Monday, May 12, 2008
As the candidate's wife revealed to wild applause Tuesday night, she will not be boxed in, focus grouped or stifled with a tight smile and a stiff wave.
Jul 28, 2004 | Teresa Heinz Kerry didn't talk about her Botox, her prenup, or how good-looking John Edwards is. She didn't say she would give up her fortune to have her dead husband back, or tell George W. Bush to "shove it." But in her highly anticipated prime-time speech before the Democratic convention on Tuesday, she defended her right to say any or all of those things.
"My name is Teresa Heinz Kerry," she said. "And by now I hope it will come as no surprise to anyone that I have something to say."
In convention parlance, Heinz Kerry "stuck to the script." She's known for freewheeling ad-libs, but her speech was on teleprompter, a device she used for the first time. Although she penned her own remarks -- her husband read them beforehand -- all texts delivered from the podium had to be "vetted" by the campaign. Still, that didn't keep Teresa from being Teresa.
Indeed, her personality beamed through Democratic Party control. She is fluent in five languages and sampled them all with greetings in English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. She captured the crowd by relating how she grew up in Mozambique under a dictatorship, and described how her upbringing and journey here as an immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen inspired her independence.
"My right to speak my mind, to have a voice, to be what some have called 'opinionated,' is a right I deeply and profoundly cherish," she said. "My only hope is that, one day soon, women -- who have all earned the right to their opinions -- instead of being labeled opinionated, will be called smart or well-informed, just as men are."
Above all, Heinz Kerry came to tell the American people why her husband should be president of the United States. Earlier this week, she was misunderstood when she remarked that no mortal is qualified to be president, although her husband "was pretty close to it." But now she spoke without qualifications.
Many Americans say they do not know enough about Kerry, and his wife's speech helped bridge the gap. After being warmly introduced by her son, Chris Heinz, she wove praise for "John" through a series of issues dear to her. A dedicated philanthropist, she oversees an estimated $1 billion fortune inherited when her late husband, ketchup heir and GOP Sen. John Heinz, died in a plane crash.
"With John Kerry as president, global climate change and other threats to the health of our planet will begin to be reversed," she said. "With John Kerry as president, the alliances that bind the community of nations and that truly make our country and the world a safer place, will be strengthened once more."
Heinz Kerry stayed dignified and elegant -- like "a great European actress," someone on CNN said -- but got in a passing swipe at rival George W. Bush. "John is a fighter," she said. "He earned his medals the old-fashioned way -- by putting his life on the line for his country."
But her performance was being scrutinized not for what she would say about Kerry so much as whether she would go "off-message." On Sunday, Heinz Kerry was caught on camera in a confrontation with an editorial writer for a Pittsburgh newspaper owned by right-wing philanthropist and Whitewater figure Richard Mellon Scaife. She eventually told the journalist, as everyone in America has no doubt heard by now, to "shove it."
She and the campaign then endured two days of endless questioning in the media -- "Is Teresa Heinz Kerry an asset or a liability?" -- just in time for the Democrats' big moment. But Kerry himself seemed unfazed by the "shove it" affair. "I think my wife speaks her mind appropriately," he said on Monday.
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