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Posted on 02/14/2004 7:50:17 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
This time it's personal
(Filed: 15/02/2004)
From war records to dental records to interns: the mud-slinging has begun even before the Democrats have picked their presidential candidate, report Julian Coman, in Las Vegas, and Charles Laurence
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Sin City was in a sentimental mood on Friday evening. Improvised rose stalls dotted the Las Vegas streets in preparation for St Valentine's Day. At the Clark County Court House, a three and a half hour queue for on-request marriage licences had formed by 7.30pm. But at a campaign rally for Senator John Kerry, deep in the Hispanic quarter of Vegas, the subject of romance was emphatically off the agenda.
"The senator has said all he's going to say about baseless gossip," said one campaign aide. "That's all you're going to get."
It has been a high old week for the Washington rumour-mill. Did President George W. Bush really bunk off his National Guard service? Did the handsome but married 60-year-old Senator Kerry, the president's likely opponent for the White House, really have an affair with a woman journalist 46 years younger than himself?
At the Valley High School, where Mr Kerry was speaking before a raucous crowd, Cherie Brillhart, a Las Vegas casino worker, didn't care: "This is all muck-raking. The scandal-mongering about Kerry is only happening because he's got a chance of winning," she said. "All Democrats care about is kicking out George Bush. They'll take no notice of anything else."
Thomas Hagen, a telephone engineer, agreed: "I saw John Kerry deny having this affair on television, just before I came to this meeting. It's going to take something huge to make Democrats reject him at this point. This doesn't even come close."
For now that may be true. But the Republican spotlight has only just begun to shine on the past of the runaway front-runner for the Democrat nomination.
The rumours of a Kerry affair emerged on Thursday via the Drudge Report, the internet news service that broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal. This time the site reported that an extra-marital relationship, beginning in September 2001, had taken place between Sen Kerry and a pretty 24-year-old American reporter who was a frequent visitor to Capitol Hill.
The reporter, Alex Polier, is described by friends as a happy-go-lucky young woman with a striking figure and a journalism degree from Columbia University. According to Drudge, she "fled" to Africa a week ago, after being confronted by a television producer about her connections with Mr Kerry.
In Nairobi, at the home of a friend who, somewhat confusingly, may also be her fiance, she is refusing to answer the phone. Miss Polier's parents, in Malvern, Pennsylvania, have adopted the same policy, after initially denying the rumours. For his part, Sen Kerry had no option but to go on the campaign trail and face the press pack.
Throughout Friday, as he campaigned in Wisconsin before flying to Las Vegas, local reporters dogged Mr Kerry's every step, demanding a response to the charge of adultery.
Traditional family values are not the strongest electoral suit of the senator for Massachusetts, who has come under fire for his support of same-sex civil unions. Apparent disregard for his own marriage vows, if proven, would be a gift to the Bush strategists who plan to portray him as an unreliable liberal.
Kerry supporters tried to shout the reporters' questions down. Aides tried not to remember Gary Hart, another telegenic Democrat whose primary campaign collapsed in 1988 after an illicit liaison with a model. And no one dared recall the words of the candidate's formidable wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, who once warned her first husband: "If you ever get something [from an extra-marital affair], I'll maim you. I won't kill you. I'll maim you."
Finally, Sen Kerry spoke: "I just deny it categorically. It's rumour. It's untrue. Period."
Unfortunately for both Mr Kerry and President Bush, categorical denials may not be enough in this campaign. In fact, the slander, sly tricks and black propaganda have probably only just begun. Last week's muck-raking saw the first phase of what the Republican National Committee Chairman, Ed Gillespie, believes is becoming the "dirtiest" presidential contest in history. According to Mr Gillespie: "Some time this fall, Kerry campaign operatives intend to go into pro-life chat rooms on the internet to spread a scurrilous story that President Bush drove a former girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her abortion."
