"Old Habits Die Hard For Verbose Kerry"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXLIV

"Stemwinders"? How quaint.

In today's NYT. Yes, that's right: the New York Times.

On his return from vacation in Idaho, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts announced what might be called a Spring Resolution: "No more long answers."

Mr. Kerry, whose stemwinders have provided fodder for both critics and humorists, did manage to dispatch with six questions in about as many minutes during a brief news conference on Saturday afternoon in Kansas City. But on Monday morning in Sacramento, he was back to his long-winded self as he tried to respond to an attack by Vice President Dick Cheney, who said Senator Kerry was a very reliable legislator: Republicans counted on him to vote for tax increases every time.

Speaking to students at a skills center, Mr. Kerry started out tersely enough: "They found Dick Cheney in an undisclosed location and brought him out to attack me," he said. "That seems to be his designated role, not to create jobs but to attack John Kerry."

Then came the red meat, though it was sandwiched between some thick slabs of wordy bread.

"What's really interesting is that with each attack, this administration is building up the truth deficit to go along with the jobs deficit, and the fiscal deficit, and their international intelligence-gathering credibility deficit," Mr. Kerry said. "This administration has one economic policy for America, 3 million jobs lost and driving gas policies towards $3 a gallon. That's their policy. And they're now running a campaign of untruths, of misleading America. They're running a campaign in March of mid-October desperation."

He went on: "They cannot seem to find the truth and tell the truth, or if they find the truth they don't like it so much because it's a truth of 3 million jobs lost, it's a truth of millions of children being left behind because of the broken promise of No Child Left Behind. It's the truth of no health-care plan for Americans as health-care costs go up and up, it's the truth of going backwards on the environment and pretending that they're doing something with fancy names like healthy forests and clear skies, even as they deliver a worse product to Americans.

"If I were them I suppose I'd understand why they are not telling the truth," he continued. "It's because they don't have a record to run on, they have a record to run away from. So they distort." Nice sound bite. But not done yet.

"Latest distortion: Dick Cheney goes out and tells Americans that John Kerry is going to raise your taxes and he voted against — get this — because I voted against the Bush tax cut, that we couldn't afford at the high end, the wealthiest Americans, but I did vote for, indeed proposed, an alternative that gave the middle class a tax cut, that didn't take all that money and transfer it from the average American to the wealthiest people — they're trying to mislead Americans.

"So let's say it once loudly and clearly," Mr. Kerry continued, "and I hope the vice president and the president hear it, and I hope they will for once stop misleading Americans to tell Americans the truth. Here's the truth: Under my plan, 98 percent of Americans will get a tax cut at the federal level from John Kerry's administration. Ninety-eight percent of Americans."

There's more.

"The only people, the only people, who will be asked to help share in building a strong America are those at the very, very top who are earning more than $200,000 a year who are getting yet another tax cut at the expense of almost all the priorities we have in this country. And I'm offering America not one of those phony 30-second advertisement kind of campaigns, I'm offering you a real choice, which is what elections for the presidency of the United States are supposed to be about. The choice is you can either have a tax cut for people earning more than $200,000 a year on top of each of the tax cuts they've already had, or we can invest in health care and education and in the creation of jobs in the United States."

In all, Mr. Kerry's riff stretched to six minutes, a rambling 755 words, more than five times the 136 his aides had jotted down for him.

The original statement included the crack about the "truth deficit" but not the one about the undisclosed location. It did not include numbers of jobs lost in Ohio and Michigan, or a mention of No Child Left Behind, or outsourcing.

But does it count as a long answer if there was no question?

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I suppose one could look at this is an unusual way to take some swipes at the Bush administration. But, they could have done it without the swipes at Kerry, no?

In the New York Times!

One really does get the feeling sometimes that even Democrats aren't happy with their Nominee Presumptive.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 03/31/04 07:04:11 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & John Kerry.