Two JFKs, divisible

National Review, Sept 13, 2004 by Noemie Emery

I NEVER knew John Kennedy, and John Kennedy was not (sigh) a friend of mine, but among the legions of those who are no John Kennedy, John Forbes Kerry probably heads up the list. Their names are similar: their given name John; their mothers' maiden names beginning with "F"; their vaguely Irish-sounding surnames beginning and ending with the same letters. They came from Massachusetts; commanded small boats in wartime in Pacific and/or Asian waters; and had access to vast sums of money they did nothing whatever to earn. Past these, however, points of resemblance are thin on the ground. John Kennedy was one of four charismatic American presidents of the 20th century, with a capacity to charm, disarm, and inspire people, one by one, and in a mass audience--a communicator on a par with Ronald Reagan and both Roosevelts. Kerry, on the other hand, rambles, meanders, and puts people to sleep. In the words of Democratic policy guru Ben Affleck, he tends to "enervate" those who listen. Kennedy imparted energy; Kerry drains people of it. Women do not jump or scream in John Kerry's presence. In fact, they seem hard-pressed not to yawn.

All his life, John Kennedy had the ability to seduce and enlist in his interest people of all social classes, from the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire to the East Boston townies whom he met in 1946 when campaigning for Congress and who stayed in his orbit till death. Kerry has problems making connections with anyone; at least anyone not on the payroll. Kennedy's great charm was, according to most people who knew him, a quality of being more intense than most people, of wringing the most out of every experience. People in his company tended to feel more alive and exuberant. People near Kerry, on the other hand, tend to feel dead, or at least in a coma. This may be restful, but it fails to inspire. People nod off when he talks. Kennedy was adored by his Secret Service detail, perhaps even too much so. Kerry's detail has a different reaction. As the Washington Prowler reported on The American Spectator's website, at least one agent asked to be reassigned after Kerry took him on a shopping trip involving the purchase of intimate items. On vacation in Idaho, Kerry threw a fit when knocked down by an agent trying to avoid other skiers. "I don't fall down. That son of a bitch ran into me," Kerry snapped at observers, who happened to notice his tumble. The real JFK did not swear at agents, or take them along to buy jockstraps. It's just "that special gracelessness," as Ben Bradlee might say.

Then there's the matter of money. Kennedy got his from his father, a buccaneer millionaire many times over, whose largesse he shared with eight siblings. Kerry, on the other hand, married his, twice--first to a woman worth $300 million, then to a woman worth more than three times that. Kennedy, when he ran for president, had two nice but unremarkable houses--one on Cape Cod, another in Georgetown--the use of his father's estate at Palm Beach, his New York apartments, his father's small boat, and a small plane bought by his father when he began his campaign. Kerry has the same sort of stuff, but on steroids: a huge townhouse in Georgetown (as opposed to a small one) and four other mansions on other choice pieces of real estate, the total value of all of which is near $30 million. He has a boat worth over $800,000, and his wife's plane, the deluxe version of a Gulfstream jet, costs $35 million, making this man a really high-maintenance dude. Kennedy's wife spent his money (and boy, did she spend it), costing him no end of annoyance and even embarrassment. Kerry, by contrast, spends his wife's money, and spends it with a sense of eager entitlement never seen in the real JFK.

John Kennedy did not go in for exotic sports and expensive equipment; his favorite pastimes were golf and touch football. (His real favorite pastime was, of course, women, which did not cost him money. If it had, he might have been more restrained.) Throughout his public career of 17 years, Kennedy gave his government salary to various charities, and lived on his trust funds. Kerry has a different idea of what he ought to "give back" to society. Between his marriages, when he was forced to live on his own earnings, his annual donations to charity, on a salary over $100,000, ranged from $2,039 to 0, for an aggregate total of under .07 percent of his income. The best indication of where his priorities lie seems to be in his returns for the year 1993, when he reported an income of $130,345, bought himself an Italian motorbike for $8,600, and gave the wretched of the earth $175.

And then, of course, there is public life. The favorite construct of Democratic poseurs (such as Kerry) is to present themselves--in contrast to unsubtle Republicans--as cool, nuanced, and continental, like John Kennedy. But this ignores the fact that in the 1960 election Monsieur Nuance was not Kennedy, but Adlai Stevenson, the only-too-subtle liberal darling, adored by the type of people who now support Kerry because they can't stomach President Bush. In those days, of course, they could not stomach Kennedy either, whom they regarded as hopelessly brash and aggressive--too macho, too hard-line, too bellicose. (The one they really detested was kid brother Bobby, who was too religious, always moralizing, and prone to seeing everything in black and white.) Kennedy disliked Stevenson and thought him effeminate; a "girly-man," in Schwarzenegger argot. Unlike Kerry, the real JFK was not the most liberal senator, or even the fourth-most-liberal senator, but one of the most conservative in the whole field of Democrats, an anti-Communist and ardent Cold Warrior. He had spent part of his young manhood in Europe, watching his father make all the wrong choices, and he never forgot it. His first major speech after being elected to Congress in 1946 was an address in March 1947 defending the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine, and criticizing the Munich Pact of 1938--which his father had favored--as a terrible error that illustrated the folly of attempts to appease an aggressor.