Drudge posts Newsweek's interview with Kerry

[quaoar]

I hesitate to post anything from Drudge, but he does manage to reveal what other media are reporting before they actually post it. Newsweek has not posted this yet.

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash2.htm

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 ." 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.

[graywarrior]

1. Kerry should have hired a DU'r to help connect him to voters.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Helga Scow Stern]

3. 11/11? That was a century ago. So much has changed since then. n/t

[cal04]

4. I'm Going to Learn'/Newsweek/MSNBC link

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6777696/site/newsweek/

[quaoar]

6. Thanks

Didn't think to look at MSNBC.

[blm]

5. How about the NEWS MEDIA's failure to report Bush's campaign LIED and

distorted the facts as further insult to the American public?

[Rockerdem]

7. Jesus!! Here's a big reason why Kerry lost

Read this quote from the very bottom of Drudges article:

"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.' "


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Kerry was loyal and kept and listened to a lame adviser or two, one of whom is now backstabbing him anon'ly. Leave it to Evan Thomas to feature the dirt.

[LittleClarkie]

8. Well, aside from Hillary and Gore, he has the name recognition

If Hillary can be a front runner, so can he.

And as for that adviser, I ask the question: how much was the candidate, and how much were the advisers giving that candidate bum advice. Is the adviser trying to make sure that the blame goes on the candidate, and not on the advisor's, of which he is one?

That said, I don't know how much Kerry has to change, but he has to learn to let himself out. He needs to learn to do what he did in the last two months all through his campaign.

He does need to sharpen his message, but part of that sharpening will include jettisoning most of the advisers.

I wonder how much spin will be put on what Kerry does next, in the child care bill he wants to put forth, in going to Iraq, and other things. God forbid Kerry should have any luck in fighting the Bush regime, no matter his reasons for doing so.

I will agree with the nephew, though. Once people get to truly know Kerry, they are fiercely loyal. My fellow John Kerry groupers could vouch for that.

[quaoar]

9. Probably Shrum