What Kind of Guy is John Kerry?

[JPZenger]

Here's a little more background on John Kerry from a June 6, 2003 profile of him in the Washington Post:

1. He is a hunter, rides a Harley, is a pilot, and plays ice hockey. This is not a guy that is going to be able to be labeled as an elite wimp.

2. "As spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" The senators were awed by the young man's poise and by his Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts."

3. Kerry's father was an American diplomat based in Europe. Kerry grew up along the Iron Curtain and biked through much of Europe as a kid.

4. Kerry's family wasn't wealthy. Kerry worked Summers loading trucks in a grocery warehouse and selling encyclopedias door to door.

5. "After Yale, Kerry volunteered for the Navy. He returned from Vietnam with his faith in the government shaken. He felt betrayed; his friends had died in the war. In 1972, he ran for Congress as a "peace candidate," campaigning so relentlessly that once when an aide came to pick him up, he found Kerry asleep in the shower. Kerry lost, but he won as lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982 and as senator in 1984. The same avenging anger that animated him after Vietnam shaped his work on the Hill. Rather than focusing on legislative matters, he went after government corruption."

6. "He thrives on stress and pressure," said former senator Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.).

7. Inside his briefcase, he carries a camouflage "good luck" hat from Vietnam. It was given to him "by a CIA guy as we went in for a special mission in Cambodia."

P.S. In high school, he played bass guitar in a rock band named the Electras that recorded an album. Their album actually still sounds good, and is prized on ebay.

[liberalnurse]

1. The list is incomplete......

I'd like to really know what he is like. These items are just resume stuffing. What is the real story below the fluff?

[boxster]

3. Perhaps you should try a little research.

That is, if you are truly interested.

http://www.issues2000.org/John_Kerry.htm
http://www.issues2000.org/John_Kerry_VoteMatch.htm
http://www.johnkerry.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/top/news/washington/campaign2004/candidates/johnfkerry/index.html

And only about 10,000 other sources that are quite readily available to anyone who takes a little time to look.

[absyntheNsugar]

18. There was that one Boston Globe article

Really good, really detailed. Wish I had the link....

But if you find it, it's an excellent read. It will take you a while tho...

[absyntheNsugar]

13. yes you forgot his "Cheers" appearance

LOL :-D

[Feanorcurufinwe]

15. Cheers

Bar Wars VI: This Time It's for Real
Comedy, 30min
Ted Danson, Kirstie Alley, Rhea Perlman
Although Gary's Old Towne Tap is under new ownership, the gang at Cheers intends to revigorate its war of practical jokes against the rival pub. Alas, Gary's taciturn owner (Harry Guardino) doesn't find the pranks very funny--but then, not too many mobsters are known for their sense of humor. Senator John Kerry appears as himself in the opening scene. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
http://entertainment.msn.com/movies/movie.aspx?m=547961

[Octafish]

19. JK Profile from American Windsurfer...

... in which Kerry gets philosophical, a bit, too:

A Windsurfer in the White House?

"It's a tough job! Somebody has gotta do it." - John Chao, editor/publisher of American Windsurfer, kept up with Senator John Kerry for a full year to bring you this extraordinary portrait in words and photographs of a man, navigating through the forces of life.

SENATOR JOHN KERRY was being pulverized by 40 knot winds. His windsurfing buddy cringed at the sight of a United States Senator being tossed around like a rag doll and splattered time and time again onto the forgiving waters of his beloved state of Massachusetts. For three hours, Kerry felt the rage of the wind and struggled to leverage his body against the gale force-finding balance briefly, only to lose it in spectacular crashes. Nevin Sayre, the windsurfer whose equipment the Senator was borrowing, was amazed at the warrior's perseverance and was worried about the Senator's safety. He could see the New York Times headline blaming him for the loss of a luminary. For even he, a former professional windsurfer, had difficulties in these overpowering conditions. "Finally," recounts Sayre, the 54-year old Senator dragged himself out of the water and, grinning from ear to ear, proclaimed the experience as . . . "OUTSTANDING!"

