Kerry the Un-Electable
By Grover Norquist

When John Kerry won the Iowa caucuses on January 19, Democrats bravely told themselves they were voting for electability. All the other challengers had nailed their colors to particular Democratic party special interests. Howard Dean was the candidate of left-wing anti-Bush enthusiasts; John Edwards of trial lawyer money and the South; Dick Gephardt of labor unions; Joe Lieberman of the disappearing moderate Democrats; Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley-Braun of the African-American vote.

 

Crowning Kerry with the virtue of “electability,” though, is like a teenage boy telling a young lady she has a “good personality.” That usually means you can’t think of anything better to say.

 

Surely Kerry is a stronger candidate in a general election than Dean. Or is he? Howard Dean was seen as out of the mainstream on two issues: His venomous opposition to the Iraq war and his early support of civil unions for homosexual couples. Dean opposed the Iraq war at a time when many expected U.S. troops to find buckets of anthrax beneath Baghdad. That would have crippled the candidacy of any vocal opponent of the war. But the expected WMDs were not found, and though Dean’s skepticism may not be a vote winner in a general election, it is probably not a fatal liability. And his radical, too-weird-for-middle-America position on civil unions is suddenly the default position for many conservatives—including President Bush—who have made stopping same-sex marriages their priority instead. Even Dean’s disastrous rant on Iowa’s election night would have been treated as cute if he had won.

 

While Dean would have been no prize candidate, John Kerry is actually a weaker one on several fronts. Kerry has served in the Senate for 19 years and has a voting record best described as a “target-rich environment.” His votes closely track Senator Edward Kennedy’s—during a period when Kennedy’s Presidential aspirations had given way to his run for the title of “History’s Greatest Liberal Senator.” This long, publicly-available-on-the-Internet voting record has already exposed Americans to Kerry’s 350 different votes for higher taxes. The American Shareholder Association has compiled a book of Kerry’s attacks on the investor class, beginning with 15 votes against reduction of the capital gains tax.

 

Kerry, like Michael Dukakis, grew up in a politically isolated community. Dukakis actually believed he was being politically appealing when he bragged that he was a “card carrying” member of the ACLU and opposed mandatory flag saluting. Pundits speak of coming from “Inside the Beltway” as a signal of a Washingtonian’s distance from middle America. But if you come from inside Route 128—which rings Cambridge and Boston—you occupy a different political planet from most Americans.

 

John Kerry (like Al Gore before him) suffers from the very opposite of the challenge faced by Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue”—whose unconventional name forced him to learn to defend himself at a young age. Neither Kerry nor Gore had to defend or rationalize their core left-of-center values growing up—not at prep school, not in college, not among the liberal peers or family members who circulated in their wealthy circles. That is why both men bristle at any criticism or challenge: They have never faced it before.

 

Kerry also faces the Gary Hart problem: The press has so far loyally refused to print anything seriously negative about him. The journalists who covered for Hart’s philandering did him a false favor. When he reached the highest level of competition, he was scorched by a level of scrutiny he had never had to face before. Kerry’s unpleasant personality and his fellow senators’ dislike of him are widely known by reporters in Washington—but so far not written about.

 

The last challenge is one any Democratic nominee would face. Every left-of-center voting bloc wants Kerry to win, for sure. But plenty of leading Democrats wouldn’t mind seeing him lose: If Bush wins, the Presidency would be available to them in 2008 as an open seat. If Kerry wins, the next clear opening doesn’t come up until 2012.

 

President Bush, on the other hand, is surrounded by ambitious Republicans who wish him well and prefer a retiring Bush and Cheney in 2008. Even the Bush-hating John McCain would prefer that scenario to running against an incumbent John Kerry in 2008.