[lit-ideas] More on John Kerry's background
- From: Eternitytime1@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 10:39:11 EDT
Hi,
This does not deal with the Vietnam issue, but it does deal a bit with *who*
Kerry is and a bit as to why I do tend to think of him as more 'one of us'
rather than 'one of them'.
(He's a bit like Missouri's own Kit Bond--who grew up in Mexico MO [not TOO
far from Julie <g>]--and while working at the University of MO's law library
while in graduate school, my boss was a woman who had gone to school with him
(and knew his ex-wife). He kind of did what Kerry did--rising eventually
to a place where he has quite a bit of $$ and power (for a variety of
reasons--this article states that Kerry married money twice..)--and while Bond
is a
Republican <g>, he started out championing many public policies which
benefited small business, children (Like the organization Parents as Teachers
he
was the one who pushed and made it happen on both a statewide and nationwide
basis), etc. (Of course, Bond took a break and kind of 'lost' it for a
while-but has returned to what and who he used to be these past few years.
[the
speculation is that he 'lost' it when he ended up in the Senate because of too
much playing around--which is when he ended up divorced--but has 'grown'
since
and his marriage to a woman who held him at arms length for some time
totally turned him back into who he *used* to be.) Dang, but I digress.
Too much in my head, I fear.
Anyway, I highlighted in bold what his ideas are/have been in regards to
(esp) ealthcare/insurance costs. I had not really heard quite the analysis as
to why Hilary Clinton's healthcare proposal failed.
So, here is an article (by Boston Globe columnist...I guess that is why they
focus on Kerry alot...he is from that area...) which also talks about how he
tried to go upward without 'work' after Vietnam by running for Congress
because he was so upset at the whole Vietnam War. He eventually realized
that he
needed to start at the bottom and went to Law School and then started out
as an assistant prosecutor (kind of like most of the rest of the
politicians...)
I look at this as how he has had to learn what I think is both a major life
lesson (that of learning that we have to do things step by step) and how he
uses that lesson for good.
His ideas of the government stepping up and paying for the cost of a
medical procedure/situation if it costs more than $50,000 is kind of
intriguing.
It still allows for private medical insurance, but takes away the insurance
companies screams that they have to charge everyone a fortune because of a few
people's procedures. I am going to see what else is written on it...
_The Kerry I Know_ (http://www.prospect.org/web/view-print.ww?id=8118)
So he's not Mr. Charisma. But he has courage, judgment, and intellect.
Imagine that!
By _Thomas Oliphant_
(http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?name=View+Author§ion=root&id=1116)
Issue Date: 08.01.04
The first two times I dealt with John Kerry, when he had his initial brush
with notoriety many years ago, I didnâ??t know what to make of him. It was
actually a little later, after he had screwed up and taken one on the jaw,
that I
became intrigued by him. He lost his first political fight, and deserved to;
but instead of slinking off to a privileged corner of his world, he decided
on a slow climb up the public-service ladder. Not for the last time, his grit
surprised me.
Now, on the threshold of his more than decent shot at the presidency,
something un-chic has occurred to me: Odds are that he could be a successful,
even
excellent, president. No hero worship here. Knowing somebody is supposed to
mean knowing him as a human being, zits and all. Part of my confidence
involves the meeting of a particular kind of public figure and his times; part
of
it is this inner drive of his that survived the bright flash of sudden fame
that burns out just as quickly and accepted the non-flashy way up the ladder
so
long ago.
I like Kerry a lot. I admire how he got to this place. And I think he is
well-prepared to preside over the sausage making that lies ahead of him if he
wins this fall. It is likely to be a tough grind -- more or less the way he
likes it. (His successful discussions with John Edwards about a partnership
displayed a sensible pol with the confidence to reach beyond his familiar
world;
the fact that my genius daughter helped discover â??two Americasâ?? for
Edwards
and now writes for the ticket only proves again that she has figured things
out faster than I have.)
In non-Bush America, a far more prevalent symbol of sentiment these days,
rather than outright affection for Kerry, is the â??Anybody But Bushâ?? pin.
