It is pretty clear now that Barack Obama is going to deploy John Kerry as an attack dog. There are a variety of reasons why this is a good idea: John Kerry is considered an elder statesman of the Democratic party, especially on matters of foreign policy, the environment, and energy policy, so McCain's charges on the Obama campaign of inexperience ring hollow with JK as a surrogate. I am sure Obama views Kerry as a loyal soldier who endorsed him way back in January after Hillary won New Hampshire, not to mention that Kerry chose to pluck Obama out of relative obscurity to be the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. But the most compelling reason to deploy Sen. Kerry as attack dog, is that he clearly pushes McCain's buttons. John Kerry drives McCain completely up the wall. After all, the only time this entire election season where we have seen McCain giving us a glimpse of his famed temper was when John Kerry's name came up. Given this reality (whether you love or hate Kerry), I am serving this diary up with a comprehensive history of why Kerry can attack McCain with abandon, and to set the record straight from the selective amnesia of right wingers and the traditional media.
This has been the typical response to John Kerry playing attack dog against McCain:
John Kerry on Loyalty
I suppose it only makes sense for John Kerry to attack John McCain (unfairly, if you bother to understand the context) for suggesting that it was not terribly important when American troops exit Iraq, and I suppose it only makes sense that Kerry would make his attack so personal by suggesting that McCain is "confused" about basic facts of Middle Eastern history. These are low blows, of course, but understandable, given the way McCain turned on Kerry during the Swift Boat attacks of 2004. Oh, wait.
The "oh, wait" by Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic, was a link to John McCain calling the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry "dishonorable and dishonest". To many in the traditional media, the only thing they remember about McCain's relationship to Kerry was his three words against the SBVT and the "VP dance" that occurred in the spring of 2004 when rumors abound that John Kerry wanted John McCain as his running mate. All other history has been erased. Well, that is changing right now.
I intend to prove two things in this diary: 1) That John Kerry has a long history of defending McCain vigorously when his honor was questioned and that 2) It was McCain who turned on Kerry, thereby burning all bridges to what was once a powerhouse bipartisan friendship.
It is important to start at the very beginning of the history of that friendship. The story told in 1996 of how Kerry and McCain came together on the POW/MIA issue is still a compelling one. And because they got the job done along with the other members of the POW/MIA Select Committee and President Clinton, that history remains intact, with none of the fighting these days casting a shadow on the good work they did together. But it is important to note that the first political act John McCain made toward John Kerry was to go to Massachusetts in 1984 to campaign against him. McCain hated Kerry for protesting the Vietnam War and his testimony in 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But then McCain got to know Kerry on a 1991 flight to Iraq after the first Persian Gulf War, and he changed his mind about the man. They became good friends, finding an alliance on the POW/MIA issue, both serving on the POW/MIA Select Committee. But it was a difficult time for McCain, who was constantly harrassed by the Ted Sampley crowd who had been peddling conspiracy theories for years, preying on families of POWs and MIAs:
And what this investigation revealed, in the words of its final report—twelve hundred and twenty-three pages long—was that "while the Committee has some evidence suggesting the possibility a POW may have survived to the present, and while some information remains yet to be investigated, there is, at this time, no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia."
The judicious phrasing of this conclusion did not conceal its meaning from those who were never going to surrender the issue. They became enraged, and aimed their anger at the one person whose participation was undermining their cause: John McCain, the man who'd gone to sleep reciting the names of P.O.W.s. I saw this not long ago, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in Washington. There visitors can buy T-shirts, decals, and other souvenirs, and they can pick up free copies of a bimonthly broadsheet, The U.S. Veteran Dispatch. On the front page of the June-July, 1996, issue is a photograph of a young John McCain, purportedly as a prisoner in Hanoi. The headline reads "PW SONGBIRD MC CAIN," and the caption explains, "McCain earned the title 'PW Songbird' because of the propaganda broadcasts he made for the Reds during the Vietnam War." The article elaborating the charge was written by a former Green Beret, a decorated Vietnam veteran. An article in a previous issue was headlined "JOHN MC CAIN: 'THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE.' "
One man came to McCain's defense during the vicious attacks, and he didn't just say a few measured words on it:
"Listen," Kerry said to me, sitting forward in his chair at his Washington home. "I defended him in those hearings when some stupid-ass right-wing idiot accused him of being the Manchurian Candidate, that somehow the Vietnamese had brainwashed him. This is the most unbelievably callous, degrading, nonsensical piece of crap I've ever heard in my life, coming from some chicken hawk out there, to hurl at somebody who spent as long as he did being tortured and standing up for his country, and caring about it as much as he did. It's incredible that people would behave like that, absolutely stunning."
And it wasn't just in the hearings. Kerry even defended McCain when he was up for re-election to the Senate:
In 1992, as the Kerry committee's deliberations were nearing their conclusion, McCain was up for reëlection. That fall, he made one of his numerous trips to Vietnam, going over and back in a weekend. His Democratic opponent seized on the trip, criticizing McCain with more than an implication that he was grandstanding. Kerry had been the object of such attacks himself, so he immediately organized a letter from the members of the committee, Democrats and Republicans alike, defending McCain. Senator Bob Kerrey, of Nebraska, a committee member and a Medal of Honor winner, had gone to Arizona to campaign for the Democrat, but he, too, supported McCain on the issue. McCain won the election.
