Decision ‘08

If You Think I Can Pass Up A Story Like This…

…you don’t know me very well. Mark Leibovich in the New York Times on John Kerry’s status as an isolated loser:

Senator John Kerry keeps to himself around the Capitol. He is always rushing somewhere, head down, disappearing into elevators. A Senate loner for 22 years, Mr. Kerry seems all the more isolated now as he darts past the media hordes around the next set of presidential seekers, colleagues that include Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama.

Even in the best of times, Mr. Kerry’s face hung droopy and funereal, one of the most weary in American politics. Today, Mr. Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who was the exit poll president-elect for a few hours in November 2004, endures the peculiar pariah status that his party reserves for its losing nominees.

“America does not tolerate losing, even though it’s through losing that we learn the most,” said David Thorne, the twin brother of Mr. Kerry’s late first wife, Julia Thorne, and his closest friend. “People want fresh faces. Or they think they do.”

As the 2008 campaign begins in earnest, Mr. Kerry has been forced to adapt to something resembling a normal Senate life. This has been no small challenge for a man whose identity has long been steeped in becoming president, or trying to.

Last week, days after he announced he would not run again, Mr. Kerry said there was no point to dwelling on what might have been. “You know, that’s such a waste of time right now,” he said in a Capitol hallway interview. “I came close, but so what? I didn’t make it, so move on. Just go forward. There’s no sense going backwards.”

Mr. Kerry ratified his status as Dead Candidate Walking in an emotional speech on the Senate floor two weeks ago. “We came close, certainly close enough to be tempted to try again,” Mr. Kerry said, referring to his 2004 campaign.

Only two colleagues attended his announcement, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a fellow Massachusetts Democrat, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada (another, Senator Ken Salazar, Democrat of Colorado, walked in late). “I have concluded this is not the time for me to mount a presidential campaign.”

The grave Kerry face was on stark display that day, his voice breaking at times. When it was over, Mr. Reid hugged him and said he loved him, and then Mr. Kerry left the chamber by himself.

His announcement could have been a dignified valedictory moment. But the enigmatic Mr. Kerry is often misunderstood, and several news reports said he had cried when saying he would not run; in fact, he choked up earlier in his speech when talking about an Army captain he had met in Iraq who had been killed.

No matter, the photo of Mr. Kerry breaking down ran prominently in the Drudge Report and elsewhere. It buttressed the notion of John Kerry as the forlorn loser who had finally bottomed out. It also served as a grim visual to another round of Kerry abuse, conjuring up the caricature of him as a helmet-haired, flip-flopping elitist.

“Who will the windsurfing caucus back now?” a columnist for The Boston Herald wisecracked. A cartoonist for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans mocked Mr. Kerry as saying, “Actually I was for another White House bid before I was against it.”

It’s almost…almost…enough to make you feel sorry for the guy. Then I remember he’s a pampered United States Senator who always manages to only fall in love with extremely wealthy women and I snap out of it quickly…

4 Responses to “If You Think I Can Pass Up A Story Like This…”

1 Dennis Says:
February 5th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
I actually had more respect for him before he lost than after. I assumed a lot of the attacks on his character were the typical shrill partisanship you expect in these races.

But that fact that it took him two years to recognize what obvious to everyone else in November ‘04 - he was never going to be president - really makes me question his judgment.
2 mikebdot Says:
February 5th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Mark Coffey: Gossip queen. After the ‘08 election you ought to consider switching to: http://www.gossipqueen.com It’s for sale too!
3 Erin Says:
February 5th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
I will never feel sorry for this leftist socialist UN loving elitest piece of kept crap. He is the picture of everything that is wrong with the elite in this country, he is pathetic. His anthem” I can be rich and do what I want however I want to tell you what to do and I shall not follow the same laws and rules as I pass upon you the little people”
4 wavemaker Says:
February 6th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
As a Massachusetts citizen, I can speak with some authority that the guy has been an arrogant, self-centered egomaniac puke since he got into politics three decades ago. Nobody here (D or R) likes him — he’s universally disliked even by his own delegation (his first several terms he elevated the practice of stealing his colleagues’ limelight to an artform). He is the paradigm example of the old addage, “familiarity breeds contempt.”

Don’t feel sorry for him. He wouldn’t for you.