true story or not, remember rupert murdoch owns the london times.
R
At 06:50 AM 11/5/2004, you wrote:
>(In today's London Times. More interesting than the gossip about Teresa
>Heinz Kerry, the internal campaign squabbling, and Kerry's indecisiveness,
>are the revelations that Kerry repeatedly met with and offered John McCain
>unprecedented VP powers in charge of the Pentagon, and the Clinton team's
>unsuccessful late pressure on Kerry to support the gay marriage ban
>initiatives.)
>--------------------
>'I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot'
>By Tim Reid
>The Democratic challenger repeatedly shot himself in the foot
>London Times
>November 05, 2004
>
>JOHN KERRY constantly squabbled with his difficult and hypochondriac wife,
>ran a campaign team riven by internal feuding, and repeatedly begged the
>Republican senator John McCain to become his running-mate, according to a
>riveting inside account of his doomed presidential bid.
>
>The Massachusetts senator was so obsessed with getting advice from a
>multitude of rival advisers that one aide confiscated his mobile telephone.
>His wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, became such a moody distraction that in the
>closing weeks of the campaign another aide instructed her to stop whispering
>advice in his ear and back off.
>
>At the same time, according to Newsweek, the relentlessly disciplined Bush
>White House, which only once descended into near panic after the President’s
>disastrous first debate performance, became so aghast and delighted at Mr
>Kerry’s ability to shoot himself in the foot that they almost felt sorry for
>him.
>
>One of the untold stories of the presidential campaign was the erratic
>behaviour of the candidate’s wife, the Heinz heiress Mr Kerry married in
>1995, according to Newsweek. She drove her Secret Service detail mad with
>her chronic lateness, constantly demanded attention, including her husband’s
>(who seemed to tread on eggshells when around her). She even sent him off on
>errands, such as fetching bottles of water. She clashed with Mary Beth
>Cahill, Mr Kerry ’s campaign manager, and Mr Kerry was caught in the middle.
>
>At the climax of a coast-to-coast campaign tour after the Democrat conventio
>n in August, Mr Kerry’s aides had crafted a family holiday hike in the Grand
>Canyon, with the candidate’s wife and two daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa.
>But shortly after the hike began, Mrs Heinz Kerry was soon complaining of
>migraines, telling her husband that she could not go on.
>
>The end of the hike led to one of the biggest blunders of Mr Kerry’s
>campaign, one of several times he fell squarely into traps set for him by Mr
>Bush’s re-election team.
>
>For several days, Mr Bush had been issuing this challenge to Mr Kerry: if he
>knew before the Iraq war that no weapons would be found, would he still have
>voted to authorise the war (Mr Bush insisted that he, as President, would
>still have invaded). Asked this by a reporter at the Grand Canyon, Mr Kerry
>said yes, he would still have voted to give Mr Bush “the authority” to
>invade.
>
>In Bush-Cheney headquarters, they could hardly believe their luck that he
>handed them another flip-flop. But they had always believed that, properly
>baited, he could be led into a trap. Inside the Bush re-election “Strategery
>Room” (named after a famous Bush malapropism), a sign above the door read:
>IT’S THE HYPOCRISY, STUPID, a reference to Mr Kerry’s constantly shifting
>positions.
>
>The greatest moment inside this room came when Mr Kerry, after days of
>baiting by the Bush campaign over his vote for the war, but his vote against
>an $87 billion (£47 billion) request for funding it, told a rally: “I
>actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”
>
>“Oh my God,” said Terry Holt, Mr Bush’s communications adviser, as he
>watched the blunder on television. Mark McKinnon, Mr Bush’s advertising
>chief, said: “The second we saw it, we knew we had a new ad. The greatest
>gifts in politics are the gifts the other side gives you.”
>
>Mr Kerry, now in sessions with a speech coach, grew increasingly frustrated.
>After a faltering press conference by Mr Bush in April, and with Iraq in
>turmoil, Mr Kerry exclaimed: “I can’t believe I’m losing to this idiot”.
>
>During the early summer, Mr Kerry implored Mr McCain, the maverick
>Republican who ran against Mr Bush in the 2000 Republican primaries, to
>become his running-mate, meeting him seven times. He even offered to expand
>the vice-presidency to include running the Pentagon. “I can’t say this is an
>offer because I’ve got to be able to deny it,” Mr Kerry told Mr McCain. “But
>you’ve got to do this.”
>
>Mr McCain told him he was out of his mind, and went on to embrace Mr Bush.
>“Goddammit,” a furious Mr Kerry said to an aide. “Don’t you know what I
>offered him? Why the f*** didn’t he take it?” At the time, Mr Kerry also
>thought that John Edwards, his eventual choice, was overly ambitious. “What
>makes this guy think he can be president?” he asked staff in February.
>
>After the anti-Kerry Swift Boat veteran attacks in August that questioned
>his Vietnam service, Mr Kerry’s campaign was in turmoil, beset by feuds,
>indecision and dithering. Mr Kerry, often generous to his staff but a
>constant whiner, had reverted to indecision, unable to straighten the mess
>out.
>
>Enter James Carville, Bill Clinton’s former strategist. So appalled was he
>by the chaos inside the campaign, and so desperate to see Mr Bush defeated,
>that in early September he decided that Miss Cahill had to be ousted, and
>Joe Lockhart, Mr Clinton’s former spokesman, inserted as manager. When he
>called a meeting with the pair, he was so worked up, he began to cry,
>screaming to Miss Cahill: “You’ve got to let him (Mr Lockhart) do it!” Mr
>Lockhart duly took over, and Mr Clinton’s former campaign team virtually
>moved in. When Mr Kerry telephoned Mr Clinton in hospital hours before his
>heart bypass surgery to wish him luck, he received a 90-minute lecture.
>
>Mr Clinton, correctly sensing that “values” would play a crucial role in
>voters’ minds, urged Mr Kerry to back local ballot initiatives calling for a
>ban on gay marriage. (Mr Kerry refused).
>
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"This is an impressive crowd. The Haves and the Have Mores. Some people call you 'the elite.' I call you 'my base.' " -- George W Bush on the Campaign Trail.