WALTER CRONKITE'S LETTER TO KERRY Kerry, don't let Bush define you

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER ^ | Mon, Mar. 22, 2004 | WALTER CRONKITE

[Liz]

Dear Sen. Kerry:

In the interests of your campaign and your party's desire to unseat George W. Bush, you have some explaining to do. During the primary campaign, your Democratic opponents accused you of flip-flopping on several important issues, such as your vote in favor of the Iraq war resolution.

Certainly your sensitivity to nuance, your ability to see shades of gray where George Bush sees only black and white, explains some of your difficulty. Shades of gray don't do well in political campaigns, where primary colors are the rule. And your long and distinguished service in the Senate has no doubt led to genuine changes in some positions. But the denial that you are a liberal is almost impossible to reconcile.

When the National Journal said your Senate record makes you one of the most liberal members of the Senate, you called that "a laughable characterization" and "the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life." Wow!

Liberals, who make up a substantial portion of the Democratic Party and a significant portion of the independent vote, are entitled to ask, "What gives?" It isn't just the National Journal that has branded you as a liberal. So has the liberal lobbying group Americans for Democratic Action. Senator, check your own Web site. It says you are for rolling back tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, for tax credits to both save and create jobs, for real investment in our schools. You've voted, in the words of your own campaign, for "every major piece of civil rights legislation to come before Congress since 1985, as well as the Equal Rights Amendment." You count yourself (and are considered by others) a leader on environmental protection issues. You are committed to saving Medicare and Social Security, and you are an internationalist in foreign policy.

What are you ashamed of? Are you afflicted with the Dukakis syndrome - that loss of nerve that has allowed conservatives both to define and to demonize liberalism for the past decade and more? You remember, of course, that it was during the 1988 presidential campaign that George Bush the elder attacked Democrat Michael Dukakis both for opposing the Vietnam War and for stating he was a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union. Both proved, Bush said, that Dukakis was a liberal. Dukakis responded to that as an attack on his patriotism. He defended neither liberalism nor the ACLU.

Dukakis might have responded by saying: "I am surprised, Mr. Bush, that you are not a member of the ACLU. We do not have to agree on all the positions that the ACLU may take on this issue or that, but we should applaud its effort to protect the rights of Americans, even those charged with heinous crimes." Dukakis might have defended liberalism as the legacy of FDR and Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy - none of whom were anything like 100 percent liberals but all of whom advanced the cause of a truly liberal democracy.

But by ducking the issue, Dukakis opened the way for the far right to make "L" for liberal a scarlet letter with which to brand all who oppose them. In the course of that 1988 exchange, Bush offered a telling observation, saying, in effect, that liberals don't like being called liberal. You seem to have reaffirmed that analysis.

If 1988 taught us anything, it is that a candidate who lacks the courage of his convictions cannot hope to convince the nation that he should be given its leadership. So, Senator, some detailed explanations are in order if you hope to have any chance of defeating even a wounded George II in November. You cannot let the Bush league define you or the issues. You have to do that yourself. Take my advice and lay it all out, before it's too late.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Walter Cronkite is a nationally syndicated columnist

Walter Cronkite (mail@cronkitecolumn.com) appears regularly.

[Liz]

"Certainly your sensitivity to nuance, your ability to see shades of gray ............"

......indicates Kerry's total lack of principles, his hypocrisy, and connivance, a craven desire to have it both ways, calculated subterfuge, and an inclination to bamboozle voters to serve his own interests.........

........to name a few things Walter forgot to include.

[T'wit]

And, this would be the same Walter Cronkite who lied, lied, lied throughout his career in denying his own agenda and being the left-wing snake that he is.

[petitfour]

Unfortunately for Kerry, he has done his own defining over a lifetime.

[prion]

Dear Walter Cronkite; Sit down and shut up. We only liked you when you read other people's words. Also, it helped that you looked like Walt Disney.

[Diogenesis]

FLASHBACK

Terrorist-Murderer Saddam: "Mr, Rather, it is absolutely remarkable that you media girly men
will repeatedly betray the USA, your President, and even the free American people during war
and for so very little. You and Mr. Cronkite are truly amazing.
Do you realize, Mr. Rather, that for millions and millions of Iraqis and my captives
I had to gang rape each man's children and his wife,
and then burn them in nitric acid, and mutilate them by cutting off at least an ear,
and then force them to watch me push their children through a paper shredder.
Mr. Rather, I used to have to remove testicles and arms before we have every seen such betrayal.
But you and CBS, and Cronkite actually grovel to me and other enemies of the USA
for..... for ...... ..... for ..... for nothing.
Thank you, Mr. Rather.
Thank you. We, terrorists, al Qaeda, Communists, and Baathists worldwide,
are very very very very lucky to have you at our feet, Mr. Rather."

[OldFriend]

Cronkite and Kennedy, perfect together!!!

[evad]

We do not have to agree on all the positions that the ACLU may take on this issue or that, but we should applaud its effort to protect the rights of Americans, even those charged with heinous crimes

Wonder what ACLU he's talking about?

