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bjohnson
Seaman Recruit
Joined: 22 Aug 2004
Posts: 49
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 Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 10:42 pm Post subject: Ok, so Kerry is smart and I'm a little bit slow |
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<slap forhead>
With respect to John Kerry's career planning, it took me until now to realize that running for Congress is one job where you aren't required to submit a resume with a list of character references.
Smart, very smart.
</slap forehead> |
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Dimsdale
Captain
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 527
Location: Massachusetts: the belly of the beast
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| Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 12:41 am Post subject: Re: Ok, so Kerry is smart and I'm a little bit slow |
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| bjohnson wrote: | <slap forhead>
With respect to John Kerry's career planning, it took me until now to realize that running for Congress is one job where you aren't required to submit a resume with a list of character references.
Smart, very smart.
</slap forehead> |
And running for the Senate as an ultraleftist in an ultraleftist state, pretending to be Irish in an Irish dominated political atmosphere helped too.
During his 1996 race with Weld, Kerry was branded a mooch for giving little to charity and living rent-free with a lobbyist and two developers during the 1980s. He also was chastised for violating a spending cap he negotiated with Weld, dumping $1.7 million of his newfound wealth into the campaign. He and Cong. Nick Mavroules, D-Mass, were receiving free Buicks from a shady dealer in their district named Bob Brest. When the free Bob Brest Buick was discovered, Kerry claimed his non-payment was "an oversight" and wrote a check. Unlike Nicky Pockets, Kerry was not indicted.
It is unknown what he did for Bob Brest to get the Buick.
From an artilcle by Bill Weld, his 1996 Senate race opponent:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5506111/site/newsweek/
This was written on August 2, before the SBVT ads took off. Note the references to the Vietnam war card that Kerry would play, but has now blown up in his face thanks to you guys!!
Kerry 'Will Have It Both Ways'
Oppo Research: An old rival's recipe for a GOP win this fall
WELD KERRY
Susan Walsh / AP
By William F. Weld
Newsweek
Aug. 2 issue - I never thought I'd lose to John Kerry in 1996. Although Kerry was the incumbent senator and had been in public life longer than I had, his style seemed to me out of touch with the voters. In fact, Kerry succeeded in making me—often subjected to the charge of being patrician—look like a lunch-pail Democrat: of the people as well as for the people. A lunch-pail Democrat is the best thing you can look like in Massachusetts, and I had received 71 percent of the vote in my re-election campaign for governor just two years earlier. I believed I was set to knock off a prominent Democratic incumbent.
It didn't quite work out that way.
The race was neck and neck from the day I announced until late October 1996. We both had statewide favorability ratings of more than 70 percent, and in the head-to-head, we were each stuck at slightly more than 40 percent. We beat our heads against the wall trying to break the race open, but nothing seemed to work.
Then, a week before the election, Kerry opened up a 10-point lead in our overnight tracking polls, and stayed there. Senator Kerry won by eight percentage points—not even a particularly close race, in the end.
What happened? I ran against John Kerry, but John Kerry chose not to run against Bill Weld. After Bob Shrum joined his campaign, Kerry ran against Newt Gingrich, Jesse Helms and Bob Dole—in Massachusetts, a shrewd move. It also didn't hurt him that Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole in Massachusetts by 33 percentage points in November.
This year, with Bob Shrum again onboard, John Kerry will again run a shrewd campaign. He will have it both ways. As he moves to the center, he will run not against the Iraq war, but against this Iraq war. He'll attack, but he will always be careful to wave the flag as he does so. He will lament positions of the Christian right, but attend church without fail. He will stand for gun control, but remind voters—in appropriate states—that he is a bird hunter. He will, in other words, be pro-military—and against this war; pro-religion—and against the "extremists"; pro-gun control—and pro-guns. He will run knowing that Americans like to be for, as well as against, things.
Kerry will continue to emphasize his Vietnam War record, and will reinforce that message by traveling constantly in the company of fellow veterans in the closing weeks of the campaign. Shrum will have Kerry surrogates try to bait Bush surrogates into attacking Senator Kerry's military record—how purple was that purple heart, etc.—and then pounce on the attack with rallies and 30-second spots of outraged men and women in uniform and their families. He will seek to have the Bush campaign be against. Kerry will be for.
With this said, in my view, President Bush will prevail. While Senator Kerry is highly articulate, his appeal is intellectual, not emotional. I remember the late congressman Joe Moakley telling me, after the 1996 election, that he became so frustrated in trying to line up blue-collar union support for Kerry against me that he once blurted out, "Chrissakes, Charlie, I'm not asking you to have a beer with the guy!"
I do not mean to suggest that Senator Kerry lacks charm. I personally find him to be immediately engaging.
However, there is such a thing as personal warmth, and it is all-important in politics. It is what Robert Caro meant when he wrote that Lyndon Johnson "greeted voters easily." Johnson had it. Bill Clinton had it. And George W. Bush has it. It is one reason why people such as Rudy Giuliani and John McCain and I—who are apart from the president on some issues—are proud to support him.
At the end of the day, I believe that substance matters, and America is not, happily, Michael Moore-ville. The president can and should run proudly on his record: sound achievements in peace and prosperity at home. He does not need sloganeering. He needs simply to present himself to the electorate as vividly as possible. When the people see him as he is—likable and tough-minded—no TV one-liner will prevent him from being elected to a second term.
Weld was governor of Massachusetts from 1991 to 1997. He is currently a principal at Leeds Weld & Co., a New York private equity firm.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
_________________
Everytime he had a choice, Kerry chose to side with communists rather than the United States. |
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