From earlier this month:
Early Reviews Not Good for Kerry
Pundits Pan 'Meet the Press' Appearance
URL:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2551-2002Dec3.html
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 3, 2002; 8:31 AM
John Kerry, it seems, is like one of those Rorschach ink blots: Everyone sees what they want.
Innovative thinker or cliched Massachusetts liberal. Vietnam War hero or foreign-policy waffler. Senator of stature or distant patrician.
This was dramatically demonstrated after Kerry's appearance with Tim Russert on Sunday. (By the way, journalistic convention can be maddening sometimes. Anyone with a pulse has known Kerry is running for president. So he goes on "Meet the Press" and makes some noises about running and the Monday headlines say, Kerry To Run For President. Duh.)
Some viewers undoubtedly saw an articulate, experienced man challenging Bush on a variety of issues. But others – including just about every pundit who has declaimed on the subject – saw a slippery, calculating human being.
To put it mildly, Kerry has a warmth problem. He recites his positions but doesn't tell any folksy stories, doesn't connect, doesn't seem to be speaking from the heart. His super-serious demeanor gave way to one half-smile and one laugh only at the very end of the 40-minute interview.
Even when talking about the impact of his Vietnam ordeal, when he was wounded three times, and his affection for his comrades in arms, Kerry seemed to be delivering a speech he has given before rather than showing real emotion.
And his split-the-difference stands are sometimes odd: He opposes the death penalty for murderers and everyone else – but makes an exception for terrorists.
In many ways he's the mirror image of John Edwards, who has a down-home, winning personality but is green enough that folks wonder whether he has sufficient seasoning on the issues.
All this matters because Kerry seems destined to be a top-tier '04 candidate. If Gore runs, which means Lieberman doesn't, Kerry is probably No. 2. If Gore passes, many see the Massachusetts man as the initial front-runner.
But it's becoming clear, for those who pay attention to such things, that Kerry's personality will be an outsized issue. Voters support candidates who make them feel comfortable. And the media, in their collective, elitist wisdom, have decided that John Kerry is for now outside their comfort zone.
USA Today goes with the announcement story:
"Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts kicked the nascent 2004 presidential race into higher gear Sunday. He announced he will form an exploratory committee to raise money for a possible White House campaign. . . .
"Kerry, 58, a Vietnam veteran who easily won re-election to a fourth Senate term last month, said Bush is vulnerable on domestic and foreign policy. Kerry told NBC's Meet the Press Sunday that he sensed 'deep anxiety' among Americans over the security of their jobs, retirement, health care, education and national defense. 'On almost every issue facing the country, I believe there is a better choice for this nation,' he said.
"Kerry said he would not announce his candidacy for several months, but the exploratory committee will be used to start raising money. 'When you really get into the formal stage, which I am now entering, . . . it becomes real,' he said."
Josh Marshall takes note of Kerry's media problem:
"For a variety of reasons I think Kerry is one of the very few serious presidential candidates for 2004. And we'll be talking a lot more about his candidacy. But for now let's start with just one point: The Washington press corps doesn't much like John Kerry. And, as we learned with Al Gore, that's important."
InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds gives his visceral reaction:
"Funny, I was watching Kerry on TV and wondering 'why do I instinctively dislike this guy?' Looks like I wasn't alone."
National Review's David Frum ponders the Kerry conundrum:
"So far his campaign is long on biography ('During the NBC interview,' the AP observes, 'Kerry repeatedly mentioned his service in Vietnam') and short on ideas. There was a time when Kerry questioned the public-school monopoly and other Democratic dogmas – but the Democratic primaries are as hospitable to questioning minds as a Saudi Arabian divinity school.
"Remember when Gary Hart appealed to Atari Democrats? Kerry is running as a Wahhabi Democrat, demanding a return to ancient orthodoxies on everything from foreign policy (all he is saying is give peace a chance – again) to energy (the Incan empire ran on solar power – why can't America?).
"Polls show Kerry second only to Gore among Democratic primary voters. I suspect that this is a name-recognition effect. Kerry benefits from the fact that there have been two prominent Democrats with the same name – so he gets the reputational benefit of both his own service in Vietnam and also Medal of Honor winner Bob Kerrey's; the durable advantages of his marriage to Teresa Heinz and the glamour of [Bob Kerrey's] frolic in the Nebraska governor's mansion with Debra Winger."
Ah, the little-discussed Debra Winger Factor.