Senator JOHN KERRY sat at the head of a conference table. I watched from the side of the room. To his left was Governor Tom Carper of Delaware and surrounding them were lawyers, lobbyists and various representatives from Amtrak. They were gathered at Kerry's senate office to discuss issues that were holding up the passage of the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act of 1997. Kerry listened intently. I saw him pick up on the words, but more importantly I knew he heard the sounds, catching weakness in subtle hesitations or strengths from the voices of the lobbyists. (I know this because in the many conversations I've had with John Kerry, he has exhibited an uncanny ability to catch vocal tones that reveal one's true disposition. He picks up on tones and verbally questions or reflects upon them with profound accuracy.) When the arguments were presented, Kerry spoke with authority. His voice has a deep resonance of intelligence and weight; it's a voice that commands attention. He pinpointed the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments and in a shepherd-like manner, he masterfully synthesized the opposing arguments to a point of seamless balance. "I have never seen anyone grasp issues as quickly as this man," said Gregg Rothchild, one of Kerry's many legal aides. "It is amazing how he can bring people together to a common denominator." I watched in awe. A room full of hard core politicians and lobbyists with vested interests were brought together to a point of sensible compromise. The Amtrak bill passed a week later.

John Kerry waded upwind at the event Site in Hood River, Oregon. It was mid-afternoon and the Senator had been struggling with unfamiliar equipment in an unfamiliar territory since 9:00 AM. As far as the windsurfers on the Columbia River Gorge were concerned, Kerry was just another ordinary windsurfer trying to find balance in the shifting winds of the day. With him were Olympic champion Mike Gebhardt and Sam Grossman, a windsurfing friend who flew in with the Senator that morning. It takes an average windsurfer a day or two to acclimate themselves to the Gorge's extreme conditions. John Kerry did not have that luxury. Gebhardt, a three time Olympic Champion, sailed with the Senator all morning, barking instructions at him. Later in the afternoon, Gebhardt and I rested on the bank watching Kerry drag his equipment up wind for the umpteenth time- we marveled at the man's endurance. "You know, not many people from his position of power and wealth would put up with this kind of humiliation," said Gebhardt to me. "You really feel stupid having someone like me yelling instructions at you. It's degrading, you feel like a school kid . . .This sport is incredibly humbling and it's great to see a guy like that out there trying! Really impressive!" When we bade farewell that afternoon, Kerry's exuberance was unmistakable. With a youthful dragon-slayer's delight written all over his face, John Kerry made me feel like I'd just witnessed the best day of his life. However humbling or frustrating it may be, this man clearly thrives on challenges, has the capacity to endure, and can elevate his skills to match the foe.

It was 1996, during a tight race between John Kerry and Governor Bill Weld for the Senate seat that Kerry had held for the previous two terms. The two Bay State giants were beating each other up badly in a desperate battle for the seat. To prepare their candidate for a series of debates Kerry's staff brought in political consultant Bob Schrum to help in the final two month of the campaign. The challenge was to take whatever provocations the opposition threw at him and turn them into his own message. Bruce Droste, Kerry's brotherly best friend, sat and watched the preparations and thought to himself, "This is brutal!" Afterwards, in the car, Droste noticed Kerry's countenance and asked, "Johnny, are you OK?" Kerry turned to Droste and replied, "You know, the negativity of the last weeks is not fun. This is not the way it should be. This is distasteful." The two men looked at each other and with a nod, acknowledged the brutality that politics has on human sensitivity. Kerry went on to win the toughest and most expensive election of his career, a race that cost each camp 12 million dollars. Six months later, Weld made a bid for the ambassadorship to Mexico-a move that unfortunately brought his political career to a screeching halt. Firmly planted in his way was an intransigent and powerful Jesse Helms, who refused to open the door for a simple hearing. Seeing the injustice, Kerry could have easily stayed in the background. Instead he stood up against the potent Helms and wholeheartedly came to the aid of Weld- his 12 million dollar foe.


CONTINUED...

http://www.americanwindsurfer.com/mag/back/issue5.5a.html

[polpilot]

21. (1) married for $300 mil 1st time/ married for $500-700 mil 2nd time (2)

pro-war candidate (3) pro-Nafta candidate (4)60 year old motor bike rider...

[JPZenger]

2. Kerry's Life Story

He was the son of a WWII Army pilot. After graduating from Yale University, he volunteered for the Navy during Vietnam. He served as captain of a river gunboat. He received a Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, and three awards of the Purple Heart for his service in combat.

By the time Senator Kerry returned home from Vietnam, he felt compelled to question decisions he believed were being made to protect those in positions of authority in Washington at the expense of the soldiers carrying on the fighting in Vietnam. Kerry was a co-founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America and became a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War -- Morley Safer would describe him as "a veteran whose articulate call to reason rather than anarchy seemed to bridge the gap between the Abbie Hoffman's of the world and Mr. Agnew's so-called 'Silent Majority.'"

In 1971, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he asked the question of his fellow citizens, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Sen. Claiborne Pell thanked Kerry, then 27, for testifying before the committee, expressing his hope that Kerry "might one day be a colleague of ours in this body."

