Kerry disclosure: Plenty more to tell
By Boston Herald editorial staff
Monday, April 26, 2004
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Sen. John Kerry's disingenuous disclosure strategy is raising far more questions than giving answers.
With the dust-up about his military records barely settled, the Kerry campaign is coming up with an excuse a minute to keep from releasing Teresa Heinz Kerry's tax returns. And last week's decision to detail Kerry's meetings with lobbyists backfired badly.
When it comes to political disclosure, there's no such thing as going halfway.
Kerry bungled the release of his war records, stalling and therefore raising doubts about his service.
The Kerry campaign has now changed its story three times -
count 'em three - about why it won't release Teresa Heinz
Kerry's tax records (though it's ``reconsidering'').
First, the refusal was to protect Heinz Kerry's privacy.
Then it was to protect her sons' privacy. Now, it turns
out, Kerry's wife hasn't even filed her 2003 tax returns
and has an extension until August.
Kerry still hasn't fully released his health records, and the lobbyist records he put out only date back to 1989. A full four years of Kerry's Senate service is unaccounted for.
And is it a bizarre new Kerry campaign strategy to emphasize that he's been a Washington insider for much of the last two decades?
cw-0 The not-so-subtle subtext to Kerry's ploy is that he's Mr. Disclosure and President Bush [related, bio] is not (all those secret Cheney meetings with energy executives to come up with, gasp, an energy policy.)
But first of all, Kerry is not Mr. Disclosure for all the aforementioned reasons.
And the missing four years of lobbyists' meetings raise questions about Kerry's activities during a time when Kerry himself has said he can't remember where he lived. (Boston Globe reports in 1996 determined Kerry, at various times in his first Senate term, lived at cut-rate rent or rent-free on the dime of political fund-raisers, including Robert Farmer, then a senior vice president of a major Washington lobbying firm.)
We're not aghast that a sitting senator considering legislation affecting industry would meet with representatives of those industries.
Lobbying isn't a dirty word when practiced legally.
But if you're going to tell all - and accuse the other guy of hiding something - you can't pick and choose what you disclose.
Kerry may be hoping the best defense is a good offense. So far he's played neither very well.
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