Though Mr Kerry is not yet even the official Democratic nominee for the White House, there are Democrats and Republicans who cannot wait to join battle. Record turn-outs in Democratic primaries tell their own story. The hanging chads of 2000, the national trauma of September 11 and polarised opinion on the war in Iraq all presage an almighty battle in November. "This is still a 50:50 electorate," a prominent Washington Democrat told the Telegraph, "just as it was in 2000. But it feels like both sides are twice as passionate."
The first low blows were aimed at the President. Mr Gillespie is still furious at Democrat accusations that George W. Bush went Awol while serving with the Alabama National Guard during the Vietnam War. As the White House provided pay-stubs and dental records, as well as hundreds of pages of documents, to prove that the president turned up for duty, the rumour-mill was turning its attention to Mr Kerry's sex life.
"It's perfectly plausible that an affair like this could have gone on for a long time without becoming public," said one Republican official on Capitol Hill. "Washington is so small that everywhere you go you bump into someone. So there is a kind of code of honour that you don't expose people's private lives. If that wasn't the case, living in the city would be unbearable."
Elections, of course, can bring out the worst in people. According to Craig Crawford, a correspondent for the Washington-based magazine, The Congressional Quarterly, the romantic gossip about Miss Polier, though it ended up in the hands of conservative media, came from jealous rivals in the Democratic primary race. Mr Crawford alleges that Chris Lehane, a senior figure in Gen Wesley Clark's campaign team, had "shopped around for months" a scurrilous report of a Kerry sexual liaison. Gen Clark himself told reporters in an extraordinary off-the-record briefing that his fellow Vietnam Veteran would "implode over an intern issue". The general apparently grew tired of waiting. He has now dropped out of the race and on Friday endorsed Mr Kerry.
Mr Lehane, though, has other connections. He also worked for Al Gore in his ill-fated 2000 campaign, when Mr Kerry was considered as a running mate for the former vice-president. After a "vulnerability study" of Mr Kerry, the idea of a Gore-Kerry ticket was quietly dropped. "They couldn't risk it," said Mr Crawford, in an e-mail widely circulated on Capitol Hill, "because they were trying so hard to distance themselves from Bill Clinton's personal failings."
Washington conspiracy theorists have begun to work overtime. Last November, Mr Gore endorsed the former governor of Vermont, Howard Dean, at a time when he led Mr Kerry in the polls. Despite a collapse in support and a failure to win a single one of the first 14 primaries, Mr Dean refuses to leave the race. Has Mr Gore told him to stay put until Mr Kerry's peccadillo is found out?
"The best attack research on candidates is always done by rivals in their own parties," said a senior Republican on Capitol Hill. "They are the ones with the right contacts and the inside knowledge." For the time being, Sen Kerry's categorical denial last Friday is likely to stand, at least until someone admits to something. In the bars around Capitol Hill, where staffers and interns congregate for early evening "Happy Hour", the story is already being used for the purposes of comedy. The thought of the sombre Mr Kerry, whose manner the New Yorker magazine recently described as "sepulchral", dallying with a woman less than half his age, has added to the legend of his vanity.
According to one Kerry campaign intern, Sen Kerry uses a titanium comb to manage his full head of greying hair. On occasions, when the comb has been forgotten, it has allegedly been "fed-exed" to his next destination. In a recent investigation in a supermarket tabloid, old girlfriends were found to testify to the hours spent by Mr Kerry in front of his mirror.
Forthcoming revelations may be more serious. The Bush campaign has barely started and, according to senior officials, it has already been decided that attack is the best form of defence. Last week Scott Reed, a Republican strategist, warned darkly: "Kerry and his team will learn real quickly that the American people do not know much about John Kerry."
After a week in which a military scandal has been swiftly followed by a sexual one, the American public does at least know something. This year's battle for the White House will be compelling: but it will not be edifying.
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14 February 2004: Kerry rejects smear and says: I'll fight back |
I would sincerely hope, if he did, he is arrested quickly.
LOL, The guy is such an egotist, I believe that is quite possibly true
They don't show their politicians on TV?
You would not know this from the American national media.
In other words he has all his teeth.
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