The trouble with Kerry - Your one-stop center for doubts about JFK2. from Slate.com
I'm a Democrat, but I have two big fears about John Kerry. The first is that he'll lose. The second is that he'll win. Let's take the second possibility first. One reason Kerry might lose, after all, is an inchoate public intuition that he would not be a successful president.
Failed presidencies were almost considered the norm before Reagan and Clinton came along. I'll also concede the Conventional Wisdom that Kerry is a good hand in the seconds and minutes of a crisis--when bullets are actually flying, or bombers are on the way. It's only after the crisis subsides that he turns into a play-it-safe straddler! But I'm getting ahead of myself. There are at least four factors that suggest Kerry is more likely to be a failed president than a successful one: Unwillingness to take political risks is only #2.
1. Does he work well with others? The worry here isn't so much that Kerry is an untested executive--he's never run anything larger than his Senate office--but that the presidency requires more than mere executive competence. A CEO can give orders, but to make the Founding Fathers' balky triple-veto system work, a president has to cajole congressmen and construct complicated alliances. Is that something Kerry is likely to be good at--or is he more likely to be a Jimmy Carter-style president, aloof and resented even within his own party?
The hints in Kerry's senatorial resume aren't encouraging. Legislating is an almost pathologically collaborative effort, and Kerry has been a conspicuous non-performer in the legislation department. Time magazine found exactly "three substantive bills passed with Kerry's name on them" Two of these "had to do with marine research and protecting fisheries." (The other was "designed to provide grants for women starting small businesses.") Kerry's record as a senator for two decades would be embarrassing were it not for his investigations into drug commerce and his initial digging into illegal aid for the Nicaraguan contras.
2. No visible political courage: The great question for Kerry biographers is how a man who showed bravery on the battlefield could demonstrate so little of it in his political life. Bill Clinton wasn't the boldest politician in the world, but he risked something by embracing teacher testing in Arkansas and an end to "welfare as we know it." And he stuck with those stands, trying to persuade the unpersuaded, until something came of them. Al Gore had the guts to break with his party and vote in favor of the first Gulf War--showing foresight and sound judgment that Kerry (and Clinton, for that matter) did not match.
Name an issue on which Kerry has taken this sort of career-threatening risk. True, he was an early supporter of the Reagan-era Gramm-Rudman-Hollings budget-balancing law. But since even Edward Kennedy supported Gramm-Rudman, there are limits to how many heresy points Kerry gets for it. Kerry's supporters occasionally offer his vote for welfare reform as evidence of courage--but supporting welfare reform wasn't a risky vote for a politician with national aspirations. It was the only safe vote. Nor was Kerry a significant presence in the welfare reform debate.
A more telling and troubling episode is Kerry's speech expressing doubts on affirmative action. The year was 1992, a time when Democrats could expect lots of favorable press for doing heretical things like expressing doubts about affirmative action. (Those were the days!) Kerry had announced a grand initiative on race, including "a promised series" of speeches, the first of which was delivered at Yale. Kerry's heresy was carefully cushioned, however,. He felt the pain of whites resentful of reverse discrimination. He noted that "affirmative action has kept American thinking in racial terms." But for him these thoughts had no policy consequences --Kerry didn't call for an eventual phase-out of affirmative action, for example, or a shift to affirmative action based on class rather than race. He didn't want to end it, and he didn't want to mend it either. Instead, within a few paragraphs he safely reaffirmed his support. Then he backed off even his theoretical doubts after the first critical reaction (and after Bill Clinton had passed over him in choosing his running mate.) The race initiative was shelved.
This is why the oft-told story of Kerry protesting the Vietnam war by throwing someone else's medals away resonates uncomfortably. Kerry wasn't willing to take the risk of parting with his own medals. They might come in handy some day! Even in his moment of maximum political bravado he was cautious.
3. Yep. No vision: Clinton developed his "Third Way" views over the course of decades.You could find them mushy or disagree with them but they were his own. What's Kerry's inspiring philosophy? If he had such a thing, one suspects, he wouldn't have campaigned by copying a CD-ROM of consultant Bob Shrum's old speeches into his hard drive. Even Shrum's shopworn memes--'I'll take on the powerful interests that stand in your way' etc.--don't really amount to a vision, as opposed to an attitude.
Perhaps Kerry can obtain a vision on the political black market in the months between now and the Democratic convention. But even if he does, will he be able to sell it? This brings us to ...
4. No fallback salesmanship: Successful modern presidents have one thing in common: a good pitch-man's basic rapport with mainstream voters. Reagan had it. Clinton had it. By this I mean that if Clinton or Reagan called the networks to cover an Oval Office speech, or if they addressed the Congress, the voters would at least give them a hearing--not necessarily buy what they were selling, but come to it with minds that were persuadable in a way that they had been persuaded before. That meant that when Reagan and Clinton got into trouble, as all presidents do--Reagan with Iran-Contra and Clinton with Monica--they were able to reboot, give some big speeches, and start to get out of trouble.
Sometimes a president's initial rapport with the public disappears--as Jimmy Carter's arguably had by the time of his malaise speech, or certainly by the end of his term. But Kerry would, I think, be in the uniquely precarious position of starting his term with no particular rapport. (Contrast with John Edwards-- now there's a guy who could talk his way back from a 40% approval rating.
I admit, I'm allergic to Kerry. Something in the vibration of that deep, pompous tone he adopts--the lugubrious, narcissistic fake gravity--grates on me. Others, bizarrely, say they don't have this problem. But few would argue that Kerry has formed a special bond with any large group of voters other than veterans. If he wins it's likely to be because voters see him as an acceptable alternative to an unacceptable incumbent, not because he's inspired them. It doesn't help that Kerry has a tendency to play the voters for fools--letting them think he's Irish (when he's not) or letting them think he's cleaner, in the campaign contribution department, than he really is.(e.g., saying he takes no PAC money but accepting unlimited "soft money" contributions to his Citizen Soldier Fund.)
Or letting them think he gave up his own medals. ....