Short video of Kerry on Firing Line 11/71

[fedupinBushcountry]

http://hoohila.stanford.edu/firingline/programView.php?programID=419

http://vodreal.stanford.edu/firing/5min/s25.ram

Five months before this show, WFB had taken as his text, for a commencement address at West Point, Mr. Kerry?s sensational testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the barbarism of our activities in Vietnam. Neither host nor guest has changed his views since, but there is light as well as heat generated on Vietnam in particular and morality and foreign policy generally. JK: "I want very much to create a world order in which we can somehow live..." WFB: "Well, do you think Lyndon Johnson doesn?t want to?" JK: "No, I don?t think he didn?t want to. I don?t think Richard Nixon doesn?t want to, frankly... I don?t subscribe to the theory that so many of my contemporaries do, that he is necessarily an evil man." WFB: "You just say that your moral vision is more acute." JK: "I think he is highly misguided."

Still looking for full transcript.

[ProSense]

1. Great find! Thanks!

That was really interesting to watch: the exchange between Kerry and Buckley.

[whometense]

2. Wow. Great find!

I love that little laugh Kerry gave when Buckley mentioned that he was from Boston, "as you will soon find out."

He was freakishly mature for his age, wasn't he?? :loveya:

[karynnj]

4. I loved the little laugh and smile

In the rest he was so intensely serious. Part of that was that there were very serious political, philosophical discussions on TV at that time. Now, it seems almost alien - as even the talk shows have been reduced to near soundbites.

That little laugh and smile hinted that there were other sides to the "freakishly mature" man speaking here. It is interesting that Buckley responded to Kerry as intensively as he did - with at least two editorials, the speech mentioned in the op-ed, this interview and actually debating him.

Buckley was considered a leading conservative intellectual at this time. (I saw him debate John Kenneth Galbraith at IU sometime between 1969 and 1971 and it was incredibly interesting.) His obsession with disputing Kerry on Vietnam and then carrying the discussion into foreign policy philosophy on other issues shows that on an intellectual level he was impressed with Kerry even as he disagreed with him. It really is hard to believe Kerry was only 27 then. (It's funny how Kerry was far more often right even then.)

[ginnyinWI]

5. he still does that smile and laugh today

He'll be talking very seriously about something, then at the end of the interview will suddenly break into an easy smile which seems to have been hiding under the surface just waiting for a chance to come out. :)

[karynnj]

6. It's amazing how much it changes his face

It really is a natural smile.

[Blaukraut]

3. thank you for that link

This interview could have taken place today as well as 35 years ago. Just actualize it by replacing a few words - Vietnam, Nixon -> Iraq, Bush.
Kerry was right then, and he is right now.

[Island Blue]

7. I was thinking the same thing LK.

If you didn't know, and he didn't say Vietnam, you'd think he was talking about Iraq.

I've also always been amazed at his maturity at the age he was at the time of this interview (and even before). Remind me again what * was doing at the age? Oh yeah, coke and booze. Nevermid. :crazy:

[TayTay]

8. It was also that use of the moral imagination

that struck me. That call to conscience and to take a step back, look at the situation and ask, what is this doing to our own country? What is this involvement doing to the United States and to our moral underpinnings as a nation.

He used that terminology again recently when he said that it was "immoral then and it is immoral now" to continue down this course of war. You know, of all the things that Sen. Kerry has said recently, that is the one that really, really resonants with me. It is not just bad policy, it's not just a waste of precious fiscal resources, it's not just a colossal misjudgment, it's immoral. That really gets to me because there is no going back once you have called something immoral, a line has been crossed.

It took a lot for someone 27 years old to recognize that. It takes a lot now for someone to try and once again remind Americans that they are supposed to be better than this as a nation and better than this as a guardian of human liberty. (That gets me, it really does.)