14 years later, John Kerry was elected to the Senate, serving side by side with Sen. Pell on the Foreign Relations Committee.

But in the intervening years, Kerry fought to hold the political system accountable and to do what he believed was right. As a top prosecutor in Middlesex County, Kerry took on organized crime and put the Number Two mob boss in New England behind bars. He modernized the District Attorney's office, creating an innovative rape crisis crime unit, and as a lawyer in private practice he worked long and hard to prove the innocence of a man wrongly given a life sentence for a murder he did not commit.

After being elected Lt. Governor in 1982, in 1984 Kerry was elected to the U.S. Senate, winning without funding from political action committees. Kerry built a reputation for independence, including breaking with many in his own Party to support Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction; taking on corporate welfare and government waste; pushing for campaign finance reform; holding Oliver North accountable and exposing the fraud and abuse at the heart of the BCCI scandal; working with John McCain in the search for the truth about Vietnam veterans declared POW/MIA; and insisting on accountability, investment, and excellence in public education.

Sen. Kerry was re-elected in 1990, again in 1996, defeating the popular Republican Governor William Weld in the most closely watched Senate race in the country, and in 2002. Now serving his fourth term, Kerry has worked to reform public education, address children's issues, strengthen the economy and encourage the growth of the high tech New Economy, protect the environment, and advance America's foreign policy interests around the globe.

John Kerry is married to Teresa Heinz Kerry . They have 5 children.

[JPZenger]

4. Lennon and Kerry Photo

The following includes a photo of John Kerry and John Lennon at a Vietnam protest. You need to scroll down the screen a while to see the photo:

http://countrystore.blogspot.com/2003_07_06_countrystore_archive.html

[JPZenger]

5. Philadelphia Inquirer - Vietnam Still Shapes Kerry

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/7968990.htm

[WilliamPitt]

6. I got to spend some time with him in a van

and came away with a favorable impression. He was funny, personable, sharp, focused, friendly. I got the same sense from speaking with Howard Dean on the phone last spring. Both struck me as very decent men.

[mouse7]

7. Why do you think he sometimes misses on being "too wordy?"

The place where Kerry loses "Regular Joes" in his stump speeches is when he mixes in long wordy details. It's one of Kerry's weaknesses. Have you picked up why Kerry sometimes loses sight of the "KISS principle" in his stump speeches?

[WiseMen]

8. Kerry is Unique. Democrats don't have anyone else the like.

[SinkingInTheRain]

9. Kerry spent less than 4 months in Nam

He came home with minor injuries, protested the war, chased rich women and wound up with a millionaire wife.

My dead and maimed family members that served in Nam are either dead or nursing their wounds in a Vet hospital. No millionaire wives, no senate seat, no soapbox, no 12 million dollar city home with a removed fire hydrant and no chance for a wealthy future like Kerry has.

Kerry has it easy.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

11. What is the REAL story about Kerry and Vietnam?

In an intense three months of combat following that Christmas Eve battle, Kerry often would go beyond his Navy orders and beach his boat, in one case chasing and killing a teenage Viet Cong enemy who wore only a loin cloth and carried a rocket launcher. Kerry's aggressiveness in combat caused a commanding officer to wonder whether he should be given a medal or court-martialed. Kerry would watch in despair as a crewmate killed a boy who may or may not have been an innocent civilian. He would angrily challenge a military policy that risked the death of noncombatants. And he would try to escape the fate of five of his closest friends, all killed in combat.

Along with Kerry's unquestionable and repeated bravery, he also took an action that has received far less notice: He requested and was granted a transfer out of Vietnam six months before his combat tour was slated to end on the grounds that he had earned three Purple Hearts. None of his wounds was disabling; he said one cost him two days of service and the other two did not lead to any absence. No period better captures the internal conflicts besetting John Kerry than Vietnam. He enlisted as a Navy officer candidate despite his criticisms as Yale's class orator of America's intervention in Southeast Asia. He would become a war hero, recipient of the Silver and Bronze stars, but would also become an antiwar leader, causing some former crewmates to feel he had betrayed them.

<snip>

In any case, Kerry said he was appalled that the Navy's ''free fire zone'' policy put civilians at such high risk. So, on Jan. 22, 1969, Kerry and several dozen fellow skippers and officers traveled to Saigon to complain about the policy in an extraordinary meeting with Zumwalt and the overall commander of the war, General Creighton W. Abrams Jr. ''We were fighting the (free fire) policy very, very hard, to the point that many of the members were refusing to carry out orders on some of their missions, to the point where crews were starting to mutiny, (to) say, `I would not go back in the rivers again,''' Kerry recalled during a 1971 television appearance on the Dick Cavett Show.