"But how long will that effect last? Joe Klein profiled Kerry at length in last week's New Yorker. The piece could not have been more favorable: It shot down one after another a long series of hostile assessments of Kerry's character and career. No, Klein says, Kerry is not contrived (although he did as a younger man try to mimic John F. Kennedy's accent). No he is not a womanizer (any more). No he is not a Clintonite careerist (although he has been running for president since about 1969). And after all this myth-busting, what's left? Yet despite this vigorous defense over half a dozen densely printed magazine pages, I could not identify one affirmative reason why any Democrat should wake up early on a cold New Hampshire morning to go vote for Kerry – and I was left with a strong residual impression that even Klein himself was having trouble stomaching him."
Mickey Kaus is among the non-admirers:
"What is it that makes so many people, myself included, intensely dislike Sen. John Kerry? This is the great mystery surrounding his 2004 presidential campaign. I don't think 'aloof and arrogant,' the traditional Kerry negatives, are exactly it – he may be aloof and arrogant, but there are plenty of aloof and arrogant people I don't rule out instantly due to their gross characterological deficiency, which is what I do with Kerry. It's not just his 'long record of opportunism,' though again that's part of it. . . .
"I think it starts with the phony furrowed brow. Perpetually furrowed and perpetually phony. It's been furrowed for so long I doubt he could unfurrow it now even if his advisers convinced him that would be a good tack to take! . . . Then add the sense that Kerry would never ever take a principled or unpopular stand if losing the argument might actually threaten to derail his precious political career. (He apparently made some anti-affirmative noises in 1992 and quickly backed down when the obvious groups complained.)
"Add in relentless, obvious self-promotion to the point of indignity – sucking up to Gore while jockeying for the vice-presidential nod in 2000. . . . Plus the way his equally ambitious supporters call him 'JFK.' It's creepy. The man's an animatronic Lincoln. There's a metal plate in the back of his head – under all the glued-on 'hair' – that they open up and stick screwdrivers in when he gets back to his office."
The New Republic's Noam Scheiber challenges the senator on foreign-policy grounds, after mentioning the Klein piece:
"You'd think Kerry would recognize he had some work to do if a journalist who'd set out to praise his foreign policy vision ended up making him sound incoherent instead. But if that thought had occurred to Kerry, you really couldn't tell from his hour-long appearance on 'Meet the Press.'
"Kerry's biggest problem was the same problem that jumps out at you in Klein's profile: He doesn't offer a positive vision of America's role in the world so much as a collection of cloying, mostly procedural, criticisms of the Bush administration. For example, when Tim Russert asked whether he would favor unilateral action if Saddam doesn't accurately account for his weapons arsenal, Kerry simply complained that a unilateral war would impose huge financial costs--not to mention 'the damage that could be caused to our relationship all across the globe with countries that we need.' True enough. But presumably there are some situations in which the benefits of unilateral action would outweigh the costs. Kerry gave no indication that he'd thought about what those might be.
"Even worse was Kerry's tortured defense of his vote against the 1991 Gulf war. Prompted by Russert, Kerry insisted that his 'was the right vote at that moment.' He then proceeded to tie himself in knots. On the one had, Kerry claimed he hadn't opposed dispatching troops per se, just dispatching them before there was sufficient domestic support: 'I thought we owed ourselves another three to four weeks to build the support of our nation so that if things turned sour, as we all know they can in war, we had the legitimacy which some of us who fought Vietnam remember bitterly, and we lost at that point in time.' Yet in practically the same breath Kerry asserted that he had 'believed we would win [the war] very quickly' all along, which seems to undercut his concern about a quagmire-like scenario eroding public support.
"But the biggest problem was that, as with the current Iraq situation, Kerry gave little indication of how he felt about the substance of the issue, procedural gripes aside. The closest he came was a very grudging, mechanical acknowledgement that 't was always a stand for vital interests, of course it was.' But even this seemed more like a desperate attempt to get the hard-charging Russert off his back than a serious concession. . . . What's especially frustrating about all of this is that Kerry is someone who could really be thriving in the current 'issue environment.'"
When you've lost the New Republic, you've dug yourself a hole in the Democratic primaries.
Even Matt Drudge gets into the act, charging Kerry with indulging in, yes, $150 haircuts!
The Iraq situation, meanwhile, is heating up again.
"President Bush said yesterday that early signs of Iraq's compliance with United Nations arms inspections 'are not encouraging' and warned that Baghdad must submit a 'full and accurate' account of its weapons of mass destruction by week's end," says USA Today.