Anybody But Bush avoids Kerry. It also contains more than a little bit of
disdain
and disrespect -- common attitudes in a modern Democratic Party that seems
able to take the concept of unity only so far. Democrats (political writers,
too) love second-guessing, relentless kibitzing, pseudo-biographical
psychobabble. In todayâ??s political culture, progressives tend to be
neurotic,
conservatives fanatical.
The best cure for this neurosis is not artificially induced adulation but a
rational decision to recognize Kerryâ??s strengths. This is a contemplative,
serious person -- well-grounded in progressive principles -- who has the good
habit of getting interested in new ideas that survive scrutiny. His work
habits reveal an iron butt for grunt work, as well as considerable experience
in
working across party lines. A non-Bush president will have to repair
considerable damage abroad and at home, complex tasks that will resist grand
fixes
and reward the patience and tough negotiating that are Kerry attributes. But a
non-Bush president will also have to think and act big and new, and the work
Kerry has already done on a range of issues should inspire confidence.
He is a sober yet imaginative person for sobering, dangerous times, but his
looks and wealth conceal the steel that got him this far and often cause him
to be underestimated. It was a long, strange trip, hardly befitting someone
with a first-class education who married money twice.
After Kerry returned for good from Vietnam, he impulsively entered one of
the eraâ??s many congressional fights in which pro-war politicians were being
challenged: a weirdly gerrymandered Massachusetts district that stretched from
the western Boston suburbs north toward New Hampshire. The year was 1970, and
the incumbent was a go-along Senate Armed Services Committee stalwart, Phil
Philbin, ripe for the plucking.
The anti-war candidates had agreed to abide by a vote at a mass gathering of
the principal organization in the state, Massachusetts Political Action for
Peace (MassPAX). The overwhelming favorite was the Reverend Robert Drinan,
then dean of the Boston College Law School. But during the MassPAX meeting at
Concord-Carlisle High School, Kerry made a riveting speech -- previewing
themes of soldier betrayal and new-recruit determination the nation would hear
the following year in Washington -- that won high praise. Kerry still lost,
but
I kept his phone number and made sure I stayed in touch as he became
involved in the fledgling Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
What Kerry did in the spring of 1971 still amazes me. The power and
eloquence of his statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee gets most
of the
attention because the film survives, but what amazed me more was the quiet
leadership he and a few pals showed in guiding perhaps 2,000 veterans -- many
severely wounded, angry, bitter, and passionate -- for a week that stunned
the country with its nonviolent effectiveness.
At the time, Kerry told me that he assumed his actions had precluded a
political career, a sentiment experience had taught me to share. I was
surprised,
therefore, to hear of his intention to run for Congress in the McGovern year
of 1972 in a Massachusetts district centered on the blue-collar city of
Lowell. Not surprisingly to me, the rookie made a mess of his race. Anti-war
fervor in the Democratic Party had propelled George McGovern past Edmund
Muskie,
and Kerryâ??s congressional campaign was at first almost entirely based on
Vietnam. But a changing economy had made the area around Lowell, always a
redoubt
of lunch-pail economics anyway, unusually interested in what a new Congress
would do for ordinary people. By the time Kerry realized his message was way
off-key, it was too late; 1972 was a McGovern year in the spring, but it was
a Nixon year in the fall.
I was more pleasantly surprised somewhat later when Kerry told me he had
decided to enter Drinanâ??s onetime haunt at Boston College Law School. I
sensed
he still wanted a public life, but now he was going to do it the hard, and
better, way.
A young guy who had been a decorated Naval officer was among the most
effective spokesmen against the war he fought in; a rather typical liberal
then
became a pretty good, ambitious local prosecutor in the most important
suburban
county in the state. His rise up the ladder was now conventional, methodical.
It has always impressed me that he won his intraparty fight for the
lieutenant-governor nomination in 1982 and the one for the Senate in 1984 much
differently than he lost his race for Congress in 1972. The younger Kerry had
been
an upscale, one-issue candidate; this older guy was much less the darling of
Beacon Hill, the Back Bay, and the nicer suburbs and much more the favorite
of the older suburbs and tougher cities. The first thing an observer noticed
was the veteransâ?? connection that would become such a visible element years
later in his presidential campaign. On top of that, Kerry grafted ideas and
messages that were much more Democratic than merely liberal. His majorities in
the primary victories of 1982 and 1984 were from Lawrence and Fall River and
Framingham more than Cambridge and Brookline.
