The Many Faces of John Kerry
From the February 9, 2004 issue: His record offers several avenues for GOP attack. Or does it?
by Matthew Continetti
02/09/2004, Volume 009, Issue 21
LET'S SAY you're a Republican strategist. It's around 10 P.M. on Tuesday, January 26, and you're watching Senator John Kerry, Democrat from Massachusetts, deliver his valedictory speech to supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire. Kerry has just been declared the winner in the New Hampshire primary. A week earlier, he won the Iowa caucuses. You remember that no Democratic presidential candidate who won back-to-back victories in Iowa and New Hampshire has ever lost his party's nomination. Kerry, you realize, is now the Democratic frontrunner. By a million miles.
For six months, Republicans have anticipated running against former Vermont governor Howard Dean. They couldn't wait to attack Dean's antiwar stance, his call for total repeal of the Bush tax cuts, his secularism, and his temperament. They had their clever cable-TV soundbites at the ready: Dean was George McGovern and Walter Mondale all rolled into one angry politician.
But what will they say about Kerry? Watching Kerry speak to his supporters, one has to concede he looks presidential. His baritone conveys gravitas. He sounds eager to defend his 19-year record as a senator. His supporters sound eager, too: When Kerry tells them that he has "only begun to fight," they break out into a chant of "Bring It On! Bring It On!" The chant has become a Kerry slogan, a sort of shorthand used to describe the belief among Kerry supporters--and, apparently, among Democratic primary voters and caucus-goers--that the senator is the only Democrat who can stand toe-to-toe with President Bush.
Ed Gillespie, the chairman of
the Republican National Committee, is in the business of proving them wrong. Addressing an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Arlington, Virginia, a few days before the New Hampshire primary, he laid out a plan for dealing with the new Democratic frontrunner.
"Kerry," Gillespie said, is "one of the most liberal members of the Senate." More so, in fact, than the senior senator from Massachusetts: "Americans for Democratic Action--the premier liberal rating organization--puts [Kerry's] lifetime rating at 93 percent," Gillespie noted. "Senator [Edward M.] Kennedy has a lifetime rating of 88 percent--five points less."
Gillespie paused. "Who would have guessed it?" he asked. "Ted Kennedy is the conservative senator from Massachusetts!"
Gillespie's joke got a lot of laughs. But was it an accurate assessment of Kerry's vulnerabilities? Will Republicans have no trouble portraying the senator as a Massachusetts liberal? As soft on national security? As an aloof aristocrat? Republican strategists say Kerry is vulnerable in four areas--his antiwar activity 33 years ago, his record on taxes, his record on national security, and his social liberalism. Let's see how the newly anointed Democratic frontrunner measures up.
VIETNAM. Kerry campaign staffers are confident the senator's service in Vietnam inoculates him from charges that he is "soft" on national security. Maybe. Of course, Kerry's heroism during the Vietnam War is well-established. In 1969, as the captain of a Swift boat, the future senator ferried U.S. soldiers across the waters of the Mekong Delta. He served bravely. One of the war stories you hear a lot is how Kerry saved the life of a Green Beret named Jim Rassman, who went overboard during a gunfight. These days Rassman, a registered Republican, stumps for Kerry. "I'm switching registration to vote for John Kerry," Rassman tells campaign audiences.
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