Ongoing Daily debate on Kerry at "The New Republic online."
You've courageously drawn the short straw in this debate. For that, you have my admiration and sympathy. And throughout your artful--if audibly tendon-popping--defense of Kerry, you had me nodding my head like a dozing-off spectator halfway through one of the senator's speeches. Yes, Kerry has risen to the top of the pile in the perilous precincts of both Massachusetts and national Democratic politics, feats that, combined with his stellar war record, attest to his personal toughness. And yes, the party could do a lot worse. Al Sharpton is still available, isn't he?
But if this is truly the best the Democrats can do to challenge a wildly overspending, special-interest-pandering, inarticulate saber-rattler, then it's a pathetic comment on the party's isolation and shallowness.
A Kerry nomination would be a significant comedown from the salad days of Bill Clinton. For all of his self-centered warts, Clinton also displayed some of the best traits of the baby-boom generation: independence, creativity, a genuine empathy for people, an acute awareness and understanding of his times. He chose the politics of hopeful optimism over bitter class warfare; triangulation and the rhetoric of reform over partisan mau-mauing; Robert Rubin over Robert Reich. John Kerry too often manifests the worst of the boomers: group-think, self-importance, and the overweening arrogance of a generation that still looks back at Woodstock and sees utopia instead of a public health hazard.
Your litany of Kerry's "impressive" resumé is unintentionally revealing. His spirited defense of the Sierra Club's environmental agenda, while arguably commendable, hardly represents courageous risk-taking in the pro-green context of Massachusetts and national Democratic politics. Outside of the environment, his legislative record is virtually non-existent. Instead, he's been a glorified DA, overseeing well-publicized investigations that have led to few if any constructive changes in the drug war, corporate corruption, or clandestine military operations. All of the major Democratic battles of Kerry's day--health care reform, tax reform, civil rights, minimum-wage increases--have been fought primarily by others, most notably by his Bay State colleague, Ted Kennedy.
Most of the minor battles are fought by Ted, too. It's been a longstanding truism in Massachusetts politics: If you want something done in Washington, you don't bother to call Kerry's office. Chances are, your call won't even be returned. Last summer, in separate interviews I asked three of Kerry's peers--Congressmen Ed Markey, Marty Meehan, and Mike Capuano--to name three specific things Kerry had done for Massachusetts. None of them could do it. Just today I asked the same question of a Massachusetts state representative who is Kerry's biggest legislative supporter. He drew a blank too. If you're lucky enough to be one of Kerry's few pet causes, or someone he needs something from, you may experience the persistence and energy that endears him to his war buddies and his special-interest allies. Otherwise, you get the miserly Kerry who, in 1993, gave $175 to charity out of his $126,000 salary, but found $8,600 to buy himself a fancy Ducati motorcycle.
Of course, this election isn't about nominating a new Captain Kangaroo. Dan, you argue that while Kerry may well be an aloof jerk, an entitled swell who lacks the manners to eat a campaign cheese steak the way his host makes it, he is "centered." So is a man straddling a fence, but what good does he do anybody? TNR has already documented some of Kerry's more spectacular waffles: the 1991 questioning of affirmative action dogma, followed immediately by hasty retreat in the face of liberal censure; the 1998 education-reform broadsides, quickly abandoned in the face of teacher-union heat. Who wants to be the first senator to risk his political comfort zone for a principle? Not John Kerry.
Let's face it, the track record of upper-echelon baby-boom political leadership so far is not impressive: Gary Hart and Clinton squandering capital on cheap sex; Newt Gingrich drowning a political revolution in egomania; Al Gore 2000; Dan Quayle. Appallingly, John Kerry may well turn out to be a better specimen than his competitors, and one hates to begrudge the hope of a restoration of two-party government next fall. But, Dan, let's not pretend that a Kerry nomination would be anything more than the latest eruption of baby-boomer political flatulence. |
