four months of proud service in a war he's best known for opposing?
" My campaign message was right on-target. After
all, I was in Vietnam, and this is how I got my medals."
Posted on 01/02/2005 7:48:43 AM PST by flixxx
KERRY SPEAKS: WHAT WENT WRONG Sun Jan 02 2005 10:35:31 ET
New York-In an exclusive interview about his presidential campaign and his life now, Sen. John Kerry tells Newsweek, "I'm not going to lick my wounds or hide under a rock or disappear. I'm going to learn. I've had disappointments and I've learned to cope. I've lost friends, a marriage: I've lost things in life."
Kerry has not given any formal interviews since his defeat. But on Nov. 11, he summoned a Newsweek reporter to his house on Boston's fashionable Louisberg Square. He wanted to complain about Newsweek's election issue, which he says was unduly harsh and gossipy about him, his staff and his wife. (The 45,000-word article, the product of a yearlong reporting project, is being published next week as a book, "Election 2004," by PublicAffairs.) Details from that interview appear in the January 10 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, January 3). Kerry talks with Newsweek about the campaign, why he lost and what's ahead for him. He did not wish to be directly quoted touting himself, however; he did not wish to appear defensive or boastful.
When asked why he lost the election, Kerry points to history and, in a somewhat inferential, roundabout way, to his own failure to connect to voters-a failure that kept him from erasing the Bush campaign's portrait of him as a flip-flopper, reports Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas. Kerry said that he was proud of his campaign, that he had nearly defeated a popular incumbent who had enjoyed a three-year head start on organizing and fund-raising. Sitting presidents are never defeated in wartime, he insisted (true, though two, LBJ and Harry Truman, chose not to run for another term during Vietnam and Korea).
While he quarreled with descriptions of his speaking style as "soporific," Kerry tacitly acknowledged that he failed to connect with enough voters on a personal level. Jose Ferreira, Kerry's nephew, told his uncle, "Some people are saying that your candidacy was driven by ABB [Anything But Bush]." Kerry replied: "Do you think so?" Ferreira said that once people got to know Kerry, they were intensely loyal. "Those are the people I let down," Kerry said, falling silent. In conversation with
Newsweek, Kerry seemed particularly interested in trying to find a way to speak to ordinary voters that didn't sound too grandiose or "political." Though Kerry did not directly criticize his friend Bob Shrum, it's clear he did not feel well served by his message makers and speechwriters.
The deeper problem may be Kerry's personality, which may be too distant or reserved to win mass affection. As Thomas left Kerry's house in November, Kerry called out and followed him down the street. Kerry wanted to show a letter from a schoolgirl that had been left on his stoop. The letter read, in part, "John Kerry, you're the greatest!" Kerry looked into the reporter's eye. "The pundits have never liked me," he said. "Is it the way I look? The way I sound?" He seemed vulnerable for a moment, then caught himself, smiled and walked home to his empty house.
In the heady days before the election, Kerry's top aides sat around picking a cabinet. Nowadays the foreign-policy team still meets on the assumption that it could be reconstituted for '08. But the reality is, "it's mostly sitting around some lawyer's office and asking each other if we've heard about jobs," says a member of the team. As for Kerry, says this adviser, "he thinks he's the frontrunner for '08 without recognizing that he needs to do some soul-searching. If he wants to come back, he'll have to come back as a different candidate, not the stiff who plays it safe and takes four sides of every issue."
Developing...
" My campaign message was right on-target. After
all, I was in Vietnam, and this is how I got my medals."
As a MA resident, I'm ashamed and humiliated.
Pray for W and Our Troops
I don't know, that UN dude 'poisoned the well' for any future action by the US Government. As for donations, I would think Imus believes private money is the way to go. At least that is how he built the ranch.
At least when Alter or Fineman are on the Imus program I get to hear what they have to say as opposed to when they are on with, say, Chris "the mouth" Matthews.
If anything gives us a reason for living until we're old, mean, and way over the hill, it's the prospect of Kerry/Hill/Obama/Jackson/et. al. squabbling over the dem. party nomination and our votes condemning them to oblivion again.
  |
This reminds me of Viet Nam! 
Luxury Yacht
S C A R A M O U C H E
$700,000+ 
Hidden from your eyes in Middleton, Rhode Island
 |
 ST. PADDY'S DAY IN KOHNBOATIA? |
"He [Kerry] did not wish to be directly quoted touting himself, however; he did not wish to appear defensive or boastful."
This statement pretty much sums it up. The arrogance of this elitist snob is why he lost the election.
Obviously they have never visited the DUmmie DUngeon where they eat their young.
Nice summation.
ie VOTERS FAILED TO SWALLOW IS NEVER ENDING LIES
ditto
Excellent. Thank you so much for putting this together. b.
Yes, bashing our military to promote your communist agenda didn`t go exactly as planned.
Of course he's a victim - all Dems see themselves (and us) as victims. They may be; we're not.
I totally agree. My tagline probably says the same thing, a different way.
Perfect!
If we wrote the book on what Kerry did long...there would be five volumes to print. I can't see anyone doing in less than 2,000 pages. The Vietnam angle simply was one of thousands of errors. His attacks on Bush's character didn't win him any votes either.
Well, the polls were very close, within the margin of error, and the democrats (wrongly as it turned out) figured that with their vote fraud and unprecedented turn-out effort, they probably couldn't lose. What they didn't count on is our side doing our best to keep vote fraud to a minimum (at least in key places) and the unprecedented mobilization on our side.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
