Kerry: 'I'm Going to Learn' (Newsweek interview)

[kskiska]

It was a little after 7 p.m. on election night 2004. The network exit polls showed John Kerry leading George Bush in both Florida and Ohio by three points. Kerry's aides were confident that the Democratic candidate would carry these key swings states; Bush had not broken 48 percent in Kerry's recent tracking polls. The aides were a little hesitant to interrupt Kerry as he was fielding satellite TV interviews in a last get-out-the-vote push. Still, the 7 o'clock exit polls were considered to be reasonably reliable. Time to tell the candidate the good news.

Kerry had slept only two hours the night before. He was sitting in a small hotel room at the Westin Copley (in a small irony of history, next door to the hotel where his grandfather, a boom-and-bust businessman, shot himself some 80 years ago). Bob Shrum, Kerry's friend and close adviser, couldn't resist the moment. "May I be the first to say 'Mr. President'?" said Shrum.

The others cringed. Kerry did not respond, at least in any memorable way. In the dark days after the election, he tried a joke: "Until about 7 p.m. that night, it felt great to be the 44th president of the United States." Ever since election night, John Kerry has been trying hard to learn from his mistakes, to cheer his disappointed followers, to avoid sinking into the inevitable depression—and to plot his own comeback.

Kerry has not given any formal interviews since his defeat. But on Nov. 11, nine days after the election, Kerry summoned a NEWSWEEK reporter to his house on Boston's fashionable Louisberg Square. He wanted to complain about NEWSWEEK's election issue, which he said was unduly harsh and gossipy about him, his staff and his wife. (The 45,000-word article, the product of a yearlong reporting project, is being published next week as a book, "Election 2004," by PublicAffairs.)

more…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6777696/site/newsweek/

[Pirate Smile]

1. More

Since Election Day, Kerry has made hundreds of calls to supporters and e-mailed them a two-minute video outlining his hopes for the future. "He learned a lesson from Gore in 2000," said an aide. "Gore just walked away and didn't thank people." (Untrue, says a Gore adviser.) Kerry is a realist about his prospects for running in 2008, says his spokesman, David Wade. "He realizes it's impossible to predict. In December of 2003 he was dead. In January of 2004 he was the nominee." In the meantime Kerry is going to play the role of opposition leader. Next week he will leave a family vacation in Idaho (he had planned to do some skiing, mountain climbing and skeet shooting) to travel to the Middle East and Iraq. When he returns, he will introduce two bills in the Senate: to provide for health insurance for every child in America and to increase the size of the U.S. military by 40,000 troops.

Kerry has become deeply fascinated by the task of rebuilding the Democratic Party from the grass roots up, say his advisers. He has hired a streetwise political organizer from Boston named John Giesser, the deputy to 2004 grass-roots organizer Michael Whouley, to run his political action committee. There is talk that Kerry is trying to make Giesser his Karl Rove, though Giesser is said to be too quiet and unassuming to play the role of master manipulator.

[pleiku52cab]

2. Basically he's saying - "I've given up - lets look to the future"

[NMDemDist2]

3. Kerry is smart enough not to need a KKKarl, he just needs a good

tactician

[pscot]

4. The evidence of the last election

doesn't support your assertion.

[NMDemDist2]

8. i just have two words for that---- Bob Schrum n/t

[merwin]

11. It does support it. He cleared out some of his senior election staff

late in the race and that's when he started going up in the polls...

[The Zanti Regent]

5. I'll believe it when I see it.

Kerry made the bonesman deal to send my only son to die.

I actually believed him when I thought he would fight, instead he threw the election.

My son lies in the VA Cemetary, my only child dead at 19.

Whose child will be the last one to die for the mistake Kerry and his Skull and Bones pal Bush got us into?

I have no more children to give.

Thank you for letting me down, John Kerry. I will never support you for anything ever again, and the same goes for John Edwards.

[Pirate Smile]

6. I'm so sorry for your loss. IMHO, I don't think their is any way Kerry

threw the election.

There is someone else on DU whose only child is buried in an LA cemetery from the Iraq War.

If you would like, I will do a search and try to find her for you?

[patdem]

7. Zanti, if I were you I would HATE EVERY single politican no matter his

stripe or strata. Your son and ultimately you have given the essence of life. Your angst and anger I cannot imagine. There are just not words! :cry: and that does you injustice!

May god have mercy on bush** soul or not.

[w4rma]

9. I heard Edwards wanted to fight rather than concede

I heard he had his legs cut from under him.

[The Judged]

10. Recycled news intended to put down the impending objection to the OH vote!

Newsweek is the Re-uglican National weekly magazine.

[Larkspur]

12. You're not electible Kerry. Moveon!!!