Democrats Cringe When Kerry Opens His Mouth
Frog
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. .that Kerry could be ensnared in the ribbons vs. medals
nontroversy tells you why so many Democrats start to get nervous
whenever the Massachusetts Senator opens his mouth without a
script.
Kerry has something of a gift for the toxic sound bite. "It's
just weird," says a Democratic strategist. "It's simultaneously
not a big deal and sort of unsettling." The decorations flap was
only the latest evidence that Kerry's own words are turning out
to be the Republicans' most lethal weapon. The Bush campaign has
run millions of dollars of advertising based on Kerry's now
infamous comment about having voted for an $87 billion
appropriation for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan before
voting against it — a statement that makes sense only in the
have-it-both-ways world of the U.S. Senate. Kerry last week
repeated his righteous declaration that he hadn't run a single
negative ad against Bush — just in time for the release of a
University of Missouri-Columbia study finding that 32% of his
spots have been attacks against the President. And asked yet
again recently on Meet the Press just whom he meant when he said
he has heard from world leaders that Bush has to go, Kerry
lamely offered, "You can go to New York City, and you can be in
a restaurant, and you can meet a foreign leader."
Kerry gives plenty of ammunition to those who say he considers
no hair too fine to split and who charge that he tailors the cut
of what he says to meet the tastes of the audience and the
moment. Asked on Earth Day whether he owns a gas-gobbling SUV,
the champion of higher fuel-efficiency standards first said no,
then admitted under questioning that, yes, that was a Suburban
parked at his Sun Valley, Idaho, vacation house. Next, he
distanced himself from his own driveway: "The family has it. I
don't have it." It was a far different story, however, when
Kerry visited car-loving Detroit last February. Back then, he
exulted to local reporters about how much horsepower he
commands: "We have some SUVs. We have a Jeep. We have a couple
of Chrysler minivans. We have a PT Cruiser up in Boston. I have
an old Dodge 600 ... We also have a Chevy, a big Suburban."
Says a former aide, sighing: "He wants everybody to love him."
That's something critics have noted about Kerry since he got
into politics. In its newly published biography of Kerry, the
Boston Globe reports that in 1984, Kerry went back and changed
an answer on a questionnaire from nuclear-freeze advocates so he
could boost his 94% rating and match the perfect score of his
opponent. He said he had misunderstood the question.