On Kerry, the kids are all right
By Scot Lehigh, 11/26/2003
CONCORD, N.H.
JOHN KERRY has just finished this month's relaunch of his presidential campaign, introducing himself to an assembly at Concord High School as the man intent on giving America a Real Deal instead of the Raw Deal George W. Bush has delivered.
So what's the verdict? Sara Eriksen shakes her head in disbelief.
``It was so cheesy,'' she says. Sara is a Norway native here as an exchange student, so perhaps her Scandinavian sensibility isn't yet accustomed to the tinny tropes of American campaigns.
And what do others think? Shoulders shrug.
``I thought he was ... OK,'' offers Rosie, who won't give a last name to accompany her Laodicean sentiments. Just OK? ``There were parts of it that were kind of sketchy.''
Now, high school kids may not be the world's most politically sophisticated audience, but they are authenticity meters - and today they have caught the essential artificiality of John Kerry, 4.0.
His campaign on the ropes, Kerry has gone the way of all Bob Shrum candidates. The man who once quoted Andre Gide in admiring his own complexity (``Do not try to understand me too quickly'') now finds that voters really don't get him at all. So he has entered the great consultancy cocoon and emerged as the most unlikely of pseudo-populists, a self-styled road warrior embarking on a bus barnstorming mission to reclaim the state that served as his primary toehold back before blunt, plain-speaking Howard Dean stole it away.
Truth is, the kids are right. Kerry's speech is underwhelming: Sometimes trite, often contrived, sometimes just plain dopey.
``Send them someone who offers answers, not just anger,'' Kerry implores. ``Solutions, not just slogans. So New Hampshire, in January, don't just send them a message. Send them a president.''
Thus it is that the man who has repackaged his campaign around a slogan - ``The Real Deal'' - so silly it sounds like he's promoting an Evander Holyfield fight has in four sentences offered three cliched catch phrases, the last recycled from Jimmy Carter's 1976 campaign. All while not so subtly accusing Dean of empty-calorie politics.
And Kerry had made the whole thing worse by reflexively hitting the Washington windbag button, sprinkling the address with the tired tics (``I say to you'' and ``Let me make it clear to you'' and so on) of soporific Senate speechifying.
Honestly, watching Kerry speak and then file his candidacy papers at the secretary of state's office, you can't help but feel a little sorry for him. Jeanne Shaheen, the former Granite State governor, has added some star power, and her husband, Billy, has helped fire up a claque to clap at the State House, but Kerry looks drawn and exhausted, like a patient badly in need of a shot of Vitamin B-12 and two days' sleep.
A man who has always been a distant, fuzzily focused figure, Kerry is caught in the quicksand of a process that demands a more direct connection. And none of the symbolic ways he has tried to strike a common chord - the Harley rides, the hunting - has come off as much more than hokey.
Kerry's shot all along was to define the presidency up - as a job that required the knowledge, skills, and experience that were his special province. But though he has had occasional moments, he has never convincingly delivered that larger dimension to the Democratic campaign. Three new polls in Massachusetts, where Kerry has held public office for 20 years but where Dean now holds at least a slight lead, mark how far he's fallen since the days when his team tried to peddle him as the front-runner.
So now, like Bob Kerrey in 1992 and Al Gore in 2000, Kerry is defining his candidacy down in search of a populist common denominator, boarding the ``Real Deal Express'' with his entourage of ``Real Deal Road Warriors'' to bring his message to schools, firehouses, and other ready-made audiences everywhere.
Can Kerry turn things around? At some point in the next two months, he will almost certainly fire a TV torpedo at Dean, a televised ad attack designed to peel away the liberals Kerry desperately needs. Then we'll see if the former Vermont governor can truly take a punch.
But if Dean can and if Friday's tepid effort is the best the senator can muster, then it's hard to see how even Jeanne Shaheen's horsepower and Billy Shaheen's men can put John Kerry together again.
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