Some Straight Talk on Kerry
Excellent article from Tom Oliphant (Boston Globe columnist) at The American Prospect on Kerry’s political career and the reasons for supporting him this year other than “anybody but Bush.” He paints a compelling picture of Kerry as authentic, intelligent, and hard-working, with a willingness to learn from his own mistakes and to do the ground-level grunt work necessary to succeed honestly. Conceding that Kerry’s not a political natural, or personally exciting, he finds a lot of substance in his career and eventual Presidency.
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.
He has an interesting review of Kerry’s political career and what it says about him as a person and as a leader. He also gives an intelligent overview of Kerry’s key policy initiatives that both explains Kerry and serves as a guide to the issues. The article is worth reading just for the discussion here.
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.
His conclusion could be the slogan for Kerry supporters everywhere:
John Kerry is a good, tough man. He is curious, grounded after a public and personal life that has not always been pleasant, a fan of ideas whose practical side has usually kept him from policy wonkery, a natural progressive with the added fixation on what works that made FDR and JFK so interesting. I know it is chic to be disdainful, but the modern Democratic neurosis gets in the way of a solid case for affection. Without embarrassment, and after a very long journey, I really like this guy. As one of his top campaign officials, himself a convert since the primaries ended, told me recently, this is pure Merle Haggard. It’s not love, but it’s not bad.
Give it a read.
Link via Mark A.R. Kleiman.
My husband is a gun enthusiast (not a gun nut). I don’t really know why, but he’s convinced Kerry is the Anti-Christ.
Any ideas as to how I can bring him around? Or do I just have to write him off?
Hmmm . . . well, I wouldn’t show him this, from Project VoteSmart:
You could try showing him this profile from OnTheIssues.org, which is a bit more mainstream:
To be honest, if your husband is convinced anyone for moderate gun regulations is “the Anti-Christ” then you may have to give up on him.
The Shizzle…
Well, this post, via Lean Left, just made my day. Lean Left is on my blogroll and definitely worth taking the time to look at whenever you can. I like Kerry, although I was all about Dean earlier in the