Kennedy an attribute in Democratic effort, and a Bush target
WASHINGTON -- Senator Edward M. Kennedy is emerging as the Dick Cheney of the Kerry presidential campaign, an elder statesman with the star power to raise money and energize party activists and the firepower and the freedom to harshly attack President Bush's domestic and foreign policies.
Democratic officials across the country say they welcome the well-known Kennedy playing that role and believe he will be an asset in the critical task of turning out the Democratic vote in battleground states that Al Gore lost narrowly in 2000 and where polls show the race already very tight.
Although Kennedy's blunt rhetoric comes with risks -- his speech on Monday, in which he labeled Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam," was assailed by Republicans for being a divisive, personal attack on the president.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that Kennedy "should be a little more restrained and careful in his comments because we are at war." Debating the Iraq war was appropriate and an important part of American democracy, Powell said on Fox News Radio's "Tony Snow Show." But, he added, "this is also the time that we rally the nation behind the challenge that we face in Iraq and Afghanistan."
But prominent Democrats say the political benefits of Kennedy's speaking out outweigh the costs.
"Senator Kennedy carries a measure of respectability and credibility in West Virginia, and he's a better-known quantity than John Kerry," said Michael Callaghan, chairman of the state's Democratic Party. "We love the Kennedy family, and if Senator Kennedy uses his charisma here to highlight Kerry's positions and agenda, that will be a good thing." Callaghan said that on March 17 he dined with Kerry at Jim's Spaghetti and Steakhouse in Huntington, W.Va., beneath a framed photograph of John F. Kennedy, who attributed his winning the 1960 presidential nomination and election to West Virginia voters. Recent polls show Bush and Kerry in a dead heat; four years ago, Bush beat Gore by 41,000 votes in West Virginia.
Yesterday, Kennedy defended his remarks on Bush and Iraq as "setting the record straight" and as an accounting of the "manipulation of information, distortions, deceit, broken promises, and half-truths" by the Bush administration. In his address at the Brookings Institution, Kennedy asserted that Bush had "created the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon on education, health, and jobs," and for the first time Kennedy compared the situation in Iraq to the war in Vietnam.
Kennedy called himself "a very strong supporter of John Kerry" and said he believed in Kerry's vision for the country. The senator said it was not his desire or philosophy to launch negative attacks, but that he was willing to do "whatever I can" to remove Bush from the White House.
Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said there was no coordination between the Kerry campaign and Kennedy's speech Monday, but she said Kerry looks forward to campaigning again with Kennedy, who was often at his side during the primaries. "There is nobody like Ted Kennedy in rallying a crowd and laying out the problems that the nation faces and how we should fix them," said Cutter, a former Kennedy Senate staff member.
Kerry's campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, was Kennedy's chief of staff. Other longtime Kennedy aides and advisers, Robert Shrum and John Sasso, have key roles in the Kerry campaign.
While their aides said no road map had been set for Kennedy's campaign role, the two Massachusetts senators will appear together tonight for a major Kerry fund-raiser at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington.
There are clear parallels between Kennedy and Cheney: Both know Washington inside out and have enormous fund-raising prowess, and each has the status to make headlines with his attacks. "Ted Kennedy is not hiding in a bunker, meeting with big oil companies," Cutter said, dismissing the Cheney-Kennedy comparison. "He is talking about issues that matter and speaking the truth."
But the Bush-Cheney campaign sees it differently, and in an e-mail to reporters, spokeman Steve Schmidt described Kennedy as "Kerry's lead political hatchet man" and Kennedy and Kerry as ideological twins who supported new taxes, and voted against funds for troops in Iraq.
"If Kennedy is going to be the lead dog for John Kerry, that will help us a lot," said Carl Forti, spokesman for the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, which as recently as February used Kennedy's image and the words "liberal Democrat" in an ad for a conservative Republican candidate in Kentucky. "If Ted Kennedy is willing to go to Missouri or Ohio or parts of Pennsylvania, I'll buy his plane ticket."
Chris Gates, chair of the Democratic Party in Colorado, said that four or eight years ago, Kennedy might have resonated as a "human metaphor" for liberal Democrats, but today he has transformed into a senior statesman. Gates is working on bringing both Kerry and Kennedy to Colorado, where he believes there will be a closer-than-expected race with Bush.
Glen Johnson of the Globe staff contributed to this report. 