From the beginning of his 20 years in the Senate, Kerry was able to deal
maturely -- as his pricklier, outspoken predecessor, the late Paul Tsongas,
often did not -- with the overwhelming fact of his junior status to Ted
Kennedy.
Kerryâ??s legislation list is relatively sparse. Big deal. What he did,
though, was take what was there: foreign policy, high-profile investigations
into
shady international businesses, crime and drugs, and terrorism. He became a
true expert on affordable housing, a passionate and authoritative advocate for
the public financing of federal elections, and gradually emerged, with Al
Gore, as a leading spokesman on energy and the environment.
In our meetings and meals during his first term, though, it was occasionally
obvious that a painful separation and divorce had left his life unsettled
and not all that happy. I remember dinners during that first Senate term when
I
would drop him off at a dump of an apartment in Foggy Bottom, almost always
putting a damper on an otherwise lively evening of argument and
reminiscence. After his re-election in 1990, his first stab at national
politics -- a
poor attempt at positioning to get on Bill Clintonâ??s vice-presidential short
list -- showed a person not ready for the game yet. Eight years later --
remarried, happy, and grounded -- he had the maturity to take a brief look at
doing
what Bill Bradley tried to do against Gore and wisely take a pass. Instead,
he worked like a dog as a Gore surrogate in New Hampshire, and this time
around was a natural finalist for vice president.
And, finally, to the present, and his own race. When Kennedy took Kerry
around eastern Iowa (largely working class and Catholic) shortly after
intervening to turn the latterâ??s sagging, résumé-based presidential
campaign around,
the senior senator regularly used a story that captures the best of Kerryâ??s
last two decades. As Kennedy told it, accurately, there was nothing to be
gained and much possibly to be lost when Kerry and John McCain set out in the
1980s to bind up the countryâ??s wounds from the Vietnam War. For months on
end,
there was not a syllable of press coverage as they painstakingly put old
prisoner and missing-in-action myths to rest and began assembling the case for
establishing relations with Hanoi. Inch by inch, they brought the country
along
with them. From a master of hard political work like Kennedy, it was deserved
praise, and a genuine sign of what Kerry is capable of.
After nine times around the track, Iâ??m convinced that the presidency is
something that requires more fate than ambition. Sometime Jupiter aligns with
Mars, sometimes it doesnâ??t. And when Kerry started campaigning in earnest in
early 2003, he -- not for the first time in his career -- came out of the
blocks
miserably. Since 1982, every one of his fights has required a second wind.
What I think is most relevant to a possible Kerry presidency is that he has,
up until now, always listened to criticism when he has been screwing up, and
he has responded forcefully.
The initial year of his presidential campaign was almost fatal because of
two rookie mistakes influenced by hubris: Kerry bought into front-runner-ism
via fund-raising yardsticks, and, worse, he bought into a presentation based
mostly on himself, his war record, and his résumé. What was missing from the
calculus was a Democratic electorate in Iowa and New Hampshire (and
nationally)
that was more interested in how national policy might improve its members
lives, not just in Iraq or even in the much-celebrated â??anger.â??
What I still find arresting is that Kerry not only listened and responded to
the simple message that he was tanking, a regular occurrence in the
political career of someone who mostly understands that campaigning doesnâ??t
come
naturally to him; he also took his new campaign manager and communications
director straight from the top of Kennedyâ??s Senate staff, more at his senior
colleagueâ??s insistence than recommendation. Not only that, Kerry had the
guts to
walk away from the reason (the importance of neighboring New Hampshireâ??s
primary) that there have been so many New England presidential candidates over
the
last four decades (John F. Kennedy, Muskie, Ted Kennedy, John F. Kennedy,
George Bush Senior, Michael Dukakis, and Tsongas).
