Why Is New School President Endorsing an Old Foe?
Kerrey—who called Bill Clinton ‘an unusually good liar’—is suddenly a Hillary guy
The news that New School president and former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey plans to endorse Hillary Clinton and campaign on her behalf in Iowa is probably most noteworthy for its irony. Perhaps no Democrat in the 1990’s was as persistent a thorn in both Clintons’ sides as Kerrey was.
Here’s a brief recap of their relationship:
• In 1991 and 1992, both Mr. Kerrey and Bill Clinton seek the Democratic nomination. A decorated Vietnam combat veteran, Mr. Kerrey is initially deemed the front-runner, but his chaotic and unfocused campaign quickly loses traction, and Mr. Clinton seizes the top slot. Mr. Kerrey then shreds Mr. Clinton for avoiding service in Vietnam and says that Republicans will open him up “like a soft peanut” in the fall. Mr. Kerrey drops out of the race in early March with little to show for his effort other than a meaningless win in South Dakota.
• Despite the contentious primary sniping, Mr. Kerrey emerges as a finalist for Mr. Clinton’s vice presidential slot in July 1992, with many Democrats pushing the idea that a Southern governor with a potential draft-dodging problem badly needed the balance that a Midwestern senator and war hero would provide. Reports surface that Hillary Clinton—still enraged over Mr. Kerrey’s primary season tactics—vetoes his selection. Publicly, Bill Clinton denies the reports, but Mr. Kerrey is bypassed in favor of Al Gore.
• In the summer of 1993, Mr. Clinton’s infant presidency, already knocked off course by the gays-in-the-military fiasco and his futile push for a $16 billion “economic stimulus” package, seems to hang in the balance. Facing a wall of Republican opposition and Southern Democratic defections, his controversial budget is one vote shy of final passage in the Senate. The key holdout? Bob Kerrey, who torments the White House (at one point he and Clinton had a heated phone call in which Kerrey told the president that he resented the implication that his ‘no’ vote could bring down the presidency) until finally, late in the night, assenting to give the budget its 50th vote. (Vice President Gore then broke the tie).
• Mr. Kerrey, who championed an expansive national health care program during his 1992 campaign, sounds a much more conservative note on the subject as Hillary Clinton pushes her health care plan in 1993 and 1994, delivering a blow to the administration when he joins several moderate-to-conservative Democrats in endorsing a scaled-back plan drawn up by Republican Senator John Chafee.
• As Democrats, hobbled by President Clinton’s low poll numbers, suffer historic defeats in the 1994 midterm election, Mr. Kerrey publicly brands the president “an unusually good liar,” stoking talk that he will challenge Clinton in the 1996 Democratic primaries. Paul Tsongas, who competed with Kerrey and Clinton in the ’92 primaries, publicly endorses a Kerrey candidacy. Ultimately, Mr. Kerrey begs off and instead chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 1996.
• As Bill Clinton and his allies seek to clear the 2000 Democratic field for Al Gore, Mr. Kerrey (after himself declining to run) opts to endorse Bill Bradley, the only Democrat who ends up challenging Mr. Gore, and cuts an ad for him in New Hampshire.
Mr. Kerrey’s motives for endorsing Hillary Clinton now are anyone’s guess. His actions have been unpredictable, and in many cases contradictory, through the years. Maybe he simply genuinely believes she’s the right candidate. Maybe as New York’s senator she’s been particularly good to the New School. At least we can rule out one typical endorsement motivation: wanting to be vice president. Since Mr. Kerrey and Mrs. Clinton are both New York residents, they are constitutionally barred from running together next fall.
- Poll
- Obama (D)
- McCain(R)
- Spread
- RCP Average
- 46.1
- 41.9
- Obama +4.2
- Candidate
- Favorable
- Unfavorable
- Spread
- Obama
- 55.7
- 32.7
- +23.0
- McCain
- 52.4
- 34.7
- +17.7
Who cares? He had a chance his old job in the Senate, and he refused.
Maybe he hopes to be named ambassador or something. Ambassador to Vietnam maybe?
Admirers of Bob Kerrey should read about what really happened at Thanh Phong. Kerrey claims that he and his team shot at targets "100 yards" away after receiving fire and then discovered they had shot civilians. Eyewitnesses to the event--both Vietnamese villagers who survived the massacre and participants from Kerrey's squad--tell a different story. They say that 14 or 15 people: women, old men, and children, were rounded up and killed in cold blood after Kerrey made the decision that they could neither be taken prisoner nor let free.
Gregory Vistica writes for the New York Times, quoting Gerhard Klann, Kerrey's subordinate and a participant in the massacre: "Klann says that Kerrey gave the order and the team, standing between 6 and 10 feet away, started shooting -- raking the group with automatic-weapons fire for about 30 seconds. They heard moans, Klann says, and began firing again, for another 30 seconds.
There was one final cry, from a baby. "The baby was the last one alive," Klann says, fighting back tears. "There were blood and guts splattering everywhere." Klann does not recall the men firing at the people who, in Kerrey's memory and the after-action reports, tried to run away after the initial massacre."
After being confronted with this version of events, Kerrey said at first that it wasn't his recollection, but that he "wouldn't question" Klann's memory of events. He later modified his response and said that "It's possible that a slight version of that happened." Then he denied that it was possible at all, and attacked Klann's credibility.
Some other choice Kerrey actions include holding an old man's head back while Klann cut his throat and lying about the massacre in the after-action report, claiming "21 Vietcong killed" and not acknowledging the truth until an investigation was initiated from on high after rumors containing elements of the truth began to spread.
Kerrey is an intelligent man and no doubt feels remorse for his actions. He is not Satan and he is not as bad as some other people, who order murders from abroad and watch from Washington as death counts spiral up into the tens of thousands, never expressing remorse or regret. I am thinking of people like Henry Kissinger. However, the fact remains that if the people he killed had been American or even white, the way our society regards Bob Kerrey would be fundamentally different. Vietnam falls into a convenient box in our heads: we'd really rather not think about it. No one wants to defend it, but we also don't want to acknowledge it or think about it or reflect on the possibility that our government and military habitually and for tactical reasons relied on the mass murder of civilians in a desperate attempt to win a futile war. It draws uncomfortable parallels and leads us into territory we'd really rather ignore. So we gloss over it with "who really knows" shrugs and "what's important is that he feels remorse" approval. I don't think that it isn't important that Bob Kerrey feels remorse and I don't think he's a bad person. But I do think that it's also important that the American people don't really care about what happened at Thanh Phong and My Lai and hundreds of other villages across Southeast Asia that were the sites of massacres, some of which will never come to light. I do think it's important that Bob Kerrey's activities were never sanctioned or seriously investigated or punished. I think that we have sentenced people for war crimes for incidents similarly appalling to this one--with the important exception that the victims shared our skin color. Bob Kerrey compares what he did in Vietnam to killing kittens that "aren't needed" on a farm: a necessary chore but one that still breaks your heart. My advice to you is: don't put yourself in a position where Bob Kerrey or someone like him has a gun and thinks you "aren't needed."