The new target- How would the White House attack John Forbes Kerry?

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Jan 29th 2004
From The Economist print edition


John Kerry not only looks the part of a president, with his lanky frame and Mount Rushmore profile. He acts like one as well—and has been preparing himself for the job since his teens, when he was much taken with the fact that he had the same initials as JFK. It is hard to imagine Mr Kerry saying that he isn't sure whether Osama bin Laden is guilty—or screaming like a banshee in front of a crowd of college kids.

So how will the Republican high command deal with this extraordinary shake-up? All the signs are that they will treat the new front-runner in exactly the same way as the old one. Doesn't Mr Kerry hail from liberal Massachusetts? Didn't he once serve as lieutenant-governor to the pathetically liberal Michael Dukakis? Doesn't he love taxes and hate the death penalty? Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, has pointed out that Mr Kerry has a 93% approval rating from Americans for Democratic Action, the leading liberal rating organisation: even higher than Ted Kennedy, who gets a mere 88%. “Who would have guessed it?” crows Mr Gillespie. “Ted Kennedy is the conservative senator from Massachusetts!”

But is this a credible strategy, or is it out of date? In America's political lexicon the term “liberal” is a synonym for “wimp”; sooner or later, that famous picture of Mr Dukakis looking foolish in a tank is mentioned. But Mr Kerry is no wimp. A decorated Vietnam war veteran who risked his life to save his fellow soldiers, he is addicted to macho sports such as ice-hockey, wind-surfing and killing many forms of wildlife. He rides Harley Davidsons and has a passion for red meat.

Indeed, Mr Kerry stands a chance not just of deflecting the wimp charge but of hurling it back at his detractors. Both George Bush and Dick Cheney somehow managed to avoid serving in Vietnam. Paul Wolfowitz spent the war storming the groves of academia rather than the canals of the Mekong delta. Indeed, it is hard to think of any neo-conservative who has put on his country's uniform other than in his dreams. Mr Kerry can legitimately argue that, as someone who has been at the sharp end of battle, he would have thought more carefully than these “chicken hawks” before launching a pre-emptive war. He gets some of his loudest applause on the stump when he says that he knows “something about aircraft carriers for real”.


http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2388532&CFID=22523501&CFTOKEN=4f16ca7-2db61e58-14d6-48bc-b6d5-f133dfaa26b4