A Dean Supporter Tries A GOP Talking Point On Kerry

[DrFunkenstein]

The GOP talking point:

In 1992, Kerry defended candidate for President Bill Clinton. Then, service in Vietnam didn’t matter, according to Kerry.

Now that Kerry’s running for President and is being relentlessly dogged by non-veteran Howard Dean, service does matter — it matters a lot.

http://www.rnc.org/Newsroom/RNCResearch/research081403-2.htm

The Dean supporter:

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Senator Kerry, you’ve been highly critical of Governor Dean’s lack of foreign policy experience. However, you were a supporter of the Clinton presidency and, in fact, you were on the short list for his vice president in 1992. How do you reconcile your criticism of his lack of experience when President Clinton had the exact same credentials in 1992?

KERRY: Well, I could make a joke out of it and tell you he was going to make me vice president and so that —- but I’m not going to do that because that wasn’t the reason. That-that was not the reason.

You know, President Clinton and I had a conversation maybe a couple of months ago in which he expressed to me that he thought that in this current climate, he might have had a lot harder time getting elected president than he did. And the reason is that the issue then was not post-September 11. It was not after we had all seen a very different world.

I wrote a book about six year ago now called “The New War.” And I drew that book on the experience I had as chairman of the Narcotics Terrorism Committee in which I learned about this international criminal activity and the interchangeability of all of these criminal activities — arms running, drug running, nuclear proliferation, regular proliferation, all interconnect. And so I set out a series of things we needed to do. That was 1996.

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President Clinton was elected in 92. The major issue then was the economy. Today, another Bush has presented us with a twofer; the major issues are the economy and America’s relationship to the rest of the world. And I believe we need a president now, as George Bush has proven, beyond any reasonable doubt, the presidency is not the place post-9/11 for on-the-job training. I think we need somebody who has experience.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/983074.asp

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