furstenberg's "great little bourgeois dress" -- in Carter green. Blacks were also highly visible in the Carter celebrations. Sports entrepreneur Don King threw one of the week's liveliest shindigs at the Pierre Hotel ballroom, where black celebrities danced to an all--white band. Boxer Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, civil--rights leader Jesse Jackson and entertainers Issac Hayes and Cab Calloway socialized with the
Carter staff. Campaign manager Hamilton Jordan, beer bottle in hand, wandered around happily predicting. "Our only problem now is overconfidence," but Carter delegate Merle Lefkoff said, "This is a very important party. It's a recognition of how crucial blacks have been to us especially by getting the liberals to rally mind Carter."

The hottest ticket in town was the Rolling Stone party in honor of the Carter campaign staff. It was controversial even before it took place. The Stone's resident political journalist, Hunter Thompson -- known for his free--form put--downs of politicians -- had written 20,000 words of praise in a cover story on Carter. The headline read ENDORSEMENT and caused a near staff revolt, according to Rolling Stone insiders. The magazine expected 500 at its bash, but the party was talked about all over town, and hundreds of eager guests and crashers rolled up. At midnight, the doors were rudely closed, shutting out many of the legitimate invitees -- among them some of carter's top staffers and celebrities such as Sen. Gary Hart, Jane Fonda, Barbara Howar and Warren Beatty, "Hey, Beatty," yelled TV comic Chevy Chase, standing on a balcony across the street with Paul Simon, "who's the chick?" Beatty was holding hands with Bella Abzug, who shouted back, "Be nice."

Inside, Czech director Milos Forman ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") was brokenly ecstatic."Look I meet a Carter people," he exulted. Also thrilled were two young Carter staffers who had just met Walter Cronkite -- the only celebrity the police personally ushered into the party. "I'd have to say this is the high point of the whole campaign,"
said Larry Acciari, 25, a Carter financial man. "Presidents come and go, but Walter Cronkite -- he's an institution." After smoking on the roof, Hunter Thompson came down and joined the party. "I don't think journalists should endorse candidates, but I have no career as a journalist," he said. "I write what I do." "Just humor him," said Jimmy Carter's oldest son, Jack.

Jack Carter, a husky, red--haired lawyer who lives in Calhoun, Ga., was enjoying himself. "We don't go to many big affairs like this," he said. "Back home we consider eight people a party." Young Carter, who's a good dancer, was still ready to boogie at 3 a.m. "I know I can show you something about myself by the way I dance," he told one reporter.
"Your Daddy's gonna spank you," a Southern belle teased. "Aw," Carter answered, "if y'all were in Calhoun I'd take you someplace." Three New York reporters took him out for a nightcap. Still going strong at dawn, he asked innocently, "Has your opinion of Georgia changed much since the beginning of the year?"

THE BRUNCH BUNCH
If not, at least the Georgians' opinion of New York certainly had.At a lavish Bloomingdale's breakfast of strawberry crepes and champagne, designer Calvin Klein gave personal fashion advice. "It's Camelot," exclaimed the wife of a Carter staffer racing to Bonwit Teller's brunch. "How will I go back to the car pool next week?" Annette Carter, married to Jimmy's son Jeff, thoroughly enjoyed it. "My husband said, 'You're going to take that checkbook to Bloomingdale's and spend all our money,' and I said, 'You're darn right!'"

Ascetic Jerry Brown, the California governor, held out as long as he could against the party scene, but even he gave in. He emerged from his tacky room at the McAlpin Hotel to attend a fundraiser for the farm workers. The refried beans ran out, the taco chips disappered and Jerry Rubin gazed on his Chicago Seven brother Tom Hayden, an unsuccessful Senate
candidate, neatly attired in coat and tie. Next to him was tieless Sen. John Tunney trying hard to be hip. Jane Fonda auctioned off Cesar Chavez biographies for up to $200. The only convention regular to snub the social whirl was none other than Planter's Mr. Peanut. "We decided not to have Mr. Peanut at the convention this year," sniffed a spokesman from Standard Brands, which owns Planters. "It's better if Mr. Peanut is nonpolitical."
CORRECTION--DATE: August 9, 1976, UNITED STATES EDITION
The man pictured with Don King in NEWSWEEK'S photo coverage of parties during the Democratic convention is Isaac Hayes, not Rubin Carter as the caption stated. Rubin Carter did not attend King's party.

SBD

[scotty61]

Despite everything, I always thought Billy the smarter of the two. Recent events have done nothing to disabuse me of that position.
_________________
John Kerry. A Neville Chamberlain for our times.