Newsweek's story on the Kedwards campaign...

[teke184 0]

Story

 

NEW YORK, Nov. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- When President Bush's poll numbers surged

in April after a press conference where his performance was derided by the

press and the chattering classes, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John

Kerry was baffled, writes Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas in an

exclusive report in Newsweek's special election issue.  "He said with a sigh

to one top staffer, 'I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot.'"

    (Photo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20041104/NYTH186 )

 

    The November 15 issue "How He Did It" (on newsstands Thursday, November 4)

includes an exclusive behind-the-scenes account of the entire presidential

campaign reported by a separate Newsweek Special Project team that worked for

more than a year on the extraordinary campaign.  Highlights from the report:

 

    The Clintonista "Coups."  At several critical junctures Kerry's campaign

(and the candidate himself), struggled to find sure footing.  Following the

missteps of August, Clinton veteran James Carville confronted Kerry campaign

manager Mary Beth Cahill, telling her she had to step aside and let newly

arrived Joe Lockhart run the campaign.  So worked up, Carville began to cry,

imploring Cahill:  "You've got to let him do it." Carville continued, "Nobody

can gain power without someone losing power."  Carville threatened to go on

"Meet the Press" the next day "and tell the truth about how bad it is" if

Cahill didn't give effective control to Lockhart.

 

    The "Outlandish" McCain Offer.  Kerry's courtship of Senator John McCain

to be his running mate was longer-standing and more intense than previously

reported.  As far back as August 2003, Kerry had taken McCain to breakfast to

sound him out to run on a unity ticket.  McCain batted away the idea as not

serious, but Kerry, after he wrapped up the nomination in March, went back

after McCain a half-dozen more times.  "To show just how sincere he was, he

made an outlandish offer," Newsweek's Thomas reports.  "If McCain said yes he

would expand the role of vice president to include secretary of Defense and

the overall control of foreign policy.  McCain exclaimed, 'You're out of your

mind.  I don't even know if it's constitutional, and it certainly wouldn't

sell.'"  Kerry was thwarted and furious.  "Why the f--- didn't he take it?

After what the Bush people did to him...'"

 

    "A Marathon Man."  Kerry's intensity on the trail rarely, if ever, faded.

Moments after delivering his victory speech after wrapping up his party's

nomination on March 2, Kerry was back in his motorcade and on his cell phone.

"Dad," asked his daughter Alexandra. "Will you please appreciate this moment

for 10 seconds?"  Newsweek reports, "He mumbled yes, yes, he was happy, it was

good, and then went back to working the cell phone."  It occurred to his

daughter Vanessa that her father did not match the media's cliche of him being

a fourth-quarter player, he was a marathon man.  Writes Thomas, "Kerry liked

to say that 'every day is extra' after Vietnam, but actually every day was

like the day before, a relentless march toward his goal."

    Kerry's drive to self-perfection was boundless-sometimes to a fault.  In

early spring he sought counsel from Washington speech coach Michael Sheehan.

With aides he would sometimes say, "Tell me everything you think I'm doing

wrong." When John Sasso arrived on the campaign in September he found a

candidate who had turned himself into a pincushion. "Kerry had been inviting

personal criticism from pretty much anyone who had an opinion...Kerry was

drowning in negative energy from all around," Thomas writes.  Sasso wanted it

to stop. There was to be no more direct criticism of the candidate, period.

And Teresa and the daughters were not exempt, Newsweek reports.

 

 

   Additional exclusive news reported in Newsweek's Special Election Issue:

 

 

    Clinton Advice Spurned. Looking for a way to pick up swing voters in the

Red States, former President Bill Clinton, in a phone call with Kerry, urged

the Senator to back local bans on gay marriage.  Kerry respectfully listened,

then told his aides, "I'm not going to ever do that."

 

    Kerry Anger Over Swift Boat Ads. By August, the attack of the Swift Boat

veterans was getting to Kerry.  He called adviser Tad Devine, who was prepping

to appear on "Meet The Press" the next day: "It's a pack of f---ing lies, what

they're saying about me," he fairly shouted over the phone.  Kerry blamed his

advisers for his predicament. (Cahill and Shrum argued responding to the ads

would only dignify them.) He had wanted to fight back; they had counseled

caution.  Even Kerry's ex-wife, Julia Thorne, was very upset about the ads,

she told daughter Vanessa.  She could remember how Kerry had suffered in

Vietnam; she had seen the scars on his body, heard him cry out at night in his

nightmares.  She was so agitated about the unfairness of the Swift Boat

assault that she told Vanessa she was ready to break her silence, to speak out

and personally answer the Swift Boat charges.  She changed her mind only when

she was reassured that the campaign was about to start fighting back hard.

 

    Managing Teresa.  Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, presented a host of

behind-the-scenes drama for Kerry.  Early on, the campaign staff regarded

Teresa as something of a hypochondriac, and she canceled three trips in

October at the last minute, usually for what was described to aides as a

"nonspecific malady."  Kerry's first campaign manager, James Jordan, had

little patience for her strong opinions, sending emails trashing the

candidate's wife...which inevitably reached his rivals within the campaign,

including Bob Shrum (an old Teresa friend) and helped seal Jordan's eventual

dismissal.

 

    Later came Kerry campaign's post-convention "Sea to Shining Sea" tour: a

3,500-mile bus and train trek that was not a happy trip for Teresa.  With each

passing day she made less effort to hide her displeasure.  Audiences were

mystified when Teresa turned her