Front Load (Commentary on the Dem Presidential Aspirants)

He can't even be straight about his prostate cancer. That was the uncharitable--and off-the-record--reaction from more than one Democratic presidential campaign after Senator John Kerry's February 11 announcement that he had the illness and would be undergoing surgery. What should have been a moment of sympathy for Kerry was already morphing into another story about his candor.

It happened with the very first question at Kerry's press conference. "Senator Kerry," The Boston Globe's Glen Johnson demanded, "why didn't you answer truthfully ten days ago when you were asked directly if you were sick, given that you were diagnosed with prostate cancer on December 23 and it's now mid-February?" (Johnson had noticed earlier in the month that Kerry appeared tired and run-down and had asked the senator if he was sick or had a medical problem. Kerry had said no.)

Prostategate will probably soon be forgotten. Most voters won't begrudge Kerry for wanting to tell his family about his cancer before he told The Boston Globe, even if that meant telling a white lie. But the story comes at a moment when Kerry has emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, a status that makes him the number-one target for both the press and the rest of the field. In conversations with staff from each of Kerry's four main rivals for the nomination, several lines of criticism and plans of attack surfaced. The most consistent critique is that he is insincere, a little too ready to say whatever seems politically convenient regardless of whether it's really true. And, as Prostategate demonstrated, Kerry's opponents will take every opportunity to make this impression stick.

Kerry's emergence as the early front-runner in the race is a mixed bag for the other candidates. The person it hurts the most is probably Joe Lieberman. In 1998 and 1999, national polls of the potential Republican presidential nominees consistently showed George W. Bush leading the pack. As a front-page story in The New York Times discovered, many of the voters being polled actually thought Bush was his father--the polls were simply showing which candidate had the best name recognition. But, through fund-raising, endorsements, and hires, Bush quickly turned that artificial lead into a real one and never looked back. Lieberman's presence on the 2000 Democratic ticket has awarded him a similar gift. Every national poll that has been publicly released this year shows him in the lead. Yet he has failed to translate those numbers into real momentum.

Kerry has consistently been a step ahead of the Connecticut senator in the places where Lieberman should have had an edge. While Lieberman sat on the sidelines of the race last year, clinging to his pledge not to run if Al Gore did, Kerry hired some of the best talent from the Gore/Lieberman operation. Even as Lieberman took the lead on the war with Iraq and the creation of the new Department of Homeland Security, Kerry managed to establish himself as a war hero with the best national security bona fides in the race. And Massachusetts's closer proximity to New Hampshire has neutralized any benefits Lieberman's New England roots might have garnered him in the first primary. Says an aide to one campaign, "We consider New Hampshire Kerry territory. Sixty to eighty percent of people in New Hampshire read the Globe or get some kind of Massachusetts radio or TV. All things being equal, it's his state."

For Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt, by contrast, Kerry's emergence as the front-runner is a godsend. Dean staffers get almost giddy when asked if Kerry is the leader. Dean, whose aides usually don't dwell on the fact that Vermont shares a 192-mile border with New Hampshire, is working feverishly to keep expectations low and to create the same maverick-versus-front-runner dynamic in New Hampshire that existed in 2000 when Bill Bradley almost beat frontrunner Gore and John McCain destroyed front-runner Bush.

Gephardt can't complain about Kerry's front-runner status either. "If the elite decides you're the front-runner, it brings benefits--but also a lot of risks and scrutiny," says Gephardt spokesman Erik Smith. So Gephardt has also been fighting to lower expectations, specifically the expectation that his 1988 victory in the Iowa caucus means he'll win this time around too. All the attention on Kerry has taken some of the heat off Gephardt as he prepares the major ideological and personal reintroduction he will unveil next week when he officially announces his presidential campaign in St. Louis. As the most dismissed candidate in the field, Gephardt may be ready for a boomlet of renewed interest. A (non-wobbly) hawk on Iraq and the deficit who also calls for universal health care and a global minimum wage, he won't be as easy to pigeonhole as many assume.

