washingtonpost.com Concerned Over Flip-Flop Image
Monday, Mar 08, 2004; 8:45 AM
The race to define John Kerry is not just a battle between the GOP and Democratic camps. The media are weighing in, too, especially now that they don't have Edwards and Dean and Clark and Gephardt and Lieberman to kick around anymore.
Along with the usual policy excavations, stories are cropping up everywhere that try to examine the Kerry persona, get inside his head or divine his place in the culture. Such things matter when the presidency is at stake.
Unfortunately from the Kerry camp's point of view, one narrative taking hold in the press is that of Kerry as Flip-Flopper, which just happens to coincide with the 'says one thing, does another' line being pushed by the Bush team. Take, for instance, this New York Times piece:
"When Senator John Kerry was speaking to Jewish leaders a few days ago, he said Israel's construction of a barrier between it and Palestinian territories was a legitimate act of self-defense. But in October, he told an Arab-American group that it was 'provocative and counterproductive' and a 'barrier to peace.'
"On Feb. 5, Mr. Kerry reacted to Massachusetts' highest court's decision legalizing same-sex marriages by saying, 'I personally believe the court is dead wrong.' But when asked on Feb. 24 why he believed the decision was not correct, he shot back, 'I didn't say it wasn't.'
"Throughout his campaign, Mr. Kerry has shown a knack for espousing both sides of divisive issues. Earlier in the race he struggled to square his vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq with his loud criticism of the war and his eventual vote against $87 billion for military operations and reconstruction.
"Now with the general-election campaign under way, President Bush and Republicans are already attacking Mr. Kerry for precisely this characteristic. In California this week, the president said Mr. Kerry had 'been in Washington long enough to take both sides on just about every issue.'"
The New York Post reports the Bush spin:
"Republicans launched a 'Kerry vs. Kerry' Internet boxing game, using online humor to try to zap Democratic nominee John Kerry by painting him as an unrepentant flip-flopper.
"The move underscores how the crucial phase of the 2004 election could be the next few months as Republicans seek to tarnish Kerry's image.
"Clicking on the game's Web site produces a loud 'ding' to start the match, and a mirror image appears of two cartoon Kerrys sizing each other up -- and then 30 rounds of flip-flop charges with detailed citations for each issue."
Even the Kerry camp is worried about the senator's rhetoric, says the Boston Globe:
"Ask John F. Kerry for his views on the environment, and he'll smile as he recalls painting Storrow Drive 'biodegradable green' to celebrate Earth Day in 1970, or he'll borrow a phrase from President Kennedy and declare that America should 'go to the moon right here on Earth' in a quest for alternatives to fossil fuels.
"Other times, the senator will tie environmental protection to the economy, calling himself an 'entrepreneurial Democrat' who would create 500,000 jobs by investing in alternative energy while castigating oil and gas companies as 'polluters.'
" 'I want to continue to drill where we ought to drill,' Kerry told about 800 people yesterday at Houston Community College. 'But I haven't met one parent in America who's written a letter to anybody saying, "I want dirtier air for my kids to breathe" or "I want dirtier water for my kids to drink." '
"Kerry strategists like the line about 'dirtier water'; it aligns the candidate with families across the political spectrum. Yet they shudder at 'Kerryisms' that reinforce an image that his campaign staff is now preoccupied with shaking: Massachusetts liberal. Kerry's line about going to the moon on Earth, some advisers say, can evoke the moonbeam caricatures of Democrats like Al Gore and Jerry Brown as off-the-wall thinkers on the environment and other issues."
The New York Post strikes again with this John & Yasser piece:
"Democratic presidential nominee-to-be John Kerry called Yasser Arafat a 'statesman' and a 'role model' in a 1997 book that Kerry cites as proof of his own foresight about foreign policy.
"Kerry expressed the opposite view eight days ago, when he told Jewish leaders in New York that he shares President Bush's belief that Arafat must be isolated because he's not a 'partner for peace' -- much less a statesman."
Maureen Dowd tells us about Kerry the Poet:
"Mr. Kerry is not a simple brush-clearing, ESPN-watching fellow. Just as he has an almost comically vast palette of aggressive masculine sports and hobbies, with costumes and gear, he has a vast palette of cultural preferences.
"He not only reads poetry -- 'I love Keats, Yeats, Shelley and Kipling' -- he writes it. 'I remember flying once; I was looking out at the desert and I wrote a poem about the barren desolation of the desert,' he said. 'I wrote a poem once about a great encounter I had with a deer early in the morning that was very moving.' (Sometimes he shoots deer, sometimes he elegizes them.)"
David Brooks zeroes in on Kerry the Wealthy:
"Kerry's second wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is worth over $500 million. Between them they have a $4 million mansion in Georgetown, a $6 million townhouse on Louisburg Square in Boston, a $6 million summer home on Nantucket, a $3 million estate in Pittsburgh and a $5 million ski lodge in Idaho, which is a 15th-century English barn that was disassembled and imported to the U.S." He is also "a guy whose 42-foot powerboat, the Scaramouche, sells for upward of $700,000."
Mickey Kaus looks back to Kerry the Playboy:
"The NY Post's Page Six gossip column recently had an item noting that the wife of NYT executive editor Bill Keller -- back when she was single -- once went out with Senator John Kerry (who was then between wives). . . . I trust Keller, unlike his predecessor, to play it straight when it comes to the Times' Kerry coverage. But NYT readers are certainly entitled to know about the connection. . . .
"The response of the Kerry campaign was: 'Americans care about jobs, health care and national security, not gossip,' declared Kerry spokesman David Wade. 'John Kerry's coverage in the New York Times will be determined by his vision for the country and the fights he wages and nothing more.'
"Please! Wouldn't a less pompous and on-message -- in a word, a less Lehanish --response, be more effective? Something like: 'Yes, they went out when they were both single. So what?' " |
