An excerpt of a letter I wrote to Milbank and Olbermann, which expresses my personal journey...
I have followed Senator Kerry’s career a bit, being a freelance artist working at the computer, with c-span on most of the day. So I was aware of his investigatory roles in BCCI and exposure of Iran/Contra. This made me somewhat of a fan early. I also watched much of the POW hearings and the move toward reconciliation with Vietnam. Again, my admiration grew, and grading on a “politician’s curve” I would rank him up high along with the likes of Wellstone, Henry Gonzalez, etc.
So the Bush smears were of some concern to me, and I felt somewhat frustrated by the fact that his story was not given any airplay leading up to the convention. Around this time, c-span aired an old tape of Kerry vs. O’neill on the Dick Cavett show. I was stunned, as I realized I had first seen Kerry as a teenager of about 13. I remembered how proud I was of soldiers who came back to take on the government that had sent them to kill and die for ideological reasons with dubious justification. All the while using the war for power and profit. I knew he was one of a group of heroes who might save my younger age group from having to suffer through what they had suffered.
This prompted me to read Brinkley’s “Tour of Duty” and by that time I was TOTALLY sold on John Kerry.
As I went through this process and shared with various friends and web forum colleagues, I saw that it was only lack of information that was causing his tepid support. As he was improving his speaking skills, like a ball player early in the season, his base of strong support was slowly learning about a lifetime of amazing achievement and character. I saw “strong military” types admiring his service and support of Veterans, the Dean and Kucinich supporters admiring his anti-war activism, and so on. I saw the same light go off in peoples’ heads, as it did mine, when the magnitude of a life of service revealed to them just what an historical opportunity we had before us with Kerry as president. A Kennedy without the philandering, a Lincoln without the depression. And surely better secret service protection. Someone who has vision, and can fight smart and heal wounds at the same time.
Rest assured, we will never worship Kerry as the right worships their strong macho warlord. After all, democrats are much more prone to argue amongst themselves than fall in step with any leader. This is simultaneously a strength and a weakness. But in John Kerry we have a leader that more and more of us would be willing to stand up to the fiercest attacks by macho, bullying Rovian thugs, to fight for justice when (not if) the right wants to deny the legitimacy of our votes. And then, to stand together and heal the wounds caused by the belligerent attitudes raised with our rush to war in Iraq. Gone will be the crackdown on dissent, the free speech zones, the “watch what you say” clampdown. Instead we will be moving toward an energy independence, an emphasis on new technologies and scientific progress rather than stumbling toward a new dark age, where ideology trumps enquiry.