People come up with shrewd and brilliant ideas in presidential politics all
the time, but the tactic of Kerryâ??s will be studied for ages. Based on the
diagnosis that he was sinking like a stone in New Hampshire, the recommended
cure was to leave the state after mid-December and try to use Iowa (where he
was also plummeting) as a slingshot to propel him back into contention in the
Granite State. Put yourself in Kerryâ??s shoes as he decided he had to give up
on neighboring New Hampshire and head west; it took balls. It also took
discipline to talk, town after rural town, much more about kitchen-table
economics
and less about foreign affairs and much less about himself. Kerryâ??s comeback
was a lot of things, but it was not out of character. Once again, it was the
more difficult path to success.
Itâ??s also helpful to know that his comeback was political and personal, but
-- quite contrary to the â??flip-flopâ?? label the Bush team has sought to
stick
on him -- it did not involve a single change in his approach to the big
questions of our day. Normally, positions on issues donâ??t work well for me
as
clues to a presidency, or as stand-alone reasons to be for someone. In
Kerryâ??s
case, however, he has made three contributions -- in health care, on energy,
and in foreign policy -- to the national discussion over the past year that
are vintage Kerry and powerful evidence of how his political mind works. They
are not derivative, and, in each instance, the contributions were formulated
not by the pollsters or the advisers but by Kerry himself.
On health care, as Kerry grappled with the mess of todayâ??s nonsystem, he
made a critical conceptual breakthrough in his analysis of why the great
attempt
in 1993â??94 under Bill and Hillary Clinton flopped. In his mind, and heâ??s
correct, the problem was that universal-coverage schemes tend to focus on the
roughly 15 percent of the public that lacks insurance at any given moment,
instead of the 85 percent who have what could be charitably called coverage
(many of whom despise it almost to apoplexy).
Kerryâ??s second conceptual contribution was his determination to find and use
savings from inside the wasteful status quo to finance health careâ??s reform
and expansion, focusing on the third of all health-care costs that are not
clinical. His third was to invest in and use new technology and other
qualitative strides in medicine to accumulate still more savings. His fourth
was to
build toward universality using the existing mix of private and public
delivery systems, not to jerry-rig a new one, the best example being his
endorsement
of tax credits to assist individuals who want to buy into the choice-laden
federal employeesâ?? health-insurance plan.
Finally, to deal with viciously escalating insurance costs, Kerry went for
the idea of federalizing catastrophic costs, above $50,000 for a condition or
illness. After careful vetting (a version of this had been on the table as
far back as the Nixon administration; more recently, it has attracted
considerable business support), he was able to claim that this would reduce
insurance
costs an average of $1,000 per beneficiary. This is vintage Kerry: part
traditional progressive (meaning Ted Kennedy), part new thinking, and designed
politically for swing voters in Congress.
His conceptual contribution on energy was similar in its focus on using the
existing energy business system, as opposed to new taxes or general revenues,
to produce a revenue stream for investments in new technologies for old
fuels like coal and natural gas, as well as renewables. The idea is to use
royalty payments from oil and gas exploration to finance a trust fund for
conservation and renewable investments that could, over a decade, reduce
imports by 2
million barrels per day -- about what comes from the Persian Gulf currently.
It is an investment both in lower energy costs and in economic growth in new
industries. It is also a plan designed to avoid many of the regional and
special-interest political fights that have bedeviled presidents for 30
years.
Kerry sought from the beginning to plan big on the energy front, both to
find a grand, worthy national effort along the lines of the space program in
the
1960s and to serve a larger foreign-policy purpose. A national policy to
gradually end the addiction to imports from the Persian Gulf is likely to do
far
more to â??transform the Middle East,â?? to borrow the silly Bush
phraseology,
than invading Iraq almost unilaterally with no workable plan for the
aftermath. Kerry would back it up with a reactivation of the Middle East peace
process, with an activist United States at the center again and allies and
moderate Arab states enlisted to provide aid to -- and put pressure on -- the
Palestinian Authority. A long period of tacit and not so tacit acquiescence in
Ariel Sharonâ??s postures and actions would cease. Vigorous diplomacy -- in
his
conviction that it really works, Kerry is very much his
foreign-service-officer
fatherâ??s son -- would define him in large part, not merely in the Middle
East but also in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea; with trade agreements; the Kyoto
Protocol process; and the various nonproliferation regimes. My pal Mark
Shields once observed that, more often than not, each president is the
stylistic
antithesis of his predecessor. Kerry is a worker as well as a thinker.
