Weighing defeat, Kerry sees lessons to guide future
The following interview was conducted by Peter S. Canellos, Nina J. Easton, Michael Kranish, and Susan Milligan of the Globe staff. The article was written by Canellos.
WASHINGTON -- Pained but not bowed, Senator John F. Kerry promised in an interview with the Globe last week to apply the lessons of a presidential campaign that he portrayed as ''so much bigger and more complex than people think" to bolster a Democratic Party that he indicated he might seek to lead again.
''I'm not going to sit around, you know. I'm going to learn a lot of good lessons," he said.
Sitting in a wing chair in his Senate office, opposite a historical print of Nantucket Harbor, Kerry offered a wide-ranging assessment of an election he lost by about 3 million popular votes and 35 electoral votes. He said he was determined to play a leading role in his party's efforts to integrate values and religion into its message, especially as directed at his fellow Catholics.
He also said he'd be eager to work at improving the party's grass-roots organizations alongside his former rival Howard Dean, now in line to head the Democratic National Committee, a man he said won his respect by campaigning tirelessly for the Kerry-Edwards ticket.
During the two-hour interview on Thursday, Kerry cited some impediments to his election as president, including the gay marriage referendums in 11 states (''I can certainly tell you it had an impact"), the financial disadvantage of the early convention (''We had a 13-week general election and they had an eight-week"), and surveys showing half of Bush voters believed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had helped plan the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks (''Now, did I scratch my head over that? You better believe it.")
Kerry also said he hopes to sit down with President Bush to talk about foreign affairs before Bush's trip to Europe at the end of this month, in what would be the first meeting between the two since their final presidential debate.
Despite the contentious nature of the campaign, Kerry expressed no resentment toward the president, but revealed a simmering bitterness toward some of the president's staunch backers. Kerry demanded that the swift boat veterans who had criticized his military record agree to open up their own files because he knows ''one guy was busted" and another ''has a letter of reprimand."
The fight over the ads by veterans accusing Kerry of exaggerating his Vietnam heroism -- a period that marked a downturn in Kerry's polling numbers -- lingers as a key battle of the campaign.
Last spring, after securing the nomination, Kerry promised Democrats that he wouldn't fall victim to the character attacks that felled so many of the party's former nominees. Three months after Election Day, Kerry still appears angry with himself for allowing the swift boat ads, along with the Republican portrayal of him as a ''flip-flopper," to define his candidacy for some voters.
He also expressed frustration over surveys showing he lost to Bush among Catholic voters, a problem Kerry promised to address by pursuing an agenda that reflects ''the whole cloth" of Catholic teachings, not just abortion.
''We were all taught as young Catholics growing up to think and see our Catholicism, and in our duty to God and to ourselves in that relationship, as the whole cloth of Catholicism, the whole cloth of responsibility, the solidarity of people to their community and to each other and ultimately to the Lord," Kerry said. ''I'll tell you -- that teaching has always been inclusive of just wars, the environment, poverty, justice, social justice, and never been reduced to one point or another."
Kerry insisted that he and his running mate, former North Carolina senator John Edwards, talked about values ''every day" during the race, but he strongly endorsed efforts by Democrats to talk even more about religion.
In discussing his own dilemma of whether to run again for the presidency, he said he wasn't fully prepared to consider it. But he appeared willing to seek the guidance of a higher power.
''God will figure it out," he said quietly.
Starting from scratch As soon as it became clear that Kerry would be the Democratic nominee last spring, he faced a daunting task: Building a general-election campaign organization from scratch.
''You know, you're putting together a half-billion dollar corporation, hiring hundreds of employees, in the span of days," Kerry said. ''And the human resource issue of getting everybody tuned in on advance [work], on crowd building, on message, and war room. It's very complicated. And you know, [Bush strategist] Karl Rove had six years . . . to be spending $400 million a year doing messaging, framing, branding, all the kinds of things they do, and they do it very effectively."
And Kerry soon became aware of the isolation a chief executive can experience in the middle of a huge organization. He reached a point, he said, when he didn't have time to preview his own campaign ads. He still hasn't seen some of them.
''I saw the reels of some of the early stuff," he said, ''though when we got rolling in the last three or four weeks, I didn't see the ads. I just didn't have the time."
