| March
6, 2004
John Kerry –
The Myth
By Gary
Mendoza/HispanicVista.com
John Kerry’s
months of honorable service in Vietnam
and his deliberative, ponderous speaking
style have helped create an image of a
principled, steady leader. While
this image has played a central role in
his successful pursuit of the Democratic
presidential nomination, it’s not
supported by Kerry’s record, and it
won’t withstand the type of scrutiny
he’s avoided so far but will soon
receive.
The complete Kerry
record on Vietnam is at odds with the
Kerry myth. Kerry tarnished his
honorable service upon his return when,
without substantiation, he testified
before Congress that American soldiers
committed war crimes as a matter of
routine. Because it undermined his
efforts to promote normalization with Vietnam,
Kerry buried and in some cases destroyed
evidence of American POWs left behind in Vietnam.
In Vietnam, Kerry
fought to protect his fellow soldiers.
When he returned, he fought to have them
vilified as war criminals and then fought
to leave some behind.
Kerry’s
national security record exposes the
biggest gap between the Kerry myth and
reality. Kerry has a
long-established record of opposing the
same weapon systems that have played a
key role in fighting the war on terror.
While he now decries intelligence
failures, he takes no responsibility for
his many votes to gut funding for America’s
intelligence agencies. He supported
the nuclear freeze movement and opposed
President Reagan’s ultimately
successful efforts to counter the Soviet’s
advantage in intermediate range nuclear
missiles in Europe, a decisive turning
point in America’s victory in the
Cold War.
After Saddam Hussein
invaded Kuwait, Kerry opposed the first
Gulf War. In 2003, he voted to
authorize President Bush to remove
Hussein from power and then immediately
retreated from this position when the
political heat generated by the Deaniacs
became too much to bear. Lately, he’s
begun to say we can’t afford to
cut-and-run in Iraq even though he voted
to do just that when he opposed the $87
billion appropriation to support our
troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Other than political
expediency, it’s hard to see a
consistent thread in Kerry’s
national security record.
On the domestic
front, Kerry has struggled mightily to
keep his feet firmly planted on both
sides of many important domestic issues.
Although he supported Nafta and other key
trade agreements, the cornerstone of his
jobs program is protectionism and higher
taxes (support for higher taxes is the
one constant in Kerry’s record).
While he mouths support for the principle
that marriage is between a man and a
woman, when he had an opportunity to take
a principled stand in favor of marriage
as traditionally understood, he failed
and voted against the Defense of Marriage
Act (which was designed to keep the
definition of marriage in the hands of
state government not activist judges who
make up the law as they go along). He
shouts his support for campaign finance
reform and decries the impact of special
interest money while exploiting gaps in
campaign finance laws to harvest special
interest money to fuel his own political
ambitions.
Kerry is right about
one thing--the troubled times we are in
demand a leader who will stand on
principle to fight for what he believes
is right for America. Kerry’s
record makes it’s crystal clear that
he is not that principled leader.
The more you peel
back the layers of the Kerry myth, the
more you can clearly see a poseur of
mythic proportions.
____________________________________________
Gary Mendoza, a
HispanicVista.com columnist (www.hispanicvista.com),
is a partner of the Bingham McCutchen LLP
law firm; a former Commissioner of
Corporations heading California's
Department of Corporations; Deputy Mayor
for Economic Development in Los Angeles
Mayor Richard Riordan's office, and
recent candidate for California's office
of Insurance Commissioner. Email contact:
garymendoza2002@yahoo.com
|
