The Many Faces Of Sen. John Kerry; John Kerry decided three decades ago that the path to political stardom was to be all things to all people - which included tailoring his stance on issues depending on his audience. Now that he wants to be president, can we trust him to tell us where he really stands?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 16, 2003

Byline: John Pike, INSIGHT

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, 60, was scheduled formally to announce his bid for the Democratic nomination for president in front of an aircraft carrier in South Carolina as this issue of Insight goes to press. This is the same John Kerry who only a few months ago complained when President George W. Bush landed on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln as the carrier was returning from the Middle East formally to welcome home the warfighters aboard that he used it as a stage prop for political campaigning. It is said in the Bay State that it may take extraterrestrial intelligence to figure him out. Kerry has the backbone to fly a plane under a bridge, ride motorcycles at high speed and steer a warship toward enemy fire in Vietnam, beach it and earn the Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Yet he does not have the spine to stick with a politically unpopular opinion, or even reveal his ethnic and family heritage. In Boston they say it is as if Kerry's backbone works for only half his body. Call him the man with half a backbone.

Granted, to win elections American politicians of every political stripe have for centuries altered and bonded their positions to suit the zeitgeist of mercurial public opinion. But for decades Kerry has been singled out for simply saying without conviction or belief whatever will generate media attention and help win elections. Often he is ambivalent or obfuscates to try to satisfy those on both sides of antithetical issues. Many editorial writers and commentators have dismissed him as a transparent self-promoter, a phony and an opportunist. It has been reported widely that he has been running for president since his days at prep school, with every significant move in his life calculated to further that end. A local joke among Boston polls is that his initials, JFK, are based on the acronym "Just for Kerry."

At a time of few antiwar protests, Kerry had during a class speech at graduation questioned the wisdom of militarily engaging the North Vietnamese. But he knew the political value of military service. After being graduated from Yale University in 1966 following years of prestigious New England and European boarding schools, Kerry did not delay or avoid service in Vietnam. Soon he commanded a patrol boat similar to that of John F. Kennedy, the mother of all JFKs, whose political career he sought to emulate. After a few months he requested and received a transfer out of Southeast Asia to become an aide to an admiral in Washington, and then maneuvered an early honorable discharge to run for Congress. But the district he picked was very liberal indeed, and he soon found it was impossible to get to the left of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest from Boston College Law School, and dropped out of the contest.

Kerry's first national media attention and the first in which the epithet "phony" was directed against him came on April 22, 1971, when he testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations as part of a carefully orchestrated buildup to an antiwar protest in Washington. The object was publicity, and a nationwide storm developed around this tall young man still in his 20s. He spoke as a member of an antiwar group called the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), some of whom felt kinship with Communist China's Chairman Mao. Testifying eloquently against the war and U.S. bombings using a speech prepared with the help of a Bobby Kennedy speechwriter, Kerry slipped away from the manuscript to add rhetorical bombs of his own design, saying he had heard U.S. soldiers relate how they had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war." Kerry also was quoted during this period as saying, "War crimes in Vietnam are the rule, not the exception." He spoke on television of "crimes committed on a day-to-day basis, with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

Many veterans were outraged at these charges of American war crimes, which he later acknowledged he personally never saw, and which it developed had been spun out of the mouths of young Maoists. Michael Bernique, who served with Kerry as a swift-boat skipper, reportedly said, "I think there was a point in time when John was making it up fast and quick. I think he was saying whatever he needed to say."

War veteran John O'Neill, who publicly debated Kerry at this time, has been reported as saying Kerry's statements about war crimes were irresponsible, wrong, immoral and a "disservice to all the people that were there. ... The war didn't change [Kerry]. I think he was a guy driven tremendously by ambition. I think he was that way before he went and is that way today."