Reply #75: If he went straight to the media and if they gave him a forum, [View All]

[karynnj]

he would immediately have been accused of grandstanding and there is a real chance that the media would have argued that it was Kerry wanting to replay the arguments of the campaign. (They would then say the election was a referendum on all of this and would Kerry please just go far far away.) In some ways, this would then diminish the fact that the DSM does seem to have new information that shows the Bush administration lied to their CO-EQUAL branch of government and the world.

By following Senate protocal, Kerry is demanding the Senate do its job. If he then goes to the media only after it FAILS to do its job, with 9 other Senators behind him, he at least can truthfully claim that he tried to get an investigation through the system. Also, he tied it to the second phase of the WMD intelligence breakdown investigation that was to deal with whether the administration manipulated the data - which didn't happen when it was supposed to. Note that John McCain (the moderate (?), maverick(?), favored by many Democrats (Why, I don't know)) was on this committtee. This would be fair for Democrats to use against McCain.

In today's environment, the cards are stacked against Kerry getting anywhere with this issue. Leaking interest in the memos (to a small paper), going through the Senate, then (if no miracle occurs) going to the press, sounds like a plan to get as much attention on the issue as he can. It's also not clear Kerry has the ability to get the media to cover him that some other people's comments imply.

At least some of the media doesn't give Kerry anywhere near fair coverage - for example in the NYT, when the VN premier was here they mentioned diplomatic relations were re-established a decade ago - and mentioned Clinton and McCain (who if I didn't know better, I could assume led the Senate committee that did the work); then in an op-ed piece yesterday, it was noted that re-opening relations was supported by vets and they named John McCain, Bob Kerrey and Fred Smith (CEO of Fed-ex). Since, even John McCain credited Kerry as being key to this effort - I don't know why Kerry seems to have been written out of this. Also, the NYT ignored the story that Naval records confirmed Kerry's service, while gleefully reporting his Yale grades as an 18-22 year old.)