But Kerry went back in the rivers. Indeed, it was after this meeting that he began his most deadly round of combat. Within days of the Saigon meeting, he joined a five-man crew on swift boat No. 94 on a series of missions in which he won the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and two of his three Purple Hearts. Starting in late January 1969, this crew completed 18 missions over an intense and dangerous 48 days, almost all of them in the dense jungles of the Mekong Delta.
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061603.shtml




The following excerpts are drawn from Douglas Brinkley's Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War.
<snip>

There are so many ways this letter could become a bitter diatribe and go rambling off into irrational nothings. I don't know really where to begin?everything is so hollow and ridiculous, so stilted and so empty. I have never in my life been so alone with something like this before. I feel so bitter and angry and everywhere around me there is nothing but violence and war and gross insensitivity. I am really very frightened to be honest because when the news sunk in I had no alternatives but to carry on in the face of trivia that forced me to build a horrible protective screen around myself. Something that has never happened to my feelings before. I could not even allow myself the right to think about what was happening as much as everything inside me wanted to. I was standing watch on the bridge when the executive officer called me over and after an ominous pause asked if I had a friend called Pershing. I just stood there frozen and then read your telegram knowing already in my heart the Godawful wasteful stuid thing that had happened...

Right now everything that is superficial and emotional wants to give up and just feel sorry but I can't. I am involved in something that keeps pushing on regardless of the individual and which even with what has happened must, I know deep, deep down inside me, be coped with rationally and with strength. I do feel strong and despite emptiness and waste, I still have hope and confidence. There is a beast in me that keeps pushing me on saying Johnny you can't let go because of this?Johnny you find some sense from this?Johnny you are too strong to stop now?something keeps me going harder than before. Judy, if I do nothing else in my life I will never stop trying to bring to people the conviction of how wasteful and asinine is a human expenditure of this kind. I don't mean this in an all-consuming world saving fashion. I just mean that my own effort must be entire and thorough and that it must do what it can to help make this a better world to live in. I have not lost faith?on the contrary?I have gained a conviction and desire greater than ever before?and now, a sense of inevitability?a weighty fatalism that takes worry out of the small actions of late and makes the personal much more important.
<snip>
Then, Kerry wrote, he looked over at the young woman they had detained, "who was squatting in the rear of the PBR." She was defiant. She sat very calmly, watching the movements of the men who had just blown four of her countrymen to bits. She glared at me. I wondered about her boyfriend who was fighting us somewhere else. The PBR crew said that the men in the sampan got what they had coming to them but I felt a certain sense of guilt, shame, sorrow, remorse?something inexplicable about the way they were shot and about the predicament of the girl. I wanted to touch her and tell her that it was going to be all right but I didn't really know that it would be. Besides, she wouldn't have accepted my gesture with anything but scorn. I looked away and did nothing at all which was really all I could do. I hated all of us for the situation which stripped people of their self respect.

<snip>

"I know that most of my friends felt absolutely absurd going up a river holding a loaded weapon that was supposed to be used against someone who had never really done anything to you and on whose land you were now trespassing," Kerry wrote. "I had always felt that to kill, hate was necessary and I certainly didn't hate these people." In truth, he added, scanning the shore for suspicious movements to shoot at made him "feel like the biggest ass in the world." Kerry had explored similar feelings in a letter to his parents in December of 1968. Describing the sight of American soldiers and their Vietnamese girlfriends strolling down the streets of the U.S. rest-and-recreation-center city of Vung Tau one sunny afternoon, he reflected on the crucial difference between occupiers and liberators of war-torn places. "I asked myself what it would be like to be occupied by foreign troops?to have to bend to the desires of a people who could not be sensitive to the things that really counted in one's country," Kerry wrote in that letter. He had been considering Germany's occupation of France during World War II, he added, when "a thought came to me that I didn't like?I felt more like the German than the doughboy who came over to make the world safe for democracy and who rightfully had a star in his eye."

Less than three months later experience had brought him to another melancholy observation. He wrote in his war notes, It was when one of your men got hit or you got hit yourself that you felt most absurd?that was when everything had to have a meaning in order for it all to be worthwhile and inevitably Vietnam just didn't have any meaning. It didn't meet the test. When a good friend was hit and perhaps about to die, you'd ask if it was worth just his life alone?let alone all the others or your own.