Oh well, at least he got the heinous crimes part right.

[Piquaboy]

Walter Crankite is also a old lying liberal weasel who should shut up.

[Just mythoughts]

"Certainly your sensitivity to nuance, your ability to see shades of gray where George Bush sees only black and white, explains some of your difficulty. Shades of gray don't do well in political campaigns, where

primary colors

are the rule. And your long and distinguished service in the Senate has no doubt led to genuine changes in some positions. But the denial that you are a liberal is almost impossible to reconcile."


This has the sound of Hillry speak. Wonder if Cronkite got an e-mail.

[TexasTransplant]

Priceless

[elli1]

Yeah...a guy who has had prostate surgery buying a jockstrap w/ his daughter in tow, telling a voter who asks a legitimate question that the answer is ''None of your business'' and calling a SS agent a ''SOB'' is ''nuance''--in the Liberal mind, that is.

[Semper Paratus]

I like Walter for one reason. He may be the only prominent liberal who is not ashamed to call himself one.

[I still care]

Walter is right. Bush shouldn't have to define Kerry, his own record should define him.

So in the interests of full disclosure, here is Kerry's voting record from last year. I have put an "L" on votes considered to be a liberal position.

For those interested, he gets a 5 life rating (on a 1-100 scale) from the American Conservative Union.

He voted
1: Against Estrada Nomination (L)
2: For Affirming Abortion (L)
3: To Keep the “Death Tax” (L)
4: To minimize tax cuts (L)
5: Against the president's budget (L)
6: For the marriage penalty (L)
7: To keep taxing people's dividend income (L)
8: Even more income taxes (L)
9: For nuclear weapon research
10: Against Military Base Closings
11: He missed a prescription drug bill vote (?)
12: Against malpractice reform (L)
13: To keep making taxpayers pay for other peoples abortions (L)
14: To Require car manufacturers to get higher mileage (L)
15: To Keep overtime rules the way it was (L)
16: Absent for a vote on government media control (?)
17: To increase federal control over local elections (L)
18: To force the US to comply with Kyoto (BIG L)
19: Missed vote on prescription drugs again (?)

Essence of recent voting record - never saw a tax he didn't like, and "Big business is evil, especially when they cut down trees and destroy our air" type of guy.

He did have 2 pro military votes, but they seem to be exceptions.

Oh, and he is a well documented member of the "Abortion is a holy sacrament" crowd.

Notice he was very careful to miss the prescription drug bills. Now he can say he didn't vote against them without betraying the "party".

[Liz]

I see incipient Alzheimer's here.

[summer]

Certainly your sensitivity to nuance, your ability to see shades of gray where George Bush sees only black and white, explains some of your difficulty. Shades of gray don't do well in political campaigns, where primary colors are the rule.

"Primary" colors are actually red, blue and yellow - not "black and white."

[cynicom]

Liz...

In retrospect, one would have to wonder where Cronkites interest and sympathy lay during the Vietnam war.

[Maceman]

A speech by Walter Cronkite -

United Nations, national sovereignty and the future of the world

upon receiving the Norman Cousins Global Governance Award,
on October 19, 1999, at the UN Delegates Dining Room

 

" I am greatly honored to receive this Norman Cousins Global Governance Award for two reasons:

First, I believe as Norman Cousins did that the first priority of humankind in this era is to establish an effective system of world law that will assure peace with justice among the peoples of the world.

Second, I feel sentimental about this award because half a century ago Norman offered me a job as spokesman and Washington lobbyist for the World Federalist organization, which was then in its infancy.

I chose instead to continue in the world of journalism. For many years, I did my best to report on the issues of the day in as objective a manner as possible. When I had my own strong opinions, as I often did, I tried not to communicate them to my audience.

Now, however, my circumstances are different. I am in a position to speak my mind. And that is what I propose to do.

Those of us who are living today can influence the future of civilization. We can influence whether our planet will drift into chaos and violence, or whether through a monumental educational and political effort we will achieve a world of peace under a system of law where individual violators of that law are brought to justice.

For most of this fairly long life I have been an optimist harboring a belief that as our globe shrank, as our communication miracles brought us closer together, we would begin to appreciate the commonality of our universal desire to live in peace and that we would do something to satisfy that yearning of all peoples. Today I find it harder to cling to that hope.

For how many thousands of years now have we humans been what we insist on calling "civilized?" And yet, in total contradiction, we also persist in the savage belief that we must occasionally, at least, settle our arguments by killing one another.

While we spend much of our time and a great deal of our treasure in preparing for war, we see no comparable effort to establish a lasting peace. Meanwhile, emphasizing the sloth in this regard, those advocates who work for world peace by urging a system of world government are called impractical dreamers. Those impractical dreamers are entitled to ask their critics what is so practical about war.

It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace.

To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order.

But the American colonies did it once and brought forth one of the most nearly perfect unions the world has ever seen.

The circumstances were vastly different, obviously. While the colonies differed on many questions, at least the people of the colonies were of the same Anglo-Saxon stock. Yet just because the task appears forbiddingly hard, we should not shirk it.

