Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Kerry gets a Break in a Major Paper. Get the coats out Hell must be freezing.
NY Times. Kerry’s experience and serious nature is very telling. At least one organ of the major media will give my guy a break.
What is so wrong about expecting the next President to actually have some experience in areas that matter?
The Quandary between the Experience and Maverick Image.
The article does hit on one point that the campaign articulates very poorly. “Having spent much of his career as a loner and an outsider, he finds himself fighting the impression that he is a quintessential Washington insider, yesterday's news.”
Kerry has always been an outsider in the Congress and never held a position of Congressional leadership (nor had interest in holding such a leadership position). He broke with most in his party over Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction, small business issues, NAFTA and free trade issues, and supported Clinton on welfare reform.
People forget he was a tough prosecutor who brought down the second biggest mob boss in New England behind bars. Kerry’s experience lead him to be one of the leading lights holding “Oliver North accountable and exposing the fraud and abuse at the heart of the BCCI scandal.”
He also took committee assignments that he passionately cared about in the foreign relations and small business committees and became an advocate in these areas. In the Senate Commerce Committee (a powerful one), he was out arguing for increase CAFÉ standards and to build high-speed passenger rail, hardly issues to squeeze money out of corporate donors.
John McCain was viewed as a maverick, but he never broke with his party much until after the 2000 election. Unlike the 2000 election in the 2004 general election, you want to show your extensive credentials to be President in a post 9-11 world. However, in the primaries you need to show you are a maverick within your party and that you will and have challenged the status quo. How you balance this is delicate.
What is so wrong about expecting the next President to actually have some experience in areas that matter?
The Quandary between the Experience and Maverick Image.
The article does hit on one point that the campaign articulates very poorly. “Having spent much of his career as a loner and an outsider, he finds himself fighting the impression that he is a quintessential Washington insider, yesterday's news.”
Kerry has always been an outsider in the Congress and never held a position of Congressional leadership (nor had interest in holding such a leadership position). He broke with most in his party over Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction, small business issues, NAFTA and free trade issues, and supported Clinton on welfare reform.
People forget he was a tough prosecutor who brought down the second biggest mob boss in New England behind bars. Kerry’s experience lead him to be one of the leading lights holding “Oliver North accountable and exposing the fraud and abuse at the heart of the BCCI scandal.”
He also took committee assignments that he passionately cared about in the foreign relations and small business committees and became an advocate in these areas. In the Senate Commerce Committee (a powerful one), he was out arguing for increase CAFÉ standards and to build high-speed passenger rail, hardly issues to squeeze money out of corporate donors.
John McCain was viewed as a maverick, but he never broke with his party much until after the 2000 election. Unlike the 2000 election in the 2004 general election, you want to show your extensive credentials to be President in a post 9-11 world. However, in the primaries you need to show you are a maverick within your party and that you will and have challenged the status quo. How you balance this is delicate.
# posted by AB @ 7:09 PM 