"But the ease with which a man could be brought to kill another man, this always amazed me," he went on. Even more troubling to him was the imprimatur the U.S. military accorded this coldheartedness. To illustrate his point, he referred to the messages that would come in from the brass at Cam Ranh, praising the Swifts' gunners whenever they had killed a few Vietcong, and ending "Good Hunting": "Good Hunting? Good Christ?you'd think we were going out after deer or something?but here we were being patted on the back and receiving hopes that the next time we went out on a patrol we would find some more people to kill. How cheap life became."
http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/clips/news_2003_1119a.html




The tone was sneering. But the secretly recorded dialogue illustrates just how seriously Kerry was viewed by the Nixon White House. Some of these conversations have not been previously publicized, and Kerry said he had never heard them until they were provided by a reporter.

Day after day, according to the tapes and memos, Nixon aides worried that Kerry was a unique, charismatic leader who could undermine support for the war. Other veteran protesters were easier targets, with their long hair, their use of a Viet Cong flag, and in some cases, their calls for overthrowing the US government. Kerry, by contrast, was a neat, well-spoken, highly decorated veteran who seemed to be a clone of former President John F. Kennedy, right down to the military service on a patrol boat.

The White House feared him like no other protester.

<snip>

During private conversations with other group leaders, Kerry suggested that a veterans rally be held on the Mall in Washington, an effort Kerry hoped would refute Nixon's charge that the protesters were mostly college "bums."

"It was my sense that it wasn't going to be heard unless we went to a place where the issue was joined," Kerry said. "It was my idea to come to Washington. It was my idea to do the march. I floated that idea at the Detroit meeting. We all decided to make it happen. I became the unofficial coordinator-organizer."

Some members of the antiwar group viewed Kerry as an opportunist. He hadn't testified during the Winter Soldier hearings, hadn't organized the group, yet now he was seeking to become the coordinator and spokesman. But plenty of veterans also realized Kerry - erudite and clean-cut - was the ideal foil for those who viewed the group as hippie traitors or even communists.

So Kerry became the face of the organization, and a media sensation.
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061703.shtml

[WiseMen]

16. False, but what's your point? If you dont' loose you limbs you are evil?

[SinkingInTheRain]

22. False???

What is false? Kerry spent no more than 4 month in Nam and received no major injuries. What are you saying is false?

[Octafish]

23. False because you are wrong.

Kerry spent one year aboard a destroyer in the North China Sea, off the coast of North Vietnam, escorting aircraft carriers. After his first tour, he volunteered to skipper the Fast River Patrol boats. After he was wounded three times in combat, he asked for reassignment stateside. Kerry was eligible because he had been wounded three times.

After Kerry resigned his commission in the US Navy, he became a leading advocate against the war. He helped start the "Vietnam Veterans Against the War" and testified before Congress.

So, the guy loves his country and is willing to do the hard stuff. At any rate, all that sure sounds like a better resume than "ski instructor." Don't you think?

[Deaner1971]

24. Sen. Kerry apologizes

It's obviously his fault for not being more grieviously wounded.

It's his fault that he utilized the free speech guaranteed by the Constitution to try to keep other young man and women from dying in a war with which he did not agree.

It's fault that he married women who are worth than he is.

I am truly sorry for what happened to your family members. I had friends in Mogadishu while I was in the Army and I can tell you that who lives and who dies and who loses and limb and who has a bullet harmlessly pass by is nothing but, fortune. When John Kerry volunteered, he took the same risks as every other combat soldier. He could have stayed on a destroyer or join the National Guard but, he didn't. Penalizing a man for coming home intact is ridiculous. It's like blaming a survivor of a car crash for not dying with the other passengers.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

25. Yeah, when I got shot, I asked the NVA soldier who shot me

to shoot me worse. I really wanted to come home in a box instead of just having pain every now and again.

What a load of horseshit!

Purple Hearts happen. I should have two, but the second one was never approved because the shrapnel came courtesy of the USAF. I suppose I should have asked the zoomies to come bomb us again? Yeah, that would have been the right move.

Someone who left a Destroyer to be a fastboat skipper is not a pussy, no matter how long he spent doing it. And with 3 "hearts" and over a year in theatre, he was certainly a prime candidate for transfer stateside.

And, what exactly is wrong with marrying rich women? Damn, I wish there were a few more around.

[bushwakker]

10. Intelligent, articulate, courageous

A good man who deserves our support.

[goobergunch]

12. I don't particularly care about Vietnam

The whole "seventeen years before I was born" thing may have something to do with it.

Anything there in the last five years?

[Feanorcurufinwe]

14. You mean like leading the fight against drilling in ANWR?

[Zynx]

17. That doesn't concern me that much.

I'm not much of an environmentalist compared to many on this board.

[goobergunch]

20. Barbara Boxer was the floor manager on that question

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=108&session=1&vote=00059