We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity. Time will not wait. Democracy, civilization itself, is at stake. Within the next few years we must change the basic structure of our global community from the present anarchic system of war and ever more destructive weaponry to a new system governed by a democratic UN federation.

I suppose I'm preaching to the choir here. So let's not talk generalities but focus tonight on a few specifics of what the leadership of the World Federalist Movement believe must be done now to advance the rule of world law.

For starters, we can draw on the wisdom of the framers of the US Constitution in 1787. The differences among the American states then were as bitter as differences among the nation-states in the world today.

In their almost miraculous insight, the founders of our country invented "federalism," a concept that is rooted in the rights of the individual. Our federal system guarantees a maximum of freedom but provides it in a framework of law and justice.

Our forefathers believed that the closer the laws are to the people, the better. Cities legislate on local matters; states make decisions on matters within their borders; and the national government deals with issues that transcend the states, such as interstate commerce and foreign relations. That is federalism.

Today we must develop federal structures on a global level. We need a system of enforceable world law-- a democratic federal world government--to deal with world problems.

What Alexander Hamilton wrote about the need for law among the 13 states applies today to the approximately 200 sovereignties in our global village:

"To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages."

Today the notion of unlimited national sovereignty means international anarchy. We must replace the anarchic law of force with a civilized force of law.

Ours will neither be a perfect world, nor a world without disagreement and occasional violence. But it will be a world where the overwhelming majority of national leaders will consistently abide by the rule of world law, and those who won't will be dealt with effectively and with due process by the structures of that same world law. We will never have a city without crime, but we would never want to live in a city that had no system of law to deal with the criminals who will always be with us.

Let me make three suggestions for immediate action that would move us in a direction firmly in the American tradition of law and democracy. 1. Keep our promises: We helped create the UN and to develop the UN assessment formula. Americans overwhelmingly want us to pay our UN dues, with no crippling limitations. We owe it to the world. In fact, we owe it as well to our national self-esteem. 2. Ratify the Treaty to Ban Land Mines, the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Convention to Eliminate All forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Most important, we should sign and ratify the Treaty for a Permanent International Criminal Court. That Court will enable the world to hold individuals accountable for crimes against humanity. 3. Consider, after 55 years, the possibility of a more representative and democratic system of decision making at the UN. This should include both revision of the Veto in the Security Council and adoption of a weighted voting system for the General Assembly. The World Federalists have endorsed Richard Hudson's Binding Triad proposal. George Soros, in his recent book, "The Crisis of Global Capitalism" has given serious attention to this concept which would be based upon not only one-nation-one-vote but also, on population and contributions to the UN budget.

Resolutions adopted by majorities in each of these three areas would be binding, enforceable law. Within the powers given to it in the Charter, the UN could then deal with matters of reliable financing, a standing UN Peace force, development, the environment and human rights.

Some of you may ask why the Senate is not ratifying these important treaties and why the Congress is not paying our UN dues. Even as with the American rejection of the League of Nations, our failure to live up to our obligations to the United Nations is led by a handful of willful senators who choose to pursue their narrow, selfish political objectives at the cost of our nation's conscience.

They pander to and are supported by the Christian Coalition and the rest of the religious right wing. Their leader, Pat Robertson, has written that we should have a world government but only when the messiah arrives. Any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the Devil!

This small but well-organized group, has intimidated both the Republican Party and the Clinton administration. It has attacked each of our Presidents since FDR for supporting the United Nations. Robertson explains that these Presidents were and are the unwitting agents of Lucifer.

The only way we who believe in the vision of a democratic world federal government can effectively overcome this reactionary movement is to organize a strong educational counteroffensive stretching from the most publicly visible people in all fields to the humblest individuals in every community. That is the vision and the program of the World Federalist Association.

The strength of the World Federalist program would serve an important auxiliary purpose at this particular point in our history. There would be immediate diplomatic advantages in just the world knowledge that this country was even beginning to explore the prospect of strengthening the UN. We would appear before the peoples of the world as the champion of peace for all by the equitable sharing of power. This in sharp contrast to the growing concern that we intend to use our current dominant military power to enforce a sort of pax Americana.

Our country today is at a stage in our foreign policy similar to that crucial point in our nation's early history when our Constitution was produced in Philadelphia.

Let us hear the peal of a new international liberty bell that calls us all to the creation of a system of enforceable world law in which the universal desire for peace can place its hope and prayers.

As Carl Van Doren has written, "History is now choosing the founders of the World Federation. Any person who can be among that number and fails to do so has lost the noblest opportunity of a lifetime."

[Fenris6]

Anyone checked to see if Rather got an oil voucher for his favorable reporting of Saddam?

[Liz]

Heheh........self-serving two-faced hypocrite left a massive paper trail, alright.

[summer]

"it is that a candidate who lacks the courage of his convictions cannot hope to convince the nation that he should be given its leadership."

"Convince the nation"? A person who does not have the courage of his convictions should not LEAD, period. What is an election now, anyway - just a contest between two parties as to which has the better ad campaign? I think it's actually more than that.