The sheer pace of the campaign left him unable to follow up on hurried requests to aides, he said, causing mistakes to occur at crucial moments. On Aug. 9, while campaigning at the Grand Canyon, Kerry answered yes to a question about whether he would have voted to give the president the authority to go to war in Iraq knowing what ''we know now" -- that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Kerry said the question was poorly phrased and he thought he was only reiterating why he had voted to give Bush the authority in the first place.
''When it got misinterpreted, I said [to an aide] I hadn't said that," Kerry said. ''And I told my campaign . . . they should go out and correct it."
They did not. Bush made hay over the fact that Kerry had endorsed invading Iraq even if there were no weapons of mass destruction. But Kerry, keeping up his rigorous series of speeches, was unaware for a while that his campaign had never cleared up the matter.
''I later learned" that no correction had been issued, Kerry said. ''But it was clear to me that was to be clarified."
During the same period in August, television ads by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began appearing in key battleground markets. Kerry said his campaign had already rebutted the group twice, and thought the matter was over.
''Let's get the record absolutely straight," Kerry said. ''[The veterans' group] first surfaced in the spring and we did have a press conference on the same day and they were gone. And then they came back and there was another press conference and another dealing with them and they were gone, folks. Then the Republicans got involved with them . . . and they came back in August, right around convention time, and they came back with TV."
Kerry explained: ''I don't remember seeing the first ad; I think I read it rather than saw it. Several friends of mine saw it immediately. My reaction the minute that I heard what they had said [was that] I was outraged and I said this has to be responded to. Within a few days, I gave a speech to the firefighters and I responded to it."
But the first ad appeared Aug. 5. Kerry did not make his speech to the firefighters until Aug. 19. The two-week delay between the charges and the rebuttal allowed the allegations that Kerry had exaggerated his military record to take root, according to some Democratic organizers.
''Look, are you asking me should it have been responded to immediately? I've said it a hundred times -- yes," Kerry said. ''And I'm not going to get into pointing fingers at anybody. It's my campaign, should have happened, and that's the price you pay."
The furor over military credentials hasn't ended with the campaign. Kerry pledged to sign Form 180, releasing all of his military records, but challenged his critics, including Bush, to do the same.
''I want them to sign it, I want [swift boat veterans] John O'Neill, Roy Hoffmann, and what's their names, the guys on the other boat," Kerry said. ''I want their records out there. They have made specific allegations about my record, I know things about their records, I want them out there. I'm willing to sign it, to put all my records out there. I'm willing to sign it, but I want them to sign it, too."
Kerry later confirmed that his decision to sign the form is not conditional on any others signing, but he expressed lingering bitterness over double standards on military service.
''Let me make this clear: My full military record has been made public," Kerry said. ''All of my medical records and all of my fitness reports, every fitness report involving each place I served, is public. Where are George Bush's still? Where are his military records? End of issue."
A promising start Kerry's general-election campaign began with the Democratic National Convention in Boston, and he said he takes responsibility for all strategic decisions in the rush of events that followed.
The convention was upbeat, showcasing the party's unity and readiness to lead the war on terrorism. Despite the anger that many Democratic voters felt toward Bush, the convention dwelled less on criticisms of the president than on Kerry's background and credentials to be commander in chief.
After the election, some political strategists suggested the Democrats had gone too soft on Bush. Kerry said he disagrees.
''We came out ahead," Kerry said of the Democratic convention, adding, ''I'm not going to second-guess that now."
The centerpiece of the convention was Kerry's acceptance speech, which he wrote himself.
''It was a personal speech that laid out a very personal vision for the country and it was well received," Kerry added. ''I mean, most commentators thought it was the best speech I had ever given. It rose to the occasion, which is always a tough bar to get over, and the convention folks loved it, and left there feeling like it was a great convention. You didn't hear a notion of negativity and doubt over what we did at that convention until after the campaign was over, and I'm not going to do this revisionism, folks."
Before the convention, Kerry had floated the idea of delaying a month before officially accepting the nomination, because as soon as he became the nominee he would face strict spending limits. Bush, whose convention was five weeks later, could spend as much as he wanted during the interim. Kerry's trial balloon drew a negative response, especially in Boston, and he agreed to accept the nomination on schedule. Kerry said his decision was partly emotional.
