John Kerry: The Man in the Mirror

Kerry does in 2004 what he lambasted Congressmen for doing in 1971.

E. L. Core

Two weeks ago, a Miami Herald story showed Sen. John Kerry trying to pull a fast one: he claimed to have voted for legislation that he had, in fact, voted against.

The story also showed that Kerry does in 2004 what he had lambasted Congressmen for doing three decades earlier. In his 1971 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry launched a diatribe against any legislator who took advantage of the intricacies of legislative procedures to fool the public about his position on a given issue.

But, isn't that what Kerry himself was trying to do in Miami? This is what he said:

"I'm pretty tough on Castro, because I think he's running one of the last vestiges of a Stalinist secret police government in the world.... And I voted for the Helms-Burton legislation to be tough on companies that deal with him...."

There is only one problem: Kerry voted against it. Asked Friday to explain the discrepancy, Kerry aides said the senator cast one of the 22 nays that day in 1996 because he disagreed with some of the final technical aspects. But, said spokesman David Wade, Kerry supported the legislation in its purer form — and voted for it months earlier.

Notions of purity aside, here is what Kerry had done with the Helms-Burton Act (more formally known as the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act). When the bill came up for a vote in the Senate, Kerry voted for it. But the Senate's version of the bill did not match the House's version; so, each body referred the bill to a conference committee whose job was to hammer out a new version to which both bodies could hopefully agree. When the conference version of the bill (the final version) came up for a vote, Kerry voted against it.

In Miami, though, he tried to pass off the earlier vote as if it had been the final vote. In 1971, Lt. John Kerry had decried that kind of behavior. In fact, he thought that voting different ways at different times — so one could later try to fool the public about one's voting record — meant the legislator was not "truly representing the people."

During a dialogue in his testimony, Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.) asked Kerry whether he thought members of Congress are "representative of their constituents." Kerry replied as follows:

As someone who ran for office for 3½ weeks, I am aware of many of the problems involved, and in many places, you can take certain districts in New York City, the structure is such that people can’t really run and represent necessarily the people. People often don’t care. The apathy is so great that they believe they are being represented when in fact they are not....

Senator, we also know prior to this past year the House used to meet in the Committee of the Whole and the Committee of the Whole would make the votes, and votes not of record and people would file through, and important legislation was decided then, and after the vote came out and after people made their hacks and cuts, and the porkbarrel came out, the vote was reported and gave them an easy out and they could say "Well, I voted against this." And actually they voted for it all the time in the committee.

To understand what Kerry was getting at, we must look briefly at one aspect of parliamentary procedure. An organization, like the House or Senate, may conduct much of its business through committees to which are assigned specific tasks, such as holding hearings or making voting recommendations to the whole body. Most committees comprise a small subset of the total membership of the organization. But one special committee — appropriately called the Committee of the Whole — comprises all the members of the entire organization who are present.

The committee of the whole, you might say, is the entire body "pretending" it's only a committee. Why do that? Perhaps to allow freer rules for debate and amendment during the early stages of consideration. Or, to gauge how a vote may go without actually holding the real vote: any vote taken in the committee of the whole is not the vote of the body, just as the vote taken in a small, permanent committee is not the vote of the whole body.

The rules of U.S. House of Representatives actually require that the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union (as it is formally styled) be the first step in the consideration of many types of legislation. The most important thing to remember is this: the actions of the Committee of the Whole are not the actions of the House of Representatives. The House must adopt a motion to make the Committee's actions its own, just as it would have to hold a vote on whether to accept any recommendation from a small, permanent committee.

Thus, a Congressman could cast many votes in the Committee of the Whole, to help to chisel a bill to his liking, but vote against the bill when it came to the floor of the House because it would not be to the liking of his constituency. He could report to them that he voted against the bill, in the end, though he had supported it, in fact, all the way until then. In 1971, Kerry said that such trickery — trying to pass off one kind of vote as another kind, to fool people about your position on an issue — was a way of making one's constituents "believe they are being represented when in fact they are not."

And that is what Kerry himself did in Miami this very month: he tried to pass off an earlier, preliminary vote as if it had been the final vote. Moreover, he did it again — quite baldly and very clumsily — in West Virginia a few days later:

Mr. Kerry added, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it," referring to an amendment he supported that would have rescinded some tax cuts to finance the war.

According to the judgement of Lt. John Kerry in 1971, Sen. John Kerry's attempts at trickery in 2004 mean the senator is not acting as the representative of the people.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 03/28/04 08:18:47 PM
Categorized as John Kerry & Most Notable & Political.

Spring Is Sprung

Flowers in Roscoe today.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 03/28/04 04:23:57 PM
Categorized as Other.

Three by Meynell

Three poems by Alice Meynell.

In Early Spring

O Spring, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise
      In the young children's eyes.
But I have learnt the years, and know the yet
      Leaf-folded violet.
Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell
      The cuckoo's fitful bell.
I wander in a grey time that encloses
      June and the wild hedge-roses.
A year's procession of the flowers doth pass
      My feet, along the grass.
And all you wild birds silent yet, I know
      The notes that stir you so,
Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear
       Beginnings of the year.
In these young days you meditate your part;
      I have it all by heart.

I know the secrets of the seeds of flowers
      Hidden and warm with showers,
And how, in kindling Spring, the cuckoo shall
      Alter his interval.
But not a flower or song I ponder is
      My own, but memory's.
I shall be silent in those days desired
      Before a world inspired.
O all brown birds, compose your old song-phrases,
      Earth, thy familiar daisies!

A poet mused upon the dusky height,
      Between two stars towards night,
His purpose in his heart. I watched, a space,
      The meaning of his face:
There was the secret, fled from earth and skies,
      Hid in his grey young eyes.
My heart and all the Summer wait his choice,
      And wonder for his voice.
Who shall foretell his songs, and who aspire
      But to divine his lyre?
Sweet earth, we know thy dimmest mysteries,
      But he is lord of his.

(from "Early Poems")

Spring on the Alban Hills

O'er the Campagna it is dim warm weather;
   The Spring comes with a full heart silently,
   And many thoughts; a faint flash of the sea
Divides two mists; straight falls the falling feather.

With wild Spring meanings hill and plain together
   Grow pale, or just flush with a dust of flowers.
   Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers,
Floats in the midst, a little cloud at tether.

I fain would put my hands about thy face,
   Thou with thy thoughts, who art another Spring,
      And draw thee to me like a mournful child.

Thou lookest on me from another place;
   I touch not this day's secret, nor the thing
      That in the silence makes thy soft eyes wild.

(from "Early Poems")

The Spring to the Summer
The Poet sings to her Poet

O poet of the time to be,
My conqueror, I began for thee.
   Enter into thy poet’s pain,
   And take the riches of the rain,
And make the perfect year for me.

Thou unto whom my lyre shall fall,
Whene'er thou comest, hear my call.
   O keep the promise of my lays,
   Take thou the parable of my days;
I trust thee with the aim of all.

And if thy thoughts unfold from me,
Know that I too have hints of thee,
   Dim hopes that come across my mind
   In the rare days of warmer wind,
And tones of summer in the sea.

And I have set thy paths, I guide
Thy blossoms on the wild hillside.
   And I, thy bygone poet, share
   The flowers that throng thy feet where'er
I led thy feet before I died.

(from "Early Poems")

The Poems of Alice Meynell: Complete Edition (1923), pp. 3, 25, 42. The book is on line here.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 03/28/04 07:42:53 AM
Categorized as Literary & Sunday Poetry Series.