The Many Faces of John Kerry (Part 2)

The Many Faces of John Kerry (Part 2)
Originally posted Sept. 2, 2003; reposted July 29, 2004
By John Pike




This is the second of a two-part, in-depth report on John Kerry and the 2004 presidential race.

Is Kerry a Democratic liberal or a centrist, as sometimes is claimed? The rating services of both the left and right report that he votes with Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts about 96 percent of the time in support of a strong tax-raising and government-knows-best platform. In the 1972 campaign, Kerry ads displayed photos of Kerry and Kennedy together.

John Forbes Kerry no longer trumpets the fact that his initials are JFK, and he has expunged his middle initial from his bumper stickers. Political operatives in the Bay State say this is because it is believed his close association with the Kennedys and Massachusetts liberalism might hurt his presidential candidacy, especially in the South. When it is remembered that he was Democratic presidential-nominee Michael Dukakis' lieutenant governor, Kerry campaigners note that the two were elected on separate ballots.

There are other image problems that still have not been handled. The week that included Kerry's appearance before Congress included another incident that produced an embarrassment that took years to be exposed. In a protest on April 23, 1971, Kerry led his shocked countrymen to believe that, weeping, he and his VVAW comrades had tossed their war medals onto the steps of the Capitol where a large sign nearby proclaimed: "Trash." It stirred the emotions for those on both sides of the conflict and again spurred media attention for Kerry. But then in 1984 a reporter noticed that Kerry's medals were displayed on the wall of his office and the Wall Street Journal reported that, when confronted, Kerry claimed he actually tossed away his combat ribbons, not his medals. Kerry says he threw someone else's medals. Whatever the truth, he had let the fabrication continue for years.

But enough for now of Kerry's life many years ago when the Earth was flat. Anyone past the age of 40 knows that people change their minds and even reform their character during the course of their lives. Perhaps the question should be, "Is Kerry still saying whatever needs to be said to get elected?" You bet, critics say.

Last December, after arriving a half-hour late to speak and answer the questions of 175 politically savvy Dartmouth College students on the cold and snowy New Hampshire campus, Kerry spoke of the need for increased investment in renewable energy sources such as wind, geothermal, ethanol, biomass and solar. "Twenty percent of all electricity to be produced by renewable energy sources by 2020" is his battle cry. He calls for "a new Manhattan Project" for alternative energy. He says he disagrees with the Green Party platform on only one issue, but doesn't say which. The kids love it.

Naturally, when a private company came to Massachusetts recently and told of plans to generate electricity with the winds that blow through the 18 miles of ocean between touristy Cape Cod and wealthy Nantucket Island, one would expect that Kerry would jump up and down with glee. Wrong. He is waffling. With super-rich landholders and yachtsmen such as Walter Cronkite, the Kennedys, Kerry himself, and his neighbors concerned about the possible sighting from the shore or their yachts of a few sea-based windmills, the candidate is unwilling to give the project his support at this time - a critical period when the alternative-energy company needs as much help as it can get. Critics call it hypocritical, but a Kerry spokesman provides this disclaimer: "The facts aren't in on Cape Wind and its environmental effect. ... John Kerry is waiting for all the information to come in the environmental-impact statement before he makes a decision on whether to support the project."

Those opposed to the project are not saying they don't want to have to sail around the windmills, but are talking about such concerns and sensitivities as whether birds will fly into them and be hurt or killed - a worry that never stopped the erecting of a skyscraper or a barn or house or even a telephone pole. Needless to say, environmentalists who favor use of alternative energy to replace fossil fuels wherever possible, and who considered Kerry to be a strong ally, indeed a very strong ally, are beginning to use the "O" word for opportunist and the "P" word for phony.

Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, has put it this way: "Kerry is the one who really needs to be called out on this stuff. He's been pretty mum so far. We don't know where he stands." And many on the left who were expected to support Kerry's candidacy, but have drifted off to Howard Dean, say there is a pattern to all of this. Most cite the invasion of Iraq, currently a more important issue than renewable energy. They note that Kerry voted to give Bush authorization to wage war in Iraq, and they say they are not likely to forgive him for it.

In a speech Jan. 23 at Washington's Georgetown University, this longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said, "We need a new approach to national security. A bold progressive internationalism that stands in stark contrast to the too-often belligerent and myopic unilateralism of the Bush administration. The blustering unilateralism is wrong, and even dangerous, for our country. In practice, it has meant alienating our longtime friends and allies, alarming potential foes and spreading anti-Americanism around the world. I say to the president, show respect for the process of international diplomacy because it is not only right, it can make America stronger. And show the world some appropriate patience in building a genuine coalition. Mr. President, do not rush to war."

Columnist Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe also wonders whether Kerry tries to be all things to all people. Jacoby reports that, when in the early 1990s a constituent wrote Kerry expressing support for an invasion of Iraq, Kerry's office responded by sending two letters - one saying he opposed the war and another supporting President George H.W. Bush's response. Kerry blamed it on computer problems and the failure to dispatch a third letter - one opposing the war but supporting the troops.

With antiwar candidate Dean moving ahead in New Hampshire and Iowa, Kerry continued to try to present himself as both for the war and against it, say Democratic political consultants in the Bay State. Now, they say, he may be writing off those states in favor of a last-ditch stand in the South as a national-security veteran.