As some campaigns point out, the whole idea of a frontrunner this early in the process, especially with such evenly matched candidates, may be silly. Kerry's recent crowning by the media is based partly on his swift creation of a large and expensive national organization, and, over the next few weeks, some of the other candidates will start to match that strength. Lieberman, whose organization was nonexistent in January, recently announced about a dozen top staffers. Over the last two weeks, John Edwards has announced his Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina teams. "The frontrunner thing--we're kind of happy not having that," says a senior adviser to one of Kerry's rivals. "Everybody's just looking to tear you down. It's based on a rollout of endorsements and key staff announcements over a matter of weeks. In a month, that's not going to matter." Others argue that Kerry's lead is built on a house of cards. They say his millions are buying lots of talented operatives and consultants but not loyalty or dedication. "I look at the amount he's paying staff in Iowa, and I am astounded," says an aide to a rival campaign. Another campaign says they had recently signed up a new staffer only to have her call back and tell the campaign she had to cancel the deal because Kerry was going to pay her more money to do nothing.

hether or not Kerry is the frontrunner in any meaningful way, the perception that he is the man to beat means that all the campaigns have thought about ways to bring him down. Fair or not, there is one criticism you hear over and over again. "He wants to make you believe one thing, but if you look at the fine print, it's not true," says an aide to one candidate. "It feeds into that sense that I don't know who this guy is." An official from another campaign, noting two scathing columns in The Boston Globe last week that ripped Kerry for exploiting his recently announced Jewish ancestry, says, "These attacks are coming from the people who know him best. He's too calculated in everything he does. It plays into the myth of him filming his exploits in Vietnam or having his jaw fixed"--two longtime criticisms that, it should be noted, Kerry has explained as hyperbole (many soldiers brought cameras to Vietnam, and his jaw required surgery for medical, not cosmetic, reasons). Says a senior adviser to a third campaign, "Flip-flop is the wrong word. He just tries to have it all ways on all issues. And people want straight answers."

Fair or not, the combination of his front-runnerdom and reputation means that, like Gore in 2000, Kerry will be able to get away with a lot less than the other candidates when it comes to issues of accuracy and consistency. Edwards, for instance, has largely been given a pass on the rather ludicrous claim that he personally will abide by the NAACP's economic boycott of South Carolina while his campaign will not. Kerry would have been skewered if he'd done this. (Instead, he was one of the first candidates to make the argument that it was ridiculous to try to abide by the boycott while simultaneously trying to win the state's primary.) Similarly, Dean has been able to fudge his view on the war with Iraq--attacking his congressional rivals on the narrow question of whether they should have voted for the war resolution last year but largely failing to tell the antiwar activists he courts that he favors a multilateral attack on Iraq if Saddam Hussein doesn't disarm. During the months in which Kerry bobbed and weaved on Iraq, by contrast, he was clobbered by the media (including this magazine) on a regular basis. Lieberman has reversed himself on affirmative action, and Gephardt has flipped his position on the Bush tax cut, but the media has still treated Kerry's Jewish-heritage pander to the American Israel Political Affairs Committee as the crassest political stunt of the campaign.

The other criticisms of Kerry from his rival campaigns have more to do with his style. Some argue that Kerry will simply never be good at the retail politics necessary in Iowa and New Hampshire. "He may be winning the early elite mantle," says a senior adviser to another campaign. "But the bottom line is very simple: Unless you connect with actual voters, you don't get any votes." Asked what she thinks Kerry's biggest vulnerability is, an official with another of his opponents says, "I'd say his style. I think he's patrician and inside the Beltway." Along these lines, rivals point out that Kerry's speeches are still hodgepodges of platitudinous goo that feed into all the negative stereotypes about him.

Most of these criticisms are the same ones that have been leveled against Kerry for more than a decade. He has done a decent job of knocking some of them down over the last year, and, even with his remaining issues, has catapulted ahead of the field. Several campaign aides say that the early attacks are all so familiar because it is much too soon for anyone to pull out the heavy artillery. But, if you're wondering where that fire may eventually come from, here's a thought: As the three finalists to be Gore's running mate, Lieberman, Edwards, and Kerry all went through an insanely detailed personal, medical, financial, and ideological background check, the kind of opposition research that just might be useful to a rival campaign. One of the Gore staffers who had access to this information was David Ginsberg--who now happens to be the communications director for John Edwards. This leads at least one Democratic strategist to predict, "David Ginsberg and those guys at the Edwards campaign are going to tear [Kerry] apart." They won't be the only ones trying.

