John Kerry on the issues
Posted on 06/08/2004 5:23:38 AM PDT by crushkerry
Popular history constructs narratives around the lives of our presidents. Sometimes, as with George Washington’s “I cannot tell a lie,” it’s a fable that speaks to the larger qualities of the man. Recent presidents have led lives that can be summed up in a single sentence. George W. Bush is the ne’er-do-well party boy who accepted Jesus at age forty and went on to do great things. Bill Clinton was the fat kid who only wanted to be loved by everyone, or anyone.
If John Kerry wins in November, his life’s narrative will be an easy one to write: no one likes him. He’s a loner with few friends, none of them close friends. It has been that way his whole life.
Democrats in New Hampshire, who recently wrote a highly critical open letter to Kerry, which has gone ignored by the mainstream press, aren’t the first people who’ve gotten to know the long, lanky senator and discovered they just don’t like him.
Beginning at St. Paul’s prep school in Concord, NH we beginning to see the “Kerry is an aloof jerk” narrative take root. At St. Paul’s School, Kerry strove for “achievement more than acceptance.”
"He may have seemed a little calculating to some people, and perhaps to me as well at the time, but he wanted to be liked," said one classmate from those days.
As he does today, Kerry had a very high opinion of himself in prep school. Even teachers were turned off. “I can remember him sitting on my sofa in the evenings, talking a long, long time,” Herbert Church, Kerry’s English teacher told the Boston Globe.
One teacher introduced Kerry to another this way: “This is Johnny Kerry. He's just feeling a little out of sorts because he thinks people don't like him.” Perhaps he wasn’t far off.
And in the April 12 issue of The New Republic we learned that when Kerry’s name was mentioned in a toast of the school’s highest achievers at a reunion 40 years later, the room reacted to Mr. Kerry's name only with scattered boos.
Kerry brought this arrogance with him to Yale, were other students would hum “Hail to the Chief” in his wake, mocking his over-inflated sense of self-importance. Indeed, Kerry was so remote and distant at Yale, one can almost imagine George W. Bush and his friends chasing Kerry down the hall, pinning him up to the ivy covered walls and pulling his underwear up over his head, in “super wedgie” fashion. (Except, contrary to Kerry’s little fib in Vogue, they never met each other at Yale.)
According to Joe Klein, it was at Yale that Kerry developed his “overactive sense of destiny, his theatrical sense of gravitas, and his initials …”
Again, according to Klein, Kerry gave a Class Oration that would make his current speechwriters blush. “There is, nonetheless, something slightly off-putting about the speech. The portentous quality, the hijacking of Kennedyesque tics and switchbacks, the absence of irony, the absence of any kind of joy …” ( funny that he now considers himself an “optimist”, eh?)
Do we even have to bring up his experience in Vietnam? Only two people who served with Kerry have endorsed his candidacy. The others have spontaneously joined together to oppose his candidacy. These are the people who know him the best, presumably. And they don’t just dislike him, they are actively working to stop him from getting anywhere near the Oval Office.
One of the few people who know Kerry well from this era and is still willing to say anything kind about him is Del Sandusky, the man whom Kerry saved in Vietnam. Sandusky, by the way, is literally a paid spokesman for the Kerry campaign.
Kerry’s first wife, Julia Thorne, was no fan of him, either. She was so lonely during her life with the self-involved politician she thought about suicide. According to her Kerry left her for another love: “Politics became my husband’s life. I tried to be happy for him, but after fourteen years as a political wife I associated politics with anger, fear, and loneliness.” John Kerry is a cold, cold man.
These themes haunted Kerry as he entered public life, too. Boston Globe reporter Martin Nolan describes Kerry this way: “He was an empty suit … he never passed a mirror without saying hello.”
To defend himself against accusations of aloofness, Kerry often invokes French writer Andre Gide (why are we not surprised), “Don’t try to understand me too quickly.” (Don’t worry, we’ve never heard of Andre Gide, either.)
But we’re not trying to understand him too quickly. This is a lifetime of anecdotes that collectively paint the picture of an unlikable snob who thinks he’s smarter and better than everyone else. Not exactly the kind of person you’d want running the country. No, John Kerry is a jerk, whom no one loves and no one will mourn. Quite a contrast from the outpouring of love for Ronald Reagan we’ve seen in recent days.
Ping
'splains alot bump
I'll use that one.
If the stuff in the article is even half truth, then we sure do have a bunch of idiots who are willing to vote for him for the presidency!
Every time I hear the "anyone but Bush" battle cry, I wonder about the intelligence of a lot of folks in this country! The Clintons/McAuliffe/Soros/etal have certainly done a good job of confusing people (and controlling the mainstream media).
Just my opinion; means nothing to anyone else but me.
Almost imagine? I can imagine it. That imagery has given me my first big grin of the day.
And, just from my POV, rather lazy and self-indulgent.
But none of this matters, how awful Kerry is. If he were a room-temp Ken doll, he'll still be hard to beat. Kerry is the anti-Bush, and we don't estimate properly the power of the anti-Bush.
If you want to understand John Kerry's psyche go check out his father's life. I think this is a like father like son, situation. IMHO some of his father's problems came from being of 100% Jewish blood but living as a Christian. Not too many Jews in the State Department where he worked.
Even now State is Israel unfriendly.
We need a John Kerry as the Grinch here.
John never had an easy time making friends
ping
Thanks for the research on this Gide charecter. I think we all could have assumed he was a jackass. But it's nice to have it confirmed.
Arrogance is the key describing word when it comes to trying describe al Querry, $inator Hildebea$t, her husband the Bent One, and most of the so call leaders of the Lunatic Left.
That "Arrogance" will eventually be the main factor in their political party becoming an ineffective, loud, obnoxious and arrogant organization.
Pray for W and Nancy
That's just stupid. I W or Ronnie had said this they would have been thoroughly ridiculed as not having command of the English language. The fact that it was said by a French author does not make it any less stupid.
I W = If W
Wrong, it means something to a lot of people who agree 100% with you.
I've known humorless guys like Kerry before. Usually I call them "Smilin' Jack" to their faces which always made them even more gloomy. I remember one such guy in high school. He fancied himself a playwrite and always walked around with scripts that he wrote under his arm. Of course, he never smiled and considered himself too important to speak to the "peons."
The word is getting out ping.
Congressman Billybob
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