PART II of Max Celand story
Last fall, during the desperate days when few gave his candidacy much hope, Kerry would sometimes get a call on his cellphone from Cleland. Don't give up, each would tell the other.
After months of paralyzing depression, Cleland had slowly begun to reemerge from his election defeat, starting as a teacher with the Semester Program at Washington's American University. It was the same program Cleland had attended 40 years earlier as a young man seeking an outlet for his idealism. Lecturing once a week—or, more accurately, regaling his students with old political war stories—became a kind of therapy for the unemployed ex-senator.
One day in the spring of 2003, Jim Jordan, manager of Kerry's presidential campaign, called Cleland and invited him to lunch. "I asked him what he was prepared to give the campaign," says Jordan, who has since left the Kerry camp in a staff shake-up. "He warned me he was going through a rough patch and didn't have the strength or the energy to do a whole lot. Happily, he underestimated himself."
When the summer semester ended, Cleland threw his body and soul behind Kerry, barnstorming through the key states of Iowa and New Hampshire and rallying others with his energetic example. At one point, when just about all the political experts had written off Kerry, the head of his Iowa campaign, John Norris, put Cleland on a statewide phone hook-up with staffers and volunteers. "He told people to hang in there, to remember what we were fighting for and told them we could win this thing," Norris recalls. "He was an inspiration, especially during the down days."
But Cleland and the veterans he helped pull to Kerry's side provided more than a morale boost. They were crucial to his victory in Iowa, which proved to be the pivotal contest of the Democratic primary fight. (Anecdotal evidence suggests as many as half the Kerry supporters in certain precincts were veterans.) And vets continue to play a vital role as Kerry works to broaden his support for the general election. Indeed, no presidential candidate in the last 40 years has wrapped himself so tightly in green khaki.
Veterans are on hand to greet Kerry and see him off at virtually every campaign stop. His stump speech regularly refers to his military service, and members of the Swift boat Kerry skippered in Vietnam have appeared in TV spots and campaigned across the country on his behalf.
Kerry strategists have set a goal to recruit 1 million veterans as active supporters by November, an effort that is unprecedented for either major party. "We found in the primaries that a vet calling a vet was different" from the standard political outreach effort, says John Hurley, who is leading Kerry's recruitment drive. "It's like a friend talking to a friend."
Recent history suggests that a candidate's military service—or lack thereof—is a non-issue for most voters, including veterans. In 1992, vets were split evenly between Bill Clinton—who famously avoided the draft—and President George H.W. Bush—who was decorated for combat valor in World War II. In 1996, Clinton easily defeated Robert Dole, another decorated World War II vet. In 2000, George W. Bush prevailed over a pair of Vietnam vets—McCain in the primaries and Democrat Al Gore in the general election—despite questions about Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.
But Kerry's strategy is about more than courting veterans. Privately, his aides concede that Bush probably will carry the veterans' vote, given the traditional Republican advantage on national security issues. More important is the message that Kerry hopes to send with his cordon of old soldiers. Together, they form an implicit honor guard intended to convey toughness, character and a capacity to serve as wartime commander in chief.
Norris, now head of Kerry's national field operation, describes them as "validators."
Bush did much the same thing in 2000, when he campaigned among blacks and Latinos and turned his nominating convention into a multiracial pageant, not so much to win a majority of ethnic support but rather to appeal to centrist voters as a "compassionate conservative."
Spotlighting his Vietnam service "helps sell Kerry in Wal-Mart America," says Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist who studies public opinion on military issues. "How many Wal-Mart shoppers went to Yale? How many Wal-Mart shoppers are in the Senate? Not many. But being a veteran, that provides a connection. Even if you're not going to win that subgroup, it can make Kerry more human.''
Max Cleland lives life with great gusto. "When you come back from war," he says, "every day is an extra-credit day." He laughs from the belly up, sweats when he campaigns hard and brings a voracious appetite to the table. At a coffee shop in Seattle, breakfast consists of oatmeal with bananas and raisins, eggs, bacon and a hubcap-size pancake slathered with berries, extra butter and syrup. He says grace before the meal, something he does even when he isn't feeling particularly blessed. "I've prayed for the ability to experience the joy that life has every day, even when I'm not feeling it," he says.
His purpose, he states repeatedly, is to help other Democrats, to "turn my pain into someone else's gain." It is one of the many aphorisms and little self-help squibs that Cleland collects, the way another person might seek exotic stamps or gather rare coins. They sound hokey, except that Cleland seems to cling to their inspiration so utterly.
He arrives at breakfast in Seattle with a quote, something else he collects. Over the course of an hour, he will cite Shakespeare, Helen Keller, Rudyard Kipling, John Kenneth Galbraith and, repeatedly, John F. Kennedy. But the quote he brought especially for the occasion comes from retired Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore, whose book told the story of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry in Ia Drang, one of the first U.S. battles of Vietnam. The book was made into a movie, "We Were Soldiers," which Cleland calls the best film made about that divisive conflict. "He said his book was not a war story, but a love story," Cleland explains.
And so, Cleland says, is his campaign on behalf of Kerry, Knowles and the other Democrats he calls his "band of brothers." It is not a political story, but a love story.
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Mark Z. Barabak covers politics for The Times. He last wrote for the magazine about House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. |