Then there was the moral support Kerry gave McCain during the hearings when he could barely conceal his anger the character attacks on him were so nasty:
Sometimes McCain was attacked by his fellow-senators and sometimes by witnesses. He was the lightning rod. I was told by a member of the committee staff that when Kerry and McCain were sitting near each other on the senators' dais, Kerry would, at such moments, unobtrusively move his hand over to McCain and place it on his arm and leave it there, a quiet gesture of what was becoming absolute mutual support. I asked McCain if he had been aware of Kerry's touch. "Yes," he replied. "He did that several times, and I'm glad he did. I'm grateful to him."
If you think that Kerry's defense and moral support for McCain was a given because they served on the same bipartisan select committee doing important historical work, that is not the case with all the senators serving. Most notable has been Bob Smith, former Republican Senator of New Hampshire. To this day, he does not speak well of John McCain:
Former senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican, expresses worries about McCain: "His temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him."
(Please note: Bob Smith endorsed Kerry for president in 2004)
The next difficult period for McCain came in 2000 during the presidential primary against Bush. As is famously known, McCain was smeared by Bush and Rove in South Carolina. What some have forgotten is that McCain had friends who he could count on to come to his defense:
Five Senators Slam Bush
FLORENCE, S.C., Feb. 4 -- Gov. George W. Bush was slammed today by five senators who, like his chief rival, fought in Vietnam for using a veterans activist to criticize Senator John McCain's record on veterans issues.
...
On Thursday Mr. Bush shared a stage in Sumter, S.C., with J. Thomas Burch Jr., chairman of the National Vietnam and Gulf War Veterans Committee, who said Mr. McCain, hailed as a hero for surviving five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, had opposed measures dealing with Agent Orange and gulf war syndrome as well as legislation to help families of soldiers missing in action in Vietnam.
"He came home, forgot us," Mr. Burch said.
In the letter to Mr. Bush, the senators said: "We are writing to express our dismay at the misinformed accusations leveled by your surrogate."
"These allegations are absolutely false," said the letter signed by Senators Max Cleland of Georgia, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Charles S. Robb of Virginia, all Democrats, and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Republican and one of Mr. McCain's few supporters in the Senate.
"Indeed," it went on, "Mr. Burch was a leading critic of President Reagan's and your father's policies on POW/MIA issues, and he vehemently opposed a historic effort led by the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs carried out on a bipartisan basis which resulted in the declassification of millions of documents and the identification and return to the United States of the remains of hundreds of American servicemen who were missing in action."
The senators wrote that Mr. McCain was a leader on veterans issues. "We hope you will publicly disassociate yourself from these efforts, and apologize to Senator McCain."
Referring to the senators, Mr. McCain said: "Their friendship is all the honor I need in my life, and more than compensates for the temporary irritation of baseless attacks by apparently desperate political campaigns."
So who was not just a signer to the letter, but who wrote it and got all the other Vietnam Vet senators to sign it?
Years ago, three of the Vietnam combat veterans Kerry served with in the Senate—John McCain, Bob Kerrey and Max Cleland—told me something that Kerry had never even hinted at: that Kerry had come to their rescue on occasions when they had been publicly attacked. He organized Op-Ed pieces and television appearances to defend his colleagues; he wrote a letter during the 2000 South Carolina primary, signed by Vietnam combat veterans of both parties, calling on George W. Bush to stop associating with veterans' groups who said McCain had abandoned vets ...
That, "my friends", is the definition of a good and loyal friend. Somebody who sticks his neck out for you. So, in light of these incredible defenses of McCain, how should we view McCain's defense of John Kerry during the Swift Boat ads? I would refer to McCain's actions back in August 2004 as a bare minimum of what McCain was obligated to do for someone who had his back over so many years.
Here was McCain's defense of John Kerry in August 2004:
"I deplore this kind of politics," McCain said. "I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable. As it is, none of these individuals served on the boat (Kerry) commanded. Many of his crew have testified to his courage under fire. I think John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam. I think George Bush served honorably in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War."
