But did Kerry get a bum rap? Read David Adesnik.
My view: When I watched one of the first debates in 2004 featuring the Democratic hopefuls, I wrote on TMV that Kerry had “a great future as a U.S. Senator.” Nothing I saw during the run up to the convention or campaign made me change my mind. Kerry was a flawed candidate and a shockingly naive one. He was Michael Dukakis after an extra cup of coffee.
The unanswered question for Kerry and the people around him remains: if they decided to make him being a war veteran a key part of the narrative, didn’t it dawn on them that since Kerry was best known as an anti-war Vietnam war veteran he would be under fierce attack as soon this aspect was mentioned? There was either no preparation or poor preparation. And, either way, it showed he and his advisors were not up to the job.
Kerry remains one of the coulda/shoulda candidates. If he had been more careful in who he selected to advise him and what words came out of his mouth, he might have edged through. But his days of dynamism were in the 1970s, when he was young. The older John Kerry had become too molded by the by-rote political process — and the politico speak that he had assumed — and emerged as an adult charisma-challenged. Even worse, he was politically smarts challenged.
So was his campaign all that bad? Maybe not as bad as some think. But it was not good enough. And — amid reports that he learned he might not raise the money he needed if he ran again — it has been clear that many Democrats would not risk giving him the keys to their shop again.
BUT THERE OTHER VIEWPOINTS ON THIS AS WELL:
Read The Democratic Daily
Read our co-blogger Michael Stickings
Read our coblogger Shaun Mullen
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.