Joan Swirsky
Thursday, April 29, 2004
During his primary campaign, John Kerry traveled on private jets, ate lavish dinners with his ever-present and presumably loving spouse, was spared any criticism from his competitors and was lionized by a leftist media.
To recover from the extreme “stress” of this routine, the senator took a week’s vacation at his wife’s multimillion-dollar getaway in Idaho.
Every eligible American voter must now ask:
If simple campaigning made Kerry snap at a man who asked him who the foreign leaders were he claimed were supporting him, get testy over a question about his vote for the Iraq War but against money to support our troops, and after his vacation get defensive and nasty when a small group of protesters (among a throng of fans) flapped flip-flop shoes in a symbolic gesture of the senator’s flip-flopping record, how will he react to the urgent stresses of national and international leadership?
What makes for a low tolerance to stress?
It’s usually what people used to refer to as being “spoiled.” Kids who have a sense of entitlement cannot tolerate circumstances that don’t go their way and invariably cope by having tantrums. When they grow up, they may be successful in their chosen careers, even philanthropic, and, if they’re honest, may go through life escaping scrutiny.
Not so of elected politicians who we hope and trust are dedicated to representing what we, the people, expect of a leader.
Do Americans want anyone to be president of the United States of America whose tolerance for stress runs out after a few months on the campaign trail and picks up so shortly after a vacation? Who can’t control his outbursts, puts his foot in his mouth until it reaches down to his tonsils and spews epithets on vacation?
Even on the ski slopes, Kerry attributed his spill to “the son of a bitch” Secret Service agent sworn to take a bullet for him. His staff explained that Kerry says things he doesn’t mean when he gets tired. That’s reassuring, considering that the presidency is a 24/7 job that deals with far more urgent issues than photo ops, canned speeches and skiing gaffes.
By now the entire country knows that Kerry has a bad temper, which perfectly explains his ardent embrace of Bill Clinton, the United Nations and countries like France and other regimes that have always depended on the passage of time to forgive and forget their ego-driven posturing and defects of character.
What makes for a bad temper?
In Kerry’s case, it appears to be a snobbish, condescending intolerance for dissenting opinion that he has arrived at honestly, being a son of rich and indulgent parents, privately schooled, catered to by servants, married to not one but two heiresses and, in true born-to-the-purple fashion, contemptuous of “the masses” he purports to represent.
Like those other immensely rich leftists Ted Kennedy, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton – who have spent the Bush years shrieking, flailing and generally “losing it” in public forums – Kerry has demonstrated a skin so thin that even legitimate questions provoke his anger.
Do Americans want anyone to be president of the United States of America whose bilge and bile are already – six and a half months away from the election – out of control?
Imagine Kerry meeting with Democracy-loving heads of state who tell him they support America’s global war on terrorism and hate appeasement. If he’s true to his character, it’s a good bet he will lash out, reminding them that his “philosophy” is more in tune with the U.N. and France (and other enemies of the U.S.) whose ideas about “protecting” America appeal to him more.
But if they sneer or glare at him, Kerry – who never says what he means or means what he says – is apt to change his tune. After all, for his entire tenure in the Senate, he has worked hard on a please-everyone persona, which explains why he has been both for and against every important issue facing our country for the last 19 years.
What makes for a passion to please?
In a word, insecurity, which means that deep down he doesn’t know what he really stands for and so always tries to play both ends against the middle.
Take “special interests,” which Kerry, in his practiced I-dare-you-to-challenge-me fashion, has said he will “stand up” to.
But according to former two-term governor and current Democratic senator from Georgia Zell Miller, Kerry is “the Olympic Gold Medalist when it comes to special-interest money.” Even former Vermont governor Howard Dean, Kerry’s rival during the primaries and now his Cheshire-cat-smiling supporter, said he was “outraged” that Kerry “has raised more money from paid lobbyists than any other senator during the past 15 years.”
So either Miller and Dean are lying or Kerry is lying. But even a cursory look at the record shows that … oops…guess who is lying!
Then there is Kerry’s either real or phony outrage over “outsourcing,” i.e., sending American jobs abroad.
If it’s real outrage, then just like charity it should begin at home. But oops again! That would mean that he’d have to have the character to decry the fact that his Ketchup-heiress wife gleans her fortune from the Heinz Corporation that has 57 of its 79 plants in foreign countries, and the fact that his hero Bill Clinton just outsourced $160 million worth of cabinetry for his Little Rock library to Scotland.
If, however, Kerry’s outrage is phony and he secretly appreciates the need for American companies to remain competitive by outsourcing a relatively small percentage of jobs to countries outside the U.S., then he’d have to have the character to admit this.
But in the world of moral relativism in which Kerry and his left-wing supporters live, it is unlikely that he will clarify this clear conflict of interest, hoping that the public he considers so stupid will not be able to determine whether he is lying about hating outsourcing or lying about not hating it. What makes people lie?
It is not only an innate allergy to the truth – usually driven by the desire to please or deceive – but also the arrogant belief that people are so dense that they will forget what you said in the first place.
While Kerry wants Americans to believe that he will defend our nation against terrorists, his record contradicts this. In 1994, the year after the first attack on the World Trade Center, he voted to cut $1 billion from the counterterrorism budget. In 1995, he proposed a $1.5 billion cut in intelligence funding. And he has also voted against every weapons system that is currently defending our country against the terrorists whose most passionate goal is to destroy us.
These include, among others, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the M-1 Abrams Tank, every Aircraft carrier since 1988, the Aegis antiaircraft system, the F-15 strike eagle, the Block 60 F-16, the P-3 Orion upgrade, the B-1, the B-2, the Patriot anti-missile system, the FA-18 and the F-117.
Yet Kerry still wants us to believe he’s interested in America’s defense!
Even during his campaign, Kerry lied about his prostate cancer condition, admitting to it only under pressure. And he still refuses to release his complete medical records for the four months he served in Vietnam, during which he won a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. How come? Is it because the records will reveal no scars, no internal injuries, no “therapy” and no surgery? In fact, not even one day off to “recover”?
Clearly, Kerry does not believe that “the truth” is the path to set one free but rather a relative thing to be used selectively to gain the popularity he craves.
What makes for the need to be popular?
Basically, an insatiable need for acceptance that seems only to be fulfilled from outside affirmation and not from within.
Unfortunately for Kerry, his popularity lies exclusively with only two groups: the ultra-liberal voters of Massachusetts and our country’s last remnants of enraged leftist Democrats who, to this day, are rankling unto delirium over the Bush victory in 2000.
Kerry hopes that his bandwagon of Bush bashers won’t notice that his vote for the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform law that restricts soft money contributions and, as he said, “reduces the power of the checkbook,” was violated … by guess who? Kerry wants the stupid voters and corporations to have restrictions, but when he needed cash for his campaign, he whipped out his checkbook and wrote himself a $6.4 million check!
In the same way, he wants Americans to believe that he supports our longtime relationship with that other beleaguered democracy, Israel. Again, he hopes that the stupid voters won’t remember that he described the terrorist Yasser Arafat as a “statesman” or notice that he thinks longtime critics of Israel like entrenched Arabist Jimmy Carter would best represent his administration – God forbid! – in the Middle East.
He also hopes that the stupid voters won’t notice that his wife’s Tides Foundation has financially supported, among other left-wing causes, numerous anti-war groups, including The International Action Center of Ramsey Clark (that’s right, the same Ramsey Clark who offered to defend Saddam Hussein); the National Lawyers Guild, a communist front a few years ago whose member, lawyer Lynne Stewart, was arrested for helping Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (the instigator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) communicate with terror cells in Egypt after he was arrested; and the Council for American-Islamic Relations, whose leaders have close ties to terrorist groups such as Hamas and others to which the foundation has reportedly given over $1 million.
Kerry pretends to have the best interest of the U.S. at heart, but in issue after issue – and for his entire career – invariably has aligned himself with our country’s most vicious antagonists.
What accounts for a preference to side with America bashers?
In a word: Hate. Kerry, through his votes and public statements, has made it clear that he hates large corporations, tax breaks for all citizens, our military and intelligence services, campaign finance reform (except for himself), accountability for teachers, the sanctity of human life … the list goes on and on.
Recently, he defended Shiite imam Muqtada al-Sadr as a "legitimate voice" in Iraq after this terrorist led an uprising that killed 20 American Marines. In the next breath – predictably – he changed his mind, acknowledging that indeed al-Sadr had “aligned himself with both Hamas and Hezbollah, which is a sort of terrorist alignment." Sort of?
And then – what a surprise! – he changed his mind again, saying that he would not support al-Sadr’s arrest if his terrorism were “an isolated act.”
When four American civilians were incinerated in their car a few weeks ago, all Kerry could do was insult President Bush, while offering nothing better than his tired suggestion that the corrupt U.N. get involved. “Within weeks of being inaugurated,” he said last week, “I will return to the U.N.” Isn’t this just the kind of decisive leadership America needs? The leadership of a man who can’t decide if a murderous thug who orchestrates the deaths of American soldiers should be arrested?
And just two weeks ago, when Kerry was fund-raising in New York City, a professor in the audience accused him of being “the same” as President Bush because he said he’d “stay the course” in Iraq. The professor went on to call America “imperialistic” and to say that our heroic soldiers are destroying hospitals, killing civilians, blah, blah, blah.
Did Kerry protest these blasphemous accusations and defend the U.S. and its fighting forces? Quite the contrary! He placated what he clearly recognized as a fellow America basher, spinning a say-nothing answer that both a kindergartener and a Ph.D. would reject.
Fortunately, the rest of the country is now learning about this self-glorifying poseur and that – notwithstanding his robotic rhetoric and terminal waffling – the one absolutely consistent quality Kerry has demonstrated throughout his political career is inconsistency!
Don’t Americans deserve more than a man who is riddled with character flaws and who also has a proven low tolerance to stress, a bad temper, a predilection to lying and a passion to please and be popular at any cost?
President Bush is a study in opposites, having a sterling character and none of Kerry’s neurotic qualities. Through thick and thin, he has proven to have a high level of grace under pressure, an even temper and amiable temperament, an absolute aversion to lying and, most important, a passion to please only the will and needs of the American people.
No contest!
Joan Swirsky is a New York-based journalist and author who can be reached at joansharon@aol.com
If Kerry is stressed out just campaigning, what will the rigors of being President do to him? Considering he has no message that is clear and consistant, how can he ever resolve those critical issues he will face as President? The man has no character, his only core beliefs are that America is always wrong and that America needs to get the approval of the UN to defend herself. He is driven by ambition and ambition only, as evidenced by his saying to each group he is in front of what they want to hear.
I shudder to think what he will do when tired and stressed the first time a major issue, such as a terrorist attack within the US occurs. This is not a man that can lead this country. He is not qualified by demeanor, vision or conviction. - Mark
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