''I think it was important to accept the nomination in Boston," he said. ''I'm glad I did. Emotionally, to me."
But he said the five-week gap in August when he was on a strict budget put him at ''a huge disadvantage." Unable to advertise heavily while saving money for the fall, he lost momentum. But he said he doesn't regret accepting the nomination in his hometown.
Likewise, Kerry declined to reconsider his decision later in the fall to refrain from using Osama bin Laden's taped television appearance on the Friday before the election to highlight Bush's failure to capture the Al Qaeda leader.
''Of course I gave it thought," Kerry said. ''That was the dilemma of a Friday appearance before a Tuesday election, that if I was viewed as quote 'politicizing' it, in a way, that would have boomeranged . . . I did what I thought was right for the country, which is to condemn Osama bin Laden and to make clear our determination to capture or kill him, period, and not politicize it."
Kerry said surveys and ''anecdotal evidence" suggest that late-deciding voters moved to Bush after seeing the bin Laden video, not wanting to change leaders. Despite the bad break presented by the video, Kerry said, he was pleased with the closing weeks of the campaign.
''I think the last seven, eight weeks of the campaign were really terrific," he said. ''I think we had a first-rate team. I think we had a first-rate operation."
Exit poll optimism Kerry said he knew the election would be close and so never allowed himself to feel sure that he would win. But he was hopeful.
''People wrote me off two or three times in the course of this race, and in the last week, they [Republicans] thought they were going to lose," he said. ''Most of you [the press] thought we were going to win, on Election Day people thought we had, and we came damn close."
Contrary to some reports, Kerry said, he knew about exit polls predicting his victory but didn't allow himself to believe he had won. He wouldn't even let excited aides call him ''Mr. President."
''We were coming down, going out of the house, and somebody reported that AP confirmation that Florida had 52-48 or something [in exit polls], and somebody said, 'If that's true, I may be able to call you Mr. President,' or something like that. And I was dead silent. I said, 'No, let's wait and see.' There was no jubilation, there was no nothing, and I was very, very careful."
Kerry pointed out that about two-thirds of Bush's popular-vote margin came from Texas and Oklahoma, and that the Kerry-Edwards campaign had made no effort to run up the popular vote in Democratic strongholds of New York and California. The Democrats' campaign had focused on a core group of battleground states, and, Kerry said, ''We won the popular vote in the battleground states," but fell short of the big prizes of Ohio and Florida.
Now, Kerry said, he feels a responsibility to promote the issues he highlighted during the campaign, particularly universal healthcare for children and greater support for troops in Iraq.
''Running for president is a great experience," he said. ''It is a unique insight into people's lives, a sort of sharing of their lives . . . It is very emotional. I tell you, the number of people who were tearing up in rope lines, holding their kids out to you, wanting to be there for that moment, saying 'Take care of my kid,' 'Make sure Social Security is there for me,' or 'Make sure my kid has a good school,' or 'I don't want my son in Iraq.' . . . You come out of there with a huge sense of the power of this country, and affection for the American people and for the process."
Kerry's intentions to stay viable as a party leader and potential 2008 presidential candidate will be girded by a new political action committee that will be run by his longtime strategist John Giesser of Newton, who will also oversee a 3-million-person e-mail list at johnkerry.com. Meanwhile, Kerry said, he is working on a book, but will not reveal the subject. He said it is ''premature" to think of another presidential run but acknowledged that he believes he's become a much better politician over the past year.
''I think I'm a better listener," he said. ''I talk a different language. I got beaten up a lot over that, fairly. No complaints. You know, you've got to break out of Senate-ese and all that junk. By the end of the campaign, I really developed into a much better candidate than when I began this thing, and I hope developed into a better person."
During his recent trips to the Middle East and Europe, Kerry said, he experienced firsthand his newfound celebrity, both in meetings with world leaders and in spontaneous cheers from people in pubs and on street corners in London, Paris, Cairo, and Damascus.
Unlike some past unsuccessful presidential contenders, Kerry won't admit to too many bruises. But tenderness clearly remains around the edges.
Asked what hurt him the most during the campaign, Kerry mused about how ''all of us are flawed as human beings" and ''I think I have a strong record" before raising his voice and declaring: ''One thing I know is that I didn't flip-flop on anything." 