If John Kerry were a Republican (yeah, lots of blog posts start with that clause), the major media would by now be keeping up a steady undertone of comment on the weirdness around the edges of his campaign. Just within the past couple of days, he has called for a “more sensitive war on terror” and made a point of denouncing President Bush for calmly continuing to read to school children after being informed of the 9/11 attacks. At the time, the President’s steady demeanor in the face of a catastrophe of then unknowable magnitude was widely admired, but, for all of his French affectations, Senator Kerry seems to dislike the concept of sang-froid. (One wouldn’t expect him to have heard of “stiff upper lip”.)
Earlier, there was his bizarre explanation of why he called corporate executives whose companies hire overseas workers “Benedict Arnold CEO’s”: The phrase was inserted by “overzealous speech writers” and rotely read by the candidate even though it wasn’t what he meant. I can understand blaming speech writers for getting obscure statistics wrong or plucking a line from a paean to Stalin as a campaign slogan, but Yale graduate John Forbes Kerry ought to know who Benedict Arnold was and to realize that the label is not nuanced.
But the strangest aspect of the Kerry campaign, one that grows odder the more one thinks about it, is the Senator’s obsession with a few months in his youth. John Kennedy had his heroic war story, too, and PT-109 wasn’t neglected during his run for the White House, but it was never his central theme. Senator Kennedy, 14 years out of uniform in 1960 (compared to Senator Kerry’s 34), did not pretend that he was still a military man when he went to the stage to accept his party’s Presidential nomination. Had he saluted and announced that he was “reporting for duty”, the guffaws would have drowned his speech and Richard Nixon would have waltzed into the White House.
How heroic vel non Lieutenant Kerry’s service was is not the issue. Whether he was another Alvin York or the self-important bumbler depicted by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, what kind of man wants to make youthful war stories the central theme of his biography? Bores at VFW bars and bums who have nothing else to say for themselves. Practically every American of my generation has a father or uncle who served in World War II for a longer period and under more dangerous circumstances than John Kerry did in Vietnam. Not many of them made that service the central feature of their résumés.
One would think that a man running for President of the United States would be especially eager to burnish his credentials as a political thinker, a legislative mover and shaker, a capable administrator, an effective advocate for his constituents, a champion of worthy causes, as someone who has ably carried out many responsibilities since his four months as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam (in a role that, according to Spinsanity (far from a pro-Bush site), he did’t want). It’s true that Senator Kerry’s record is unspectacular, but Senator Kennedy’s was, too. With a bit of imagination, the Kennedy campaign succeeded in cobbling together a picture of a forward-thinking, energetic Senatorial leader. The Kerry campaign hasn’t so much as tried. What this suggests to me, at the risk of indulging in amateur psychoanalysis, is that the “second JFK” lacks self-confidence. He feels that he has done nothing with his life for three decades except wait hopefully for a chance to become President. Now that he has one, as much through blind luck as his own merits, he reverts to the one episode of his career on which he feels justified in looking back with pride.
That strange psychological state is consistent with the occasional outbursts of odd behavior. It may not be inconsistent with a successful Presidency, but it isn’t reassuring to those of us who may have to suffer through a President Kerry’s quest for his own identity.
Addendum: If youthful conduct really is pertinent to evaluating Presidential candidates, one ought to look at the negative as well as the positive. John Kerry’s last substantive administrative positions were those that he held as an undergraduate at Yale. I saw his performance first hand then. As I have discussed elsewhere, it ranged from mediocre to disastrous. Were the President’s principal duty to command small craft in a war zone, the young Kerry’s record would qualify him admirably. It isn’t so good a credential for the biggest executive job in the world.
Further Reading: Mark Steyn, “Nuanced? Kerry’s Story Just Doesn’t Add Up”
Andrew Coyne, “John Kerry’s Favorite Subject”, contrasts the Kerry and Kennedy speeches accepting their Presidential nominations. Kennedy:
Above all, what is noticeable is how little he talks about himself, or his family, or the important life lessons he learned as a boy while sailing off Martha’s Vineyard. He does not boast of past accomplishments, or those still greater he is sure to achieve as president. (The word “I” appears only 30 times in the entire speech, compared with 110 for Sen. Kerry.) The only time he makes himself the issue is to say that it should not be an issue: that is, to dispel fears that, as a Catholic, he could not be trusted to govern impartially. But he does not refer even once to PT-109, or the injuries he sustained saving the lives of his crewmen, still less base his entire candidacy on it.
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