OK, Ryan Lizza is not a big fan of Kerry. Here is what the chap said about Kerry sometime earlier:

"The most shamelessly self-promoting potential veep in the Democratic Party, [John] Kerry, along with his supporters, has been busy drawing parallels between himself and the vice president. Gore served in Vietnam. So did Kerry! Gore is a technophile. Kerry is one of the Senate's leading advocates of Internet privacy! Gore is an avowed environmentalist. Kerry is, too--he even windsurfs! Says Mary Anne Marsh, Kerry's longtime political adviser, "Kerry reinforces Gore's assets." Alas, Kerry also reinforces Gore's weaknesses. He's almost too perfect a mirror. While Gore--with his Vietnam experience and solid marriage--actually offset some of Clinton's liabilities, Kerry would do no such thing. Indeed, with his privileged upbringing, Ivy League pedigree, and long record of opportunism, Kerry probably wouldn't remind voters of what they like about Gore as much as he'd remind them of what they don't."

--Ryan Lizza, "Double Jeopardy: John Kerry's Gore Problem," TNR, August 7, 2000

Still, it does strike me that even if the economy is sluggish in 2004, the Dems may have some trouble in finding an effective instrument for toppling Bush. The fact of the matter is that genuine political talent of the kind that has the potential of being a first class president, and securing the election to be so, is thin on the grond in both parties, but particuarly thin on the Dem side. The best and the brightest simply don't gravitate to politics these days. In part that is because the system is so hostile to rather well balanced types reflective types, who want to achieve something rather than be somebody, being willing to endure the gauntlet, and endure all the BS.

How many presidents, since my namesake, would you say fall into the category of "well balanced" and "reflective"?

Teddy Roosevelt? Nope.

William Taft? Sure.

Wilson? No, I don't suppose he was.

Harding? Nah.

Coolige? Hoover?

FDR? Nope. Truman? Ike? No.

JFK reflective? Maybe.

LBJ, no.

Nixon? Reflective in a paranoid way, not exactly well rounded.

Ford? Too short a term, never elected. Carter? If this is what well rounded and reflective produces, no thanks.

Reagan, yes, although the media says no.

Bush I, Clinton, not reflective but in different ways.

I think that those characteristics you cited may be what you look for, but I don't think history bears out that it is what the voters look for, nor do I think history bears out that those who exhibit those characteristics enjoy success. Some did, some did not.

George Washington fits, Lincoln fits, Teddy Roosevelt had a first class mind and was reflective, although a man of action which is not inconsistent, and I think was well balanced until his later years. Madison fits, and is considered not a good president, for reasons I am not competent to opine on at present. But yes, the examples are few. FDR had a courage courage and a first class temperment, but was not reflective, and had a mediocre mind. But he was a pretty good judge of people. Ditto for Eisenhower. Truman just had guts when it counted, and at the time it counted, and he was disgustingly sane.

Finding the chap that combines it all is no easy task. All we can do is hope for the best, and do what we can.

In some ways, Kerry seems to be a rerun of Michael Dukakis but with even less charisma. In a Republican, this flaw would be fatal to his hopes of winning the nomination. In a Democrat, he has a chance. Whatever he did in Vietnam, he's enough of a wimp now that he won't threaten hard-core Democrats. I'd be very pleased to see him win the nomination because I think he would be fairly easy to beat.

Dick Gephardt would be a tougher candidate for the Republicans to beat because he would have more appeal in the states that President Bush won in 2000. He would probably win Missouri and would be competitive in Ohio and West Virginia. However, I don't think that the Democrats will nominate him.

WFTR
Bill

I agree with you that Gephardt looks like the hardest one for Bush to beat, but Edwards and Kerry are the ones I fear most in the event of a Rat win. Really, its hard to tell which one I loathe the most of all of them!

Kind of encouraging to see Howard Dean pop up among the peaceniks of Iowa in recent polls. The guy has zero visibility, I even had to Google his name to find a picture of what he looks like. All the rest have had some face time before the media, with Edwards being the second least recognizable.

All I can say is that I hope they spend the next sixteen months ripping each other to shreds. Kerry should be able to get some nasty street protesters at the Rat convention if he feels like his 25-30% of convention delegates is enough to make him worthy of the nomination.

I limited it to since 1900, because I wonder if the demands of the political process and relatively modern media made it so that the deliberative types who could ascend to power previously no longer could.

My point was that those qualities you have put forward as most desirable have been infrequently both present in modern presidents.

You are right- finding the right one is difficult.

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