John Kerry, Circa 1996

Atlantic Unbound | October 11, 2004
Flashbacks
John Kerry, Circa 1996

Years before the frenzy of the 2004 election,
Jack Beatty offered a look at John Kerry and how he was perceived by
voters.

.....

Since Senator John Kerry became a serious contender for the Presidency,
the media has subjected his record and character to intense scrutiny.
/The Atlantic Monthly/ has been no exception. Over the past year,
/Atlantic/ contributors have addressed everything from Kerry's Vietnam
experience , to his
foreign policy views ,
his debating skills , and
even the suitability of his wife
as a First Lady. Those
seeking perspective on Kerry from before the frenzy of this year's
presidential race, however, may be interested in "A Race Too Far"
(August
1996), in which /Atlantic/ senior editor Jack Beatty analyzed that
year's Senate contest between Kerry, who was the incumbent, and
then-Massachusetts Governor William Weld. In the course of assessing
what he described as "this strange race" between "a rich Harvard guy
raised on a Long Island estate who married a Roosevelt" (Weld) and "a
rich Yale guy raised abroad who married a Portuguese catsup heiress"
(Kerry), Beatty offered an in-depth look at Kerry and how he was
perceived by voters.

Then, as now, Kerry suffered from the perception that he was stiff and
off-puttingly aloof. "Archaeologists have searched," Beatty wrote, "but
have been unable to discover a single Kerry joke." His standoffish image
was in no way helped by anecdotes such as this one, concerning his wife,
Teresa Heinz:

When Heinz was mugged in Washington, Kerry kept to his round of
fundraising events instead of rushing to her side. Did she miss him?
"I just needed hugs," she confided to Margery Eagan, of the /Boston
Herald/. Those may have been the four most frightening words spoken
in Massachusetts Democratic politics in decades.

Like today, many were also uncertain as to what to make of Heinz
herself, who seemed anything but the appropriately supportive political
helpmeet. Massachusetts residents caught bemused glimpses of her in
passing:

Though she still refers to John Heinz (not John Kerry) as "my
husband," though she is still a Republican, and though her official
residence is still in Pennsylvania, Heinz has deigned to refurbish a
mansion on Beacon Hill's most exclusive block, and frequent local
sightings of her have been reported.

Beatty suggested that Kerry's "cool, cerebral manner," and his failure
to emerge from the shadow of his more famous Massachusetts colleague,
Ted Kennedy, had left many without a clear image of the junior senator.
"These are the questions people ask about Kerry," Beatty wrote. "What
has he done for Massachusetts? What has he done for the country? What
has he done, period?"

According to Beatty, though, Kerry had made a number of contributions in
the form of a willingness to investigate the dark side of controversial
subjects. Within the Senate, some admired him for this.

"The guy has guts," Jack Blum, who investigated the drug-contra
connection for a subcommittee on terrorism that Kerry headed, told
me recently. "So many politicians are in the job so people will love
them. Kerry is a throwback to senators like Phil Hart, who, even
though he came from Michigan, investigated the auto industry. They
run for office not so people will love them but to use the powers of
office"--in Kerry's case to expose betrayals of the public trust.

Kerry had taken charge of an investigation into the Bank of Credit and
Commerce International, for example, a giant international organization
that, Kerry would prove, had engaged in various types of fraud--and was
also linked to drug trafficking and terrorism. The investigation
implicated many Democratic figureheads, including the well-respected
Presidential advisor Clark Clifford. Beatty noted that Douglas Frantz
and David McKean, the authors of a 1995 book about Clifford and his
downfall, commended Kerry for his willingness to investigate in the face
of political pressure to look the other way.

[Frantz and McKean] depict Kerry as the only Democratic senator who
was willing to investigate the Bank of Credit and Commerce
International and Clifford's role in its mega-larcenies. "What are
you doing to my old friend Clark Clifford?" an older southern
Democrat asked Kerry in a Senate elevator one day. Kerry made no
reply, but told an aide accompanying him, "You should hear what they
say to me in the cloakroom." Not in public life to be loved, Kerry
pressed on. The evidence compiled by his committee helped to close
down a huge criminal conspiracy.

Beatty also described how Kerry tackled the politically explosive topic
of POWs in Vietnam ("laying to rest the harrowing and commercially
robust fantasy that U.S. POWs are still being held in Indochina," and
thereby opening the door for normalized relations with Vietnam) and how
he had persisted in ferreting out hidden links in the Iran-Contra
investigations:

Kerry went after Oliver North more than a year before Iran-contra
broke, exposing the connection between the U.S.-supported Nicaraguan
contras and drug trafficking. And when Arthur Liman, the chief
counsel of the Iran-Contra Committee, agreed to a White House demand
that the committee be permitted to see only edited portions of
North's diaries, Kerry refused to go along with the whitewash and
persuaded the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to subpoena the
North diaries. This did not endear him to his colleagues, who above
everything were eager to avoid impeaching Ronald Reagan.

Such dogged commitment to upholding government rectitude, Beatty
suggested, was a product of his wartime experience. Not only had it
given him fortitude in his convictions, Beatty argued, but a sense of
duty to correct injustice.

Kerry accrued his Lincolnian gravity in Vietnam... Then as now, he
says, he sought to hold power publicly accountable. Making
government obey the laws and its officials tell the truth, Kerry
says, is a precondition to restoring the public trust on which any
progressive use of government depends. Kerry's investigations can
thus be seen as means to a liberal end: to put government on the
side of the governed.

Kerry seemed at a loss, however, as to how to convey such lofty
political aims to the public. "Puzzlingly," Beatty observed, pointing to
the persistent problem of his tepid public appeal, "Kerry rarely
mentions any of this on the campaign trail, preferring to recommend
himself as a co-sponsor of the reauthorization of the Marine Mammal
Protection Act."


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*Alex M. Parker* is an intern for The Atlantic Online.
Copyright © 2004 by The Atlantic Monthly Group
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