"Bush's speech, along with equally tough remarks by Vice President Cheney in Denver, reiterated the administration's threat to disarm Saddam by force if he will not do so voluntarily under the terms of a new U.N. resolution.
"But the strong rhetoric also reflects U.S. officials' private concern about the perception that Iraq has largely cooperated with the initial five days of inspections. A chief administration worry: Even the appearance that Iraq is meeting its responsibilities could unravel the international will to use force to disarm Saddam."
So too much compliance is also a bad thing?
The sharpest criticism of the Bushies in quite some time comes from . . . an ex-member of the Bush team. Here's the gist, from Monday's New York Times:
"A former member of the Bush administration says in a magazine interview that the White House values politics over domestic policy, lacking both policy experts and an apparatus to support them, and has failed to achieve a 'compassionate conservative' agenda.
"John J. DiIulio Jr., a domestic affairs expert and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was appointed by President Bush to lead the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in the second week of the new administration. He quit in August 2001 amid struggles with Congress and Christian conservatives over the direction of the president's plan to give more federal money to religious charities.
"In an interview with Esquire magazine, Mr. DiIulio said: 'There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.'
"'Mayberry Machiavellis' is Mr. DiIulio's term for the political staff and most particularly Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief adviser. He describes Mr. Rove as 'enormously powerful, maybe the single most powerful person in the modern, post-Hoover era ever to occupy a political-adviser post near the Oval Office.'
"Mr. DiIulio says the religious right and libertarians trust Mr. Rove 'to keep Bush 43 from behaving like Bush 41 and moving too far to the center or inching at all center-left.'
"As a result, Mr. DiIulio says, the administration has accomplished almost nothing domestically except Mr. Bush's tax cut and an education bill, which Mr. DiIulio describes as 'really a Ted Kennedy bill.'
"'There is a virtual absence as yet of any policy accomplishments that might, to a fair-minded nonpartisan, count as the flesh on the bones of so-called compassionate conservatism,' he says. What there is, he says, is 'on-the-fly policy-making by speechmaking.'"
By yesterday, DiIulion was contrite – and muzzled:
"John DiIulio, the former director of the White House faith-based initiative office, yesterday apologized for saying that President Bush's domestic priorities are determined exclusively by political considerations," says the Washington Times.
"Using words uttered hours earlier by White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who called Mr. DiIulio's remarks in the January edition of Esquire magazine 'baseless and groundless,' the first high-ranking Bush official to leave the administration asked for forgiveness and vowed never to speak or write again about his short White House stint.
"'My criticisms were groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples. I sincerely apologize and I am deeply remorseful,' Mr. DiIulio said in a statement. 'I will not be offering any further comment, or speaking or writing further on any aspect of my limited and unrepresentative White House experience or any matters or persons related thereto. I regret any and all misimpressions. In this season of fellowship and forgiveness, I pray the same,' he said."
Did they threaten to interrogate him at Guantanamo Bay or something?
Finally, Salon's Eric Boehlert examines a new theory about an old act of terrorism:
"Whatever you do, don't call Jayna Davis the darling of the right wing. A former Oklahoma City television reporter, Davis for the last seven years has been amassing a 2,000-page dossier which, she says, shows that a Middle Eastern terrorist cell made up of former Iraqi soldiers helped Timothy McVeigh plot the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
"As an investigative reporter for local NBC affiliate KFOR-TV, Davis first started hammering away at the story of an Iraq-McVeigh connection right after the deadly terrorist blast killed 168. Few people paid attention. Now, with a war against Iraq pending, Davis' conspiracy theory has suddenly gained new currency inside the Beltway, and all sorts of doors are opening being opened for her. Even though some intelligence pros, like Vince Cannistraro, the CIA's former chief of counter-terrorism, label Davis' dossier 'total [excrement],' some conservatives in Congress and in the media are hyping a possible connection between Baghdad and the Oklahoma City massacre. . . .
"Her theory has been embraced by Fox News celebrity Bill O'Reilly and by the wild Clinton-haters at Free Republic. She's recently been toasted in the far-right editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times as a 'brave' and 'intrepid' reporter. And defense hawks like former CIA detector James Woolsey, and former Reagan Defense Department official Frank Gaffney--always on the hunt for additional reasons to invade Iraq – have been singing Davis' praise."
But former USA Today reporter Tom Potok says: "I just think it's folly. The Oklahoma City case attracted every conspiracy theorist on the planet, including some second-rate reporters who believe they've stripped the cover off the conspiracy of the 20th century. Nothing against Jayna Davis, but she's gotten an idea in her head that's not based on real evidence.'"
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