I am not going to downplay it. This was a good moment for John McCain when he did the right thing, and I am sure that Kerry did appreciate it at the time. But within that statement contained what clearly was a right wing talking point which I heard from Bush supporters: that Kerry's and Bush's "service" were comparable. The whole point of the SBVT attacks was not necessarily to convince people of every lie they told; it was rather to create a reasonable doubt and to bring Kerry's service down to Bush's level. McCain, in his defense of Kerry, ends up defending Bush at the same time. Adding insult to injury, when the Kerry campaign featured an ad that included McCain in it and how he was smeared in 2000, McCain demanded it be pulled. And finally, when conventioneers at the Republican National Convention sported purple band aids to defame Kerry's service, McCain was silent, and instead spoke on behalf of George W. Bush as a full throated surrogate. But if this was as bad as it got from John McCain, I would be willing to let it pass. Still, it hurt:
"John’s was the strongest credible voice in Congress supporting the President’s actions against Saddam Hussein," Lindsey Graham said. "His support was critical." Some of those closest to McCain thought he was going overboard. His daughter Meghan, a student at Columbia, who voted for Kerry, called McCain and chastised him when she saw him on television making statements she considered baseless. "Once, when John was talking on TV about what a great wartime leader Bush had been, my wife had to leave the room," Chuck Larson, whose son-in-law has been flying F-18s over Iraq, told me. But many friends point out that once McCain agreed to join the Bush campaign team he would not hold back. "In for a dime, in for a dollar," he commented to aides, who ribbed him about his role change. Kerry apparently took McCain’s conversion hard. According to a key Democratic strategist, it was not McCain’s rejection that angered him—he had always understood the odds were long. But Kerry had believed that they were bound by a special friendship, first forged in the nineteen-nineties, when they worked together to normalize U.S. relations with Vietnam. And when McCain moved into his political mode—praising President Bush so extravagantly that Kerry seemed diminished by the comparison—Kerry felt betrayed.
That was only the beginning. Over the past three years we have seen McCain sell out almost everything that he used to believe in. The straight talking maverick died the day he decided Kerry was a friend he could no longer afford. The final nails in the Maverick coffin were hit in 2006 and 2007 when McCain was downright dishonorable toward John Kerry.
The first incident happened on October 31, 2006, when in the midst of the faux outrage of Kerry's "botched joke", McCain decided he wanted in on the Kerry bashing action with this craven and despicable statement:
Senator Kerry owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country’s call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education.
Americans from all backgrounds, well off and less fortunate, with high school diplomas and graduate degrees, take seriously their duty to our country, and risk their lives today to defend the rest of us in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
They all deserve our respect and deepest gratitude for their service. The suggestion that only the least educated Americans would agree to serve in the military and fight in Iraq, is an insult to every soldier serving in combat, and should deeply offend any American with an ounce of appreciation for what they suffer and risk so that the rest of us can sleep more comfortably at night.
"Without them, we wouldn’t live in a country where people securely possess all their God-given rights, including the right to express insensitive, ill-considered and uninformed remarks.
If McCain had an ounce of integrity (which he apparently doesn't these days), he would admit he doesn't believe a word of his own statement about John Kerry. I mean, come on, John. Vanity Fair was equally skeptical and got the snippy McCain treatment:
Two years ago, McCain was unsparing in his criticism of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who slimed his friend and fellow Vietnam veteran John Kerry. Kerry felt close enough to McCain at the time to make multiple and serious inquiries about McCain’s interest in running for vice president on a national-unity ticket (and McCain basked in the courtship, even if he knew nothing could ever come of it). So the alacrity with which McCain joined in demanding an apology from Kerry—whose "botched joke" last fall about George Bush’s intellect came out as a slur against American troops in Iraq—was surprising, if not unseemly. Once upon a time, the two friends would have talked about the issue privately, and McCain might well have given Kerry his frank advice. As of mid-November, they had not spoken since McCain’s statement condemning Kerry’s "insensitive, ill-considered, and uninformed remarks"—which McCain once again read from a piece of paper, by the way. When I asked McCain if he thought Kerry was really trying to insult the troops, he answered only indirectly, and with some annoyance: "I accepted it when he said, ‘I botched a joke,’ O.K.?"
And, finally, even more substantively, it became known in 2007, that John McCain
has been taking tens of thousands of dollars from the SwiftBoat donors:
The most notable recipient of Swift Boat largesse is John McCain, erstwhile front-runner and Stand Up Guy. When the Swift Boat ads were first unleashed, McCain was alone among his Republican colleagues to condemn them. A fellow Vietnam veteran, a good friend of Kerry's and a former target of smears about his own service, McCain called the ads "dishonest and dishonorable," a "cheap stunt," and he urged Bush to condemn them. But in pursuit of the GOP nomination, McCain ditched the mantle of maverick for that of hack, and his once-floundering, possibly rejuvenated campaign has been aided along the way by $61,650 from Swift Boat donors and their associates. "There is such a thing as dirty money," said Senator Kerry in a statement, after The Nation informed him of McCain's FEC records. "I'm surprised that the John McCain I knew who was smeared in 2000 and thought so-called Swift Boating was wrong in 2004 would feel comfortable taking their money after seeing the way it was used to hurt the veterans I know he loves." (McCain's office did not return calls for comment.)
The swiftboating from 2004 still stings, and the donors are just as big a deal as John O'Neill or Karl Rove.
So the next time you come across a media type who is all bent out of shape because John Kerry was being mean to John McCain, please send them this diary. Because I guarantee you, Obama will continue to use John Kerry to set McCain off. I think all the anger and annoyance McCain shows when Kerry's name is mentioned is because of one thing: guilt.