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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (598568)	8/2/2004 8:53:40 AM
From: Andrew N. Cothran	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769669

Please pass the Heinz---P L E A S E! SPICY HEINZ ADDS A DASH OF UNEASE By DEBORAH ORIN in the New York Post, August 1, 2004 Botox. Billionaire. Prenup. Private plane. Eccentric. "Mama T." Sexy. Cheeky. "Shove it!" Hardly typical images for a would-be first lady, but ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry, 65, is one of a kind — as she showed last week with an all-about-me convention speech that mixed feminism, globalism and New Age lingo. Some delegates loved it but others were aghast as she bragged of speaking five languages and showed off a few words in each, then talked of the Galileo space probe and "the mystic chords of our national memory" — but not much about husband John Kerry. "It stinks. And it ain't going to play in Peoria," groaned a New York Democrat who's at least as liberal as Heinz Kerry. It wasn't just the speech that showed why Heinz Kerry is seen as a loose cannon — her temper exploded last week when she told a reporter to "Shove it!" for daring to question why she bashed foes as "un-American." No wonder the chattering classes are buzzing about whether she is a problem for her husband's White House bid — and what he should, or can, do about it. Kerry aides know the risks. Asked if her unorthodox convention speech will hurt her husband, a campaign aide replied with a smile: "Only if people saw it." It seems Team Kerry's strategy was to hide her in plain sight by having her speak Tuesday, the one convention night with no prime-time network coverage. By contrast, Kerry's two daughters got spotlighted Thursday, when he spoke. "She's an enigma. Voters are intrigued, but her message doesn't wear that well," said Republican pollster Frank Luntz after analyzing Heinz Kerry's speech with a group of 20 voters in pivotal Ohio. "She is so different, so unique that you don't know what to expect. She's an asset with partisan Democrats, a liability for core Republicans — and it's undetermined with swing voters." Most men stayed mum in the focus group, suggesting Heinz Kerry makes them uneasy but they don't want to get into a fight about her. Luntz found the same male attitude toward Hillary Rodham Clinton early on. Most political strategists doubt that wives have a major impact on the election, but Mrs. Kerry sure doesn't look like an asset compared to the super-popular Laura Bush, a former school librarian. Mrs. Bush is rated 66 percent favorable and 12 percent unfavorable — a 5-to-1 positive ratio — while Heinz Kerry is rated 27 percent favorable and 26 percent unfavorable. No wonder President Bush now seems to get extra-loud applause for a standard line in his stump speech — that a prime reason to re-elect him is to keep Laura as first lady. "A wife can personalize, can humanize. She says, 'I love him and you can, too.' That's why the most bizarre thing is that [Heinz Kerry] is out there talking about herself instead of him," says Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway. Heinz Kerry has also blabbed that she loves costly wrinkle-smoothing Botox injections and got a prenup to limit the would-be president's access to the billion dollars or more that she inherited from her late husband, Republican Sen. John Heinz. She boasts that she's "sexy" and calls herself "Mama T." Remember how Sen. Clinton once said she could have avoided controversy by staying home and baking cookies? Heinz Kerry has gotten into a squabble with Family Circle magazine over just that: cookies. Every four years since 1992, the magazine holds a candidate wives' cookie contest — bake their cookies and vote for your favorite. It was Laura Bush's oatmeal chocolate chunk vs. Teresa Heinz Kerry's pumpkin spice — but last week Mrs. Kerry suddenly raged that dirty tricks were afoot by her own staff to make her look bad with a "nasty" recipe. She accused ex-press secretary Christine Anderson of submitting a phony recipe: "Somebody at my office gave that recipe out and in fact I think somebody really made it on purpose to give a nasty recipe." No wonder a New York convention delegate warned: "They've got to get her under control."