Long article on Kerry (and Bush) in Minneapolis Citypages

[gristy]

It's not a particularly flattering piece, overall.

http://www.citypages.com/databank/25/1210/article11875.asp

In the days following the Iowa caucuses, and the New Hampshire primary a week later, the political news was all John Kerry all the time, and you could not read far or listen long without finding the words shocking and stunning applied to his ascent from the political dead.

The biggest surprise was Kerry himself. Long known as a remote, patrician figure of no great energy or conviction--just a couple of weeks before the Iowa turnaround, Gore Vidal remarked that he was looking "a lot like Lincoln, after the assassination"--Kerry caught hold of something in the waning days of Iowa. Periodic visits to C-Span confirmed the buzz: Kerry was actually lighting up rooms, and he was doing it with relentless, full-throated attacks on the Bush regime that would have been inconceivable coming from any mainstream Democrat six months earlier.

<snip>
"He's going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party, and he's coming across as a future president," Washington Rep. Norman Dicks raved to an L.A. Times reporter last week. "He's just on fire." This could prove hazardous in the long run: Many longtime Kerry watchers still insist that down deep, he's made of wood. In Boston, Kerry is a famous target of mockery for liberal and conservative columnists alike. The criticisms usually concern his imperious manner, his love of privilege, his unerring sense of what is best for John Kerry. For years his nickname among reporters was "Live Shot," a reference to Kerry's gift for turning up in front of any camera in his vicinity. If he is elected, his wife's nearly half-billion-dollar fortune will make him the wealthiest president the country has ever had.

<snip>
This is the taproot of popular animus toward Bush, but it also happens to be Kerry's great weakness. The real payoff in Republican attacks on Kerry will come from taking shots not at his voting record but at who he is: a mainstay D.C. insider who can be shown, without much trouble, to have twisted with the political breezes all through his career. They will point out that although Kerry may have awakened one recent morn on the wrong side of "special interests," he is still the leading recipient of lobbyist contributions in the US Senate over the past 15 years.

Ouch.

[paulk]

1. the article is critical of Dean and Bush also

any particular reason you chose to highlight the parts critical of Kerry?