THOMAS OLIPHANT
The easy stereotypes don't fit John Kerry
WASHINGTON
It has also always interested me how at crunch time -- his epic struggle with Bill Weld for reelection eight years ago and when he rescued his faltering presidential campaign last winter -- Kerry has had to listen to wise mentors and counselors in order to connect with the customers of politics. People who don't quite fit stereotypes are the ones who think anew, test new ideas, change the equation. There is, however, a thin line between apartness and hubris, one of the fatal character flaws in Greek tragedy. After a bad fall in his awkward try for Congress 32 years ago, Kerry has managed to avoid succumbing to that human temptation to think it's all about him. In a few days, he and John Edwards will start a slow, photogenic tour east from the Rockies to his nominating convention. It amazes me that this reticent man will have as much control as he does over what the country ends up thinking about him as the next stage of his campaign begins. George Bush's machine has spent $100 million in a so far vain attempt to make Kerry conform to conservative caricatures of liberals. The season of media deconstructions of his life's details has yielded trees, not a forest. It's partly negative comment that no clear impressions of him have formed despite at least six months of genuine prominence, but that's another way of saying that what comes next is mostly up to him. My long exposure to Kerry's life makes me think of a story about the late Richard Neustadt of Harvard, the 20th century's pre-eminent presidential scholar. In 1986, Mike Dukakis asked him: Did all of the country's presidents have anything important in common? Neustadt answered with a grin that each of them was pretty weird. On that basis, someone should start drafting Kerry's inaugural address. More than once in the next two weeks, people will talk about his family, money, and schooling pedigrees; they should save their breath. The truth is he wasn't all that preppie in the view of most real preppies; he was a combat leader in Vietnam who turned against the war when people with his pedigrees didn't typically fight in wars. He was mostly a moderating influence in the radicalizing antiwar movement he gave new life to in 1971, but I remember vividly him telling me during the veterans demonstration here that he assumed his activism would preclude a political career. His confusion the following year of his brief celebrity with political support led to his punch-in-the-jaw loss for Congress. Continued... |
