Kerry criticized for French connection

WASHINGTON -- As the presidential race gets tighter and nastier, the F-word has increasingly crept into attacks against presumptive Democratic nominee John F. Kerry.

It has made its way into comments by the House majority leader, onto Internet blogs, and onto the Republican National Committee's website. It has shown up on sweatshirts and T-shirts, and been thrown around in columns by nationally known conservative writers.

Kerry, his foes complain, might as well be French.

"The French believe John Kerry has `a certain elegance,' " sneers a contributor to the FreeRepublic.com website, over unflattering pictures of the Massachusetts senator playing ping-pong, catching a football, and throwing a baseball. "Of course, the French also think Jerry Lewis is a comic genius. Think about it," the satirical posting says.

House majority leader Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, is reported to have started a meeting by saying, "Good morning, or as John Kerry would say, `Bonjour.' " And the RNC weighed in April 1 with a spoof TV spot -- identified as just a little April Fools' Day joke -- that derides both Kerry and the French. "Did you know that April Fools' Day was started by the French back in the 16th century? I think today, their gas prices are about $4.57 a gallon," says the announcer, with an accordion playing in the background and an oil painting shown hanging on a wall to evoke the mood of Paris.

"In the United States, we have John Kerry, who supported a 50 cent increase in the gas tax. It might not seem like much for a guy whose 50-foot yacht, named after a French swashbuckler, costs $700 to fill. Who's voted for higher taxes? All with the support of unnamed foreign leaders," the fake ad continues, showing Kerry pictured with a question mark over his face. "All of it has his cousin so upset, he called to say he's voting for Bush."

True, Kerry has a French cousin, speaks French fluently, and as a child was en vacances on the Brittany coast. It's a combination his foes have turned into a kind of character flaw, much to the insult of many French people as well as Kerry's supporters.

"These guys are doing the same thing they do to black candidates. They're appealing to people's prejudices," said Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware. The underlying message, Biden and others said, is to make the decorated Vietnam War veteran look unpatriotic by associating him with a country that opposed the Iraq war, and to make the Massachusetts senator look like he's privileged and out of touch with regular Americans.

"They're playing the anti-intellectual card, the antielitist, anticulture," Biden fumed. "It's saying sophistication is something very bad, like you read the whole Bible, instead of just the parts you want."

Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist, said Kerry's Francophilia "plays into this stereotype of the effete, French-speaking, northeastern Massachusetts liberal elitist. The fact that his position on Iraq seems reasonably close to that of [French president] Jacques Chirac is just icing on the cake."

Acknowledging that Bush came from a wealthy family, Ayres said, "George Bush is no elitist. It's a matter of style more than background. His heritage may be Connecticut, but his style is that of Texas. George Bush comes across very much as a man of the people, despite his background, and John Kerry doesn't."

Burke's Peerage, a London-based operation that tracks noble lineage, recently announced that history would suggest that Kerry would win the November election because the Massachusetts senator has bluer blood than Bush.

"So far, it looks as if the royal and noble connections of Senator Kerry even exceed those of President George Walker Bush," publishing director Harold Brooks-Baker said in a statement. Kerry has "not only royal descents going back as far as Charlemagne, but he also has connections to British peerages," Brooks-Baker said. "He is closely related, on his mother's side, to virtually every great ancient patrician family in Boston."

Bush forged a similar impression in 2000. While both Bush and opponent Al Gore came from privileged backgrounds, it was Gore who came across as the product of private school and family money, while Bush successfully presented himself as a regular guy who drinks not wine but (nonalcoholic) beer.

"It's one of a series of personal attacks that fly above the radar screen," said Doug Hattaway, a Boston-based political consultant who worked on Gore's 2000 campaign. "I think Democrats do need to make more pointed [references] to Bush as a product of privilege, with everything handed to him on a silver platter."

Tad Devine, a Kerry advisor, said that "with Gore, I think the personal attacks did take hold," and that with Kerry, Republicans are "trying to marginalize him and to suggest to people that [Kerry] doesn't share their values." The Democrats believe they can paint Bush as a president for the rich and the special interests, but "I don't underestimate [Bush] in terms of someone who's projected consciously a certain image," Devine added. "They feel that image is reassuring and people warm up to it."

Republican operatives say Kerry has played into their hands by the way he acts and speaks -- even by the sports he plays. "Look at his vacation," a Republican strategist said of Kerry's snowboarding break in Idaho. "It's a solitary sport. It just reinforces the image of aloofness. People think he's cold, so put him on a slope? It's just moronic."

The French -- having watched House officials last year rename the Belgian-created french fries "freedom fries" and even remove the small containers of French vanilla nondairy creamers from the House restaurant to protest the French government's opposition to the Iraq war -- are displeased to see their country again under rhetorical attack.

The French government will take no position on the presidential race, said Mireille Andrea Makanda, spokeswoman for the French consulate in Boston. But "for us, of course, French people, hearing French nationality being used as a so-called insult is not pleasant. We think it's ridiculous on a general basis," she said.

"The way in which it is done is racist," said Jacqueline Grapin, the French president of the European Institute in Washington. "It is a shame, because the American election deserves a higher level of debate." But the American public may not be swayed much by the French-bashing, she said.

"We have a saying in French which says that everything excessive is nil -- when you go too far, you don't get anywhere," Grapin said. "This may be one of those cases."

Susan Milligan can be reached at milligan@globe.com.