Repackaging Kerry as a Centrist; Who Let Woodward in the Door?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 11, 2004

Byline: INSIGHT

Kerry campaign insiders say Bob Shrum, the populist hustler who has been a central figure in four failed Democratic presidential campaigns in which he made a fortune from advertising production and placement, has sold the idea that the campaign must use millions in advertising piped at a profit through Shrum, Devine & Donilon to repackage John Kerry as a moderate and centrist. Given that Kerry is universally rated as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, that could make the crafty Shrum a very rich man.

* The big Democratic 527 fronts smearing the president raised about $57 million from labor unions and big donors in the first quarter of 2004, more than the sums raised in the same period by the president's re-election campaign. In short, campaign-finance reform, bought with $18 million from anti-Bush market manipulator George Soros, was a fig leaf to cover huge expenditures of soft money on behalf of Democratic candidates. That is, just what the insider warned that it was.

* As Insight goes to press, Washington is abuzz with fallout from a story broken in the last issue of this magazine that established there is no official record of the alleged wound for which John Kerry's first Purple Heart was claimed at a time when he was collecting credit for three to get himself out of Vietnam after only four months of combat. Insight not only published copies of the Navy's original medical records from which such medals are issued having confirmed that no official record of injury existed for the phony first wound but found and interviewed his commanding officer at the time, who said that the scratch for which Kerry claimed the medal did not come from enemy fire.

* Having been caught building a faked record of three woundings by hostile fire to get out of Dodge, Kerry produced his own (unofficial) sick-call notes with an undecipherable signature and added tales of a fierce firefight, which his commanding officer at the time says did not happen. There is an old Navy term for what Kerry is doing that predates Shakespeare: "Hoist by his own petard." It means, blown up by his own gunpowder.

* Given his long record of concocting fantasies to hurt conservatives and Republicans, asks an insider at the Monocle bar on Capitol Hill, what fool cleared Bob Woodward for the kind of access to administration biggies he claims to have had for his Bush-bashing book? This is, after all, the same Mortuary Bob Woodward who faked an interview with Reagan Director of Central Intelligence Bill Casey as the great conservative lay unconscious on his deathbed. Enough!

* Meanwhile, maybe there's a clue to that "what fool" question in the fact that the Bush/Cheney re-election team put the Woodward book at the top of its recommended-reading list on its official Website, GeorgeWBush.com, which will link you to Amazon.com. Incredibly, that link will in turn urge you to read the anti-Bush smear book by Kerry stalking horse Richard Clarke. Recounting this with a wince, our insider friend at the Monocle asked, "How did some of these smart guys get so dumb?"

* Israel killed two Hamas terror bosses in a row as they planned to murder Jews. The Israeli Defense Forces first took out Sheik Ahmed Yassin, mourned as a kindly and devout cripple who was only the group's religious leader. When Abdel Aziz Rantisi succeeded the bloody-handed Yassin, the line was that he was a humanitarian and a poet. It was Rantisi who announced, "I swear we will not leave one Jew in Palestine."

* The geezer triumvirate of network TV news will lose Tom Brokaw on Dec. 1 at the relatively young age of 65, leaving behind Dan Rather, 72, and Peter Jennings, 65, to continue to report the 21st century's nightly news with a 1968 perspective.

* Thanks to economist Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth for this comparison of Bush and Kerry on taxes. Capital Gains Tax: Bush, 15 percent; Kerry, 20 percent. Dividend Tax: Bush, 15 percent; Kerry, 40 percent. Top Income-Tax Rate: Bush, 35 percent; Kerry, 40 percent. Middle Income-Tax Rate: Bush, 25 percent; Kerry, 28 percent. Lowest Income-Tax Rate: Bush, 10 percent; Kerry, 15 percent. Credit Per Child: Bush, $1,000; Kerry, $500. Marriage Penalty: Bush, eliminated it; Kerry, would reinstate it. Death Tax by 2010: Bush, zero percent; Kerry, 55 percent.

* Congratulations to free-market economist Hernando de Soto, who has won the $500,000 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty. He is most famous for his scholarship confirming that lack of formal property rights is the principal source of poverty in poor countries. In late April, de Soto was named by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people [see Insight's picture profile, July 8-21, 2003].

* Those Scott Rasmussen tracking polls that have favored John Kerry apparently have a built-in IQ test. Insiders laugh that they are taken by computers, which tends to favor Democrats who are more willing to discuss politics with a recording.

* And, finally, why do you suppose no one has reported that in his April 22, 1971, testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry said under oath that his group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, was organizing resistance among U.S. troops on the battlefield? The word for that starts with a "T."