... on the threshold of (Kerry's) more than decent shot at the presidency, something un-chic has occurred to me:
Odds are that he could be a successful, even excellent, president. No hero worship here. Knowing somebody is supposed to mean knowing him as a human being, zits and all. Part of my confidence involves the meeting of a particular kind of public figure and his times; part of it is
this inner drive of his that survived the bright flash of sudden fame that burns out just as quickly and accepted the non-flashy way up the ladder so long ago.
***
That's just one fragment of this EXCELLENT cover story in the American Prospect. I HIGHLY recommend it.
>
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=8118
More Excerpts:
ON BEING FOR KERRY, NOT JUST ABB:
In non-Bush America, a far more prevalent symbol of sentiment these days, rather than outright affection for Kerry, is the “Anybody But Bush” pin.
Anybody But Bush avoids Kerry. It also contains more than a little bit of disdain and disrespect -- common attitudes in a modern Democratic Party that seems able to take the concept of unity only so far. Democrats (political writers, too) love second-guessing, relentless kibitzing, pseudo-biographical psychobabble. In today’s political culture, progressives tend to be neurotic, conservatives fanatical.
The best cure for this neurosis is not artificially induced adulation but a rational decision to recognize Kerry’s strengths. This is a contemplative, serious person -- well-grounded in progressive principles -- who has the good habit of getting interested in new ideas that survive scrutiny. His work habits reveal an iron butt for grunt work, as well as considerable experience in working across party lines. A non-Bush president will have to repair considerable damage abroad and at home, complex tasks that will resist grand fixes and reward the patience and tough negotiating that are Kerry attributes. But
a non-Bush president will also have to think and act big and new, and the work Kerry has already done on a range of issues should inspire confidence.
He is a sober yet imaginative person for sobering, dangerous times, but his looks and wealth conceal the steel that got him this far and often cause him to be underestimated.
ON HIS SENATE CAREER:
From the beginning of his 20 years in the Senate, Kerry was able to deal maturely -- as his pricklier, outspoken predecessor, the late Paul Tsongas, often did not -- with the overwhelming fact of his junior status to Ted Kennedy. Kerry’s legislation list is relatively sparse. Big deal. What he did, though, was take what was there:
foreign policy, high-profile investigations into shady international businesses, crime and drugs, and terrorism. He became a true expert on affordable housing, a passionate and authoritative advocate for the public financing of federal elections, and gradually emerged, with Al Gore, as a leading spokesman on energy and the environment.
ON KERRY’S POLITICAL SKILLS:
... What I think is
most relevant to a possible Kerry presidency is that
he has, up until now, always listened to criticism when he has been screwing up, and he has responded forcefully.
What I still find arresting is that
Kerry not only listened and responded to the simple message that he was tanking, a regular occurrence in the political career of someone who mostly understands that campaigning doesn’t come naturally to him; he also took his new campaign manager and communications director straight from the top of Kennedy’s Senate staff, more at his senior colleague’s insistence than recommendation. Not only that, Kerry had the guts to walk away from the reason (the importance of neighboring New Hampshire’s primary) that there have been so many New England presidential candidates over the last four decades (John F. Kennedy, Muskie, Ted Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, George Bush Senior, Michael Dukakis, and Tsongas).
People come up with shrewd and brilliant ideas in presidential politics all the time, but the tactic of Kerry’s will be studied for ages. Based on the diagnosis that he was sinking like a stone in New Hampshire, the recommended cure was to leave the state after mid-December and try to use Iowa (where he was also plummeting) as a slingshot to propel him back into contention in the Granite State. Put yourself in Kerry’s shoes as he decided he had to give up on neighboring New Hampshire and head west;
it took balls.
ON KERRY’S POLICY PROPOSALS:
It’s also helpful to know that his comeback was political and personal, but -- quite contrary to the “flip-flop” label the Bush team has sought to stick on him -- it did not involve a single change in his approach to the big questions of our day. Normally, positions on issues don’t work well for me as clues to a presidency, or as stand-alone reasons to be for someone. In Kerry’s case, however, he has made three contributions -- in health care, on energy, and in foreign policy -- to the national discussion over the past year that are vintage Kerry and powerful evidence of how his political mind works.
They are not derivative, and, in each instance, the contributions were formulated not by the pollsters or the advisers but by Kerry himself.
(article goes into detailed explanations about Kerry’s proposals)
ON THE MIDDLE EAST:
Kerry sought from the beginning to plan big on the energy front, both to find a grand, worthy national effort along the lines of the space program in the 1960s and to serve a larger foreign-policy purpose.
A national policy to gradually end the addiction to imports from the Persian Gulf is likely to do far more to “transform the Middle East,” to borrow the silly Bush phraseology, than invading Iraq almost unilaterally with no workable plan for the aftermath. Kerry would back it up with a
reactivation of the Middle East peace process, with an activist United States at the center again and allies and moderate Arab states enlisted to provide aid to -- and put pressure on -- the Palestinian Authority. A long period of tacit and not so tacit acquiescence in Ariel Sharon’s postures and actions would cease. Vigorous diplomacy -- in his conviction that it really works, Kerry is very much his foreign-service-officer father’s son -- would define him in large part, not merely in the Middle East but also in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea; with trade agreements; the Kyoto Protocol process; and the various nonproliferation regimes. My pal Mark Shields once observed that, more often than not, each president is the stylistic antithesis of his predecessor.
Kerry is a worker as well as a thinker.
Please read this great article. The issue is entirely devoted to the possible Kerry Presidency and involves a large number of articles available online that give advice to Kerry. Check it out!
http://www.prospect.org
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