Kerry got a taste of the rougher treatment last year, when the preseason pundits initially cast him as the Democratic candidate to beat. The Globe questioned whether he had fostered the false impression that he was Irish-American and whether he had misled a reporter about his prostate cancer. Other papers carried what Kennedy calls "absolutely ridiculous" items about Kerry getting $75 haircuts and ordering a Philly cheese steak with Swiss cheese.
A New Republic cover story (and pieces in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal) laid out some areas of potential vulnerability. Among other things, Kerry once voted against the death penalty for terrorists, opposed mandatory sentences for drug dealers who sell to children and supported a 50-cent gas-tax hike. (Plus, he was Michael Dukakis's lieutenant governor.) A front-pageWashington Post report challenged his substantial fundraising from lobbyists.
There are also financial questions, including Kerry's acceptance of $130,000 in speaking fees during his first Senate term and his $21,000 profit in a 1986 real estate deal in which he put down no money.
"Everyone gets their turn in the barrel in this business if they're successful," says Myers, who worked for Bill Clinton when he was hammered 12 years ago over Gennifer Flowers, the draft and Whitewater. The press, she says, will be digging through Kerry's record and complaints "that he doesn't connect with people, that he's aloof, that he's arrogant. It's part of the phenomenon of build-'em-up, tear-'em-down. It's not fair. Is what happened to Howard Dean fair? No."
Conservative commentators are already redirecting their fire from Dean to Kerry. Sean Hannity declared on his radio show that "we're digging up as much information on this guy as we possibly can. . . . It's not pretty." Hugh Hewitt, noting Kerry's vote against the 1991 Gulf War, wrote in the Weekly Standard: "Had Kerry had his way, Saddam would now be a member of the nuclear club."
Some pundits on the left are unenthusiastic. "When it comes to being a candidate," wrote The Nation's David Corn, "Kerry cannot do better than a B-plus."
For now, with a Newsweek cover story touting a poll in which Kerry edges President Bush, the press is giving the Vietnam war hero his due just weeks after practically writing him off. And Nyhan scoffs at the notion that the media or the Republicans can create a caricature of a Massachusetts liberal:
"That won't work with Kerry. He has actually killed people in the name of the U.S. government, and has the medals to prove it."
Dean, by the way, was quite subdued on "Meet the Press," telling Tim Russert that he never believed the front-runner hype generated by him, Time (who's got Kerry on the cover today, a week after Newsweek) and other media outlets.
This just in from the Dean camp: "At one point, Tim Russert said that while he was in Iowa two weeks ago he read a letter to the editor published in the Des Moines Register. It's interesting that Tim Russert remembered this short letter -- a smear of Governor Dean by Jim Bootz of Chaska, Minnesota -- from two weeks ago, one of 53 letters to the editor published that day, and decided to read it on national television. Also interesting: a quick Googling reveals that the writer . . . Minnesota State Director for John Kerry." Hmmm. |
