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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
The Democrat campaigns as a war hero, but barely mentions his two decades as a legislator, allowing the GOP to paint him as a flip-flopping ultra-liberal. What has he actually achieved?
Aug 10, 2004 | "Judge me by my record," John Kerry told voters during his acceptance speech in Boston last month, but he gave them precious little evidence to go on. In a 5,000-word address that stretched on for nearly an hour, Kerry managed to find time for only 73 words about his two decades of service in the U.S. Senate.
It wasn't an accident, but it may have been a mistake. Throughout his presidential campaign, Kerry has focused on his service in Vietnam rather than on his service in the Senate. While war heroes surely play better than Washington insiders, Republicans sense vulnerability in Kerry's choice and are seeking to capitalize on it. With the president's approval ratings in dangerous territory and bad news coming in on Iraq and the economy, the GOP needs a way to persuade voters that, as bad as Bush might be, the Democrat is unacceptable. In Kerry's Senate record, the Bush-Cheney campaign sees a way to make that case. And Kerry, focused on his opponent's record rather than his own, seems to be letting it happen.
The Bush campaign has long worked hard to portray Kerry as both an unrelenting liberal and an unreliable flip-flopper. Since the Democratic Convention, these attacks have intensified and have focused more closely on his Senate record. As Kerry and John Edwards left Boston, the Bush campaign issued a press release claiming that, in 19 years in the Senate, Kerry saw just five of his bills and four of his resolutions become law. On Friday, Vice President Dick Cheney claimed -- falsely -- that the National Journal has deemed Kerry's lifetime Senate voting record more liberal than Ted Kennedy's. And over the weekend, the Bush campaign followed up with a new radio spot contrasting Kerry's tough talk on terrorism and taxes with votes plucked from his Senate record. The message: Kerry can't be trusted.
The Republicans' focus on Kerry's Senate tenure, coupled with his own failure to fill in the blanks, has left even some Kerry supporters with questions about his record. What has he accomplished in two decades in Washington, and what does his Senate record say about who he is? Is he a centrist Democrat -- a "Bush lite," as the left portrayed him during the Democratic primaries -- or is he the extreme liberal that the Bush-Cheney campaign now makes him out to be?
The truth, as Kerry might say, is full of "complexities." There is more than one way to be an effective senator, and Kerry has chosen a path -- investigation, not legislation -- that does not lend itself to a simplistic, compare-the-scorecards approach. And while it's true that Kerry has been a relatively liberal voice in the Senate, two decades of roll-call votes create a record that defies the black-or-white, all-or-nothing absolutism favored by the Bush administration and a media in search of easy labels.
On the morning after Kerry's convention speech, President Bush spoke at a baseball stadium in Springfield, Mo. His pitch: All those "clever speeches" and "big promises" in Boston couldn't hide the fact that Kerry has had "very few signature achievements" in the Senate.
