Somewhat like Al Gore, presumptive presidential
nominee John Kerry appears to be developing a bit of a pundit problem.
Shortly before the Democratic primaries, an extraordinarily
revealing article titled something like "The Problem with John Kerry"
appeared in a magazine I read fairly regularly.
According to the author, a longtime political journalist I won’t name,
Kerry was
an arrogant, equivocating SOB who was too tall,
too rich, traded too heavily on his Vietnam War heroism and had disturbingly
thick, wavy hair. His preoccupation with Kerry’s
appearance struck me as so peculiar that I asked a computer-savvy friend
to
Google a recent photo of the author. Could it
be? Alas, it could. Exactly as you’d expect in a "Saturday Night Live"
skit, the
pundit resembled the "before" photo in a Hair
Club for Men infomercial. It appeared that Kerry, who is 6-foot-6, made
him
feel very small. If amused, I also was embarrassed
for the pundit’s sake. The most inane criticism journalists get is that
they
envy some politician’s charisma or seek another’s
favor. Despite a few would-be insiders who socialize with the powerful,
most live very different lives by choice.
But Kerry’s height? His hair, for heaven’s sake?
Healthy adults leave such insecurities behind in high school. Reading this
guy’s
columns felt like eavesdropping on a therapy
session. So I quit. Now and then, I check to see if he’s developed other
interests. Nope.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean Kerry has no
image problems. Quite the opposite. See, an American presidential contest
is
the ultimate reality TV show. While tallness
is normally a good thing (the taller candidate has won more votes in every
presidential
contest since 1976), and while the last bald
president (Eisenhower) was elected before most Americans had TVs, the perception
of aloofness can be hard to shake. In that sense,
the pundit was Everyman.
Almost the entire GOP case against him boils down
to this: John Kerry’s a two-faced, pseudo-intellectual aristocrat who thinks
he’s better than you. That’s how come President
Bush’s surrogates have been so busy digging up absurd "controversies" about
Kerry’s heroic military record and his subsequent
actions as a prominent activist with Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
They’ve even gone so far as to question whether
Kerry deserved the first of his three Purple Hearts—an "issue" laid to
rest when
the one-time Navy swift boat commander authorized
the full release of his service and medical records. They showed shrapnel
being dug out of his arm after a very hairy firefight
with Viet Cong insurgents. A similar battle later earned him the Silver
Star for valor.
His citation for the Bronze Star, which Kerry
earned along with his third Purple Heart in March 1969, describes him ordering
his boat back
into a hail of fire to rescue a Green Beret who’d
fallen overboard. "Lt. Kerry directed his gunners to provide suppressing
fire," it says,
"while from an exposed position on the bow, his
arm bleeding and in pain, with disregard for his personal safety, he pulled
the man aboard."
Jim Rassmann, the soldier whose life Kerry saved,
turned up unannounced in Iowa to volunteer for his campaign. Nominally
a Republican,
Rassmann’s incredulous that anybody would question
the man’s courage. In Douglas Brinkley’s book, "Tour of Duty: John Kerry
and the
Vietnam War," Kerry’s former shipmates all but
unanimously praise his leadership. To them, he was no snob at all.
Interestingly, nobody mentioned his hair.
The effort to sully Kerry’s war record failing,
attention was next directed to his activities as a protester. To a noisy
minority, exercising
democratic rights during wartime is tantamount
to treason. Needless to say, Kerry won’t be getting their votes. But if
he could be shown
to have behaved badly as a war protester, maybe
his heroic image could be dirtied for others.
Last Monday, ABC News began running a Web headline
reading, "Medal Dispute, EXCLUSIVE: Did Kerry lie about Vietnam War medals?"
One of its authors was Chris Vlasto, a producer
who also got a lot of exclusives during Kenneth Starr’s heyday. After some
questioned
whether ABC had ever used the "L word" to describe
Bush, the headline was discreetly altered to read: "Medal Dispute, EXCLUSIVE:
Why did Kerry change story about Vietnam medals?"
At issue were some ambiguous remarks Kerry made during a 1971 TV interview.
Had he thrown away all his medals during a dramatic
protest by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, or only some ribbons? And
so what?
one might ask more than 30 years later. Rather
than quibble, Kerry aggressively returned rhetorical fire. He asked when
Bush will get around
to proving he showed up for National Guard duty.
If he’d wanted to be an arrogant SOB, however, Kerry might have asked what
Bush and
Dick Cheney did with their medals.
• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.