Kerry has also shrewdly insisted -- from the beginning of his campaign -- on
a requirement, as economic policy, that the budget deficit be halved within
four years in order to keep the business recovery from hitting a wall of
higher interest rates. It is often noted, accurately, that Kerry seeks a
return
to the basic ideas Bob Rubin followed for Bill Clinton in the â??90s. What
the
observation misses, however, is the fact that Clinton got all the way through
his first campaign in 1992 decrying the economyâ??s stagnation and advocating
stimulus. Kerry, by contrast, has stuck his neck out on fiscal sanity almost
from the moment he declared. Kerry is a real Democrat in his commitment to
significant new expenditures on priorities like health care, education, energy
independence, child care, and additional tax breaks for the middle class and
working poor. However, he is also a New Democrat in his belief that the
overall context must be anti-deficit for the sake of long-term economic
growth.
Kerry is not by instinct a visionary, which is both a statement of fact and
a legitimate criticism. He will have to work hard on coherent statements of
purpose. Beginning in Iowa, however, I noticed two constant themes that got
through to the caucus-goers and then to the primary voters in New Hampshire
who
made his nomination inevitable: that encouraging and rewarding work as a
government priority should dwarf rewarding wealth, and that combating
international terrorism and promoting Americaâ??s interests in a dangerous
world are
tasks that require allies.
Kerryâ??s other, overarching political thought is that the election of a
Democratic president this year would liberate an unknowable number of
governance-minded Republicans from the iron grip of the GOPâ??s congressional
leadership,
no matter who is in the majority. In the House of Representatives especially,
the party discipline Tom DeLay can invoke on President Bushâ??s behalf would
almost by definition be less powerful under a President Kerry. On any given
domestic issue, there would be 20 or more Republicans available with the
proper
enticements and atmosphere. For those to the left of center who recall that
JFKâ??s belief in 1960 was that the country could do better, not that it could
be revolutionized, Kerry is the kind of person and politician I believe to be
worth trusting for this grubby, central task of coalition building.
In his remarkably thorough book on Kerryâ??s formative youth, Douglas Brinkley
tells a story about the two of us in the moments just before Kerry began his
statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. We had walked
from the Vietnam veteransâ?? encampment on the National Mall together, taking
a
detour while he defused a potentially volatile demonstration outside the
Supreme Court. When we entered the Dirksen Senate Office Building and raced up
the stairs a few minutes before he was due to speak, we were struck by the
absence of people in the stairwell and in the long corridor approaching the
hearing room. It felt like a Sunday.
But when we reached the door and opened it a crack, Kerry drew back
suddenly, stunned at the sight of a completely packed room. I nudged him
forward
again and attempted to cut the tension by saying, â??Go ahead. Be famous. See
if I
care.â??
It never occurred to me or to him where that moment might one day lead. I
think itâ??s important that the presidency looms on his horizon not as a
codicil
in some trust fund, a virtual entitlement by virtue of lucky birth. Instead,
it looms at the end of a long climb up the ladder from assistant county
prosecutor.
John Kerry is a good, tough man. He is curious, grounded after a public and
personal life that has not always been pleasant, a fan of ideas whose
practical side has usually kept him from policy wonkery, a natural progressive
with
the added fixation on what works that made FDR and JFK so interesting. I know
it is chic to be disdainful, but the modern Democratic neurosis gets in the
way of a solid case for affection. Without embarrassment, and after a very
long journey, I really like this guy. As one of his top campaign officials,
himself a convert since the primaries ended, told me recently, this is pure
Merle Haggard. Itâ??s not love, but itâ??s not bad.
Thomas Oliphant is a columnist for The Boston Globe. Copyright © 2004 by
The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Thomas Oliphant, "The Kerry I
Know", The American Prospect, The Kerry You Should Know, August 2004
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