An experienced Kerry watcher reminds that in 1984, when he first was trying to win election to the Senate, his chief rival in the tough Democratic primary was U.S. Rep. James M. Shannon. Kerry had been outscored by Shannon, 100-94, on the endorsement questionnaire of a group opposed to America's then-growing military. In Massachusetts, the antiwar vote was and is significant, and the two liberals were vying for their vote. A member of the group favoring a reduction in funds earmarked to build key weapons systems contacted a Kerry lieutenant and advised that Kerry change his answers on the questionnaire so that both candidates would have an equal score. Kerry changed his answers, both got a perfect score and the maneuver kept Shannon from receiving the important endorsement.

In seeking approval of this disarmament group, Kerry formally expressed approval of canceling a host of the very weapons systems that helped defeat Iraq so quickly, including the B-1 and B-2 stealth bombers, the AH-64 Apache helicopter, the Patriot missile system, the F-15, F-14A and F-14D jets, the AV-8B Harrier jet, the Aegis air-defense cruiser and the Trident missile system. Kerry says of this 1984 campaign posture, "I'm sure that some of it was driven at the time by the nature of the beast I was fighting politically."

Kerry said recently he does not remember changing his answers on the questionnaire, even though it was well-publicized at the time, and that his first responses may just have been a misstatement of his position or misinterpreted. "I wasn't trying to be on both sides of it," he soothes.

The problem for Bay Staters who know him, and for Democrats in nearby New Hampshire who are swamped by Massachusetts media with tales of his comings and goings, poses and postures, commitments and causes, is that this man thinks nothing at all of being mercurial and contradictory. It is a joke among local politicians that Kerry will simply say or do anything for the slightest advantage. For instance, they point out, Massachusetts has lots of folks of Irish decent who vote out of proportion to their numbers and being Irish there is a strong advantage to winning election - especially for Democrats, as the large number of Irish surnames at the Massachusetts Statehouse will testify. "It is how you become one of the boys," says Mike Gilleran, the former deputy chief of the Massachusetts Republican Party.

To Kerry's advantage his surname sounds Irish and his facial features look Celtic to locals. Virtually everyone has always assumed he was Irish-American. He isn't. And not only is he not Irish-American, his mother's people are New England Brahmins. For some Massachusetts Democrats, voting even once for a Yankee Brahmin requires three "Hail Marys" to cleanse the soul.

The maternal ancestors of John Forbes Kerry include the Forbeses, who made their fortune starting the Boston-China trade, and the Winthrops, one of whom led the English settlers overseas to Boston and was the first governor of Massachusetts in the 1630s. Another Winthrop was governor of Connecticut from 1676 to 1683.

While Kerry's maternal forebears were known by all, he was forgiven that accident of birth for the sake of his father's presumed Irish stock. Kerry says he has known for only about 15 years that his father's mother was in fact Jewish and from the former Austrian empire. He also says he only found out recently, when a Boston Globe reporter informed him of it, that around 1902 his grandfather Kohn, a Jew from Bohemia, changed his name from Kohn to Kerry. Not only that, he says he was completely unaware that grandfather Kerry shot himself to death in the men's room of the Copley Hotel in Boston, a story so notorious that it appeared at the time on the front pages of Boston newspapers.

Although a Kerry spokesman says that he continually corrected reported misstatements about his supposed Irish heritage, it immediately became clear to the scoffing Boston press that the senator had manipulated the misunderstanding to his advantage, having tried to correct the record in only the most tangential way if at all. Other Massachusetts politicians also have lied about their supposedly Irish heritage to gain electoral advantage. But, says Gilleran, "If it were understood by the population that he was not Irish, he would never have risen in Massachusetts politics.

Pretense to imaginary forebears may be a misdemeanor as these things go, but breaking and entering is not. Heard of Watergate? Get ready for Lowellgate.

On Sept. 18, 1972, the evening before the primary election during his second attempt for Congress, Kerry's brother Cameron and one Thomas Vallely, both part of his current campaign team, were arrested by Lowell police at 1:40 a.m. and charged with breaking and entering with the intent to commit larceny. The two were apprehended in the basement of a building whose door had been forced open, police said. It housed the headquarters of candidate DiFruscia. The Watergate scandal was making headlines at this time, and it was called the Lowell Watergate.

"They wanted to sever my telephone lines," DiFruscia said recently. Had those lines been cut, Kerry's opponent would not have been able to telephone supporters on Election Day to get out the vote and coordinate poll watchers, vital roles in a close election. "I do not know if they wanted to break into my office," says DiFruscia today. At the time he said, "All my IBM cards and the list of my voter identification in the greater Lowell area are in my headquarters."

Cameron and Vallely, along with David Thorne, who was Kerry's campaign manager at the time and has been close to him since they attended Yale together, did not deny the two entered the building in which they were captured. They said at the time they were in the cellar of the building to check their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning they would be cut.

This reporter heard an allegation that another congressional candidate placed the alleged anonymous call, which was denied. But if the Kerry campaign was concerned about someone breaking and entering to cut off its telephone service, why didn't they just call the police? Why break the law? And what does any of this say about Kerry's mind-set? Kerry campaign officials did not answer important Lowellgate questions.

The case was transferred to superior court and continued without a finding, where it was dismissed about a year later. But since it happened at the last minute, and Kerry won the primary but went on to lose the general election, this ugly business did not receive intense media scrutiny. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were busy investigating another break-in.

To tease Kerry, the editors of his Yale yearbook listed him as a member of the Young Republicans. As the Democratic primary grows more heated, says a top Democratic political consultant, the issues are likely to become: "What is a Democrat?" And, "Is John Kerry one of them?"

John Pike is a contributing writer for Insight magazine.