Message to John Kerry: Temper, temper, if this New York Post piece is to be believed:
A fuming John Kerry had “daggers in his eyes” after a fellow Democrat promoted Hillary Rodham Clinton for president — suggesting the 2004 loser is green with envy at a potential rival.
The flap was touched off two weeks ago when Clinton spoke at a Minneapolis Democratic dinner and Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.) told the cheering crowd that he was introducing “the next great president of the United States.”
Two days later, Kerry came over to Dayton on the Senate floor “with daggers in his eyes and said, ‘What are you doing endorsing my 2008 presidential opponent?’ . . . He was very serious,” Dayton told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
This is not the way to win people over but — if true — it does indicate a solid intent to run for the nomination in 2008 (as if we really needed more indications). More:
Clinton’s office declined comment but a friend tut-tutted: “Boys will be boys, even when they are senators.”
Kerry spokesman David Wade tried to make light of the story, claiming “some lines must have gotten crossed in his retelling of this particular conversation” — and insisted they were mostly “joshing’ about hockey.
That exclamation about hockey sounds like Wade’s pucking around to me. But I digress:
But Dayton’s office says the “daggers in his eyes” report was accurate and Dayton has no quarrel with it.At the April 9 Minnesota dinner, Dayton made it clear that touting Clinton for president was his own idea, saying it was an “unauthorized’ introduction — but she did nothing to dispute it.
Dayton was also quoted as offering a blunt explanation — not very flattering to Kerry — about why he favors Clinton for 2008 after backing Kerry last year: “As Winston Churchill once said, I’d rather be right than consistent.”
Why would Senator Kerry be upset by that?
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.