www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59559-2003May30.html
John Kerry THE CONTENDERS : John F Kerry John Kerry: Hunter, Dreamer, Realist Complexity Infuses Senator's Ambition By Laura Blumenfeld Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 1, 2003; From behind the stalks of a Southern cornfield, he'll watch them flutter and dart, and fire.
It takes three or four birds to have a meal," said the Massachusetts senator. Kerry described how to hunt and gut them, talking as he sliced through a steak at midnight after campaigning all day in Iowa for the Democratic presidential nomination. Carve out the heart, he said over dinner, pull out the entrails and cut up the meat. He rides a Harley, plays ice hockey, snowboards, windsurfs, kitesurfs, and has such thick, aggressive hair he uses a brush with metal teeth. "He doesn't need a consultant to tell him how to dress like an alpha male," said his friend Ivan Schlager. Yes, his message is the hard-line "stronger, safer, more secure America." But there's another part of his message, and it borders on the sentimental. "We have to get back to dreaming again," he told Democratic activists in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. On all three counts, Kerry is nuanced and often misconstrued. What makes him compelling as a person makes him vulnerable to opponents who say he lacks clarity as a candidate. Kerry's complexity has been an issue since his national debut in 1971. He became famous for a war within himself: He had fought in Vietnam and came, reluctantly, to believe the war was wrong. As spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" The senators were awed by the young man's poise and by his Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. It is much tougher now, as he presents himself as both a dreamer and a realist, an old liberal and a new Democrat, for the war in Iraq and yet troubled by it. While other White House hopefuls lined up for or against Iraq, Kerry voted for the war and then criticized the president for failing at diplomacy. Republican strategist Richard Galen said, "People who were disappointed by the Gore campaign sniff another Gore coming because he doesn't have any clear message." Kerry always has enjoyed breaking down issues, arguing all sides for sport, like a game of mental racquetball. While his Yale roommates played cards, he'd be refining a debate-team speech. He still debates his staff for fun, often playing devil's advocate against himself. Sitting on his office balcony at the Senate, he scribbles speeches on yellow pads. Occasionally, he'll even write poems, like the one he reluctantly read to a reporter: "I had a talk with a deer today/ we met upon the road some way . between his frequent snorts/He asked me if I sought his pelt/cause if I did he said he felt/quite out of sorts!" He has been testing his writing talent on the campaign trail. Some lines have worked, such as: "Never before has so much had to be done in America and so little asked of Americans." Others have not, like his call for a "regime change" at home during the Iraq war. "It showed a political tin ear," said Merle Black, a professor of politics at Emory University. More likely, it showed a man stumbling on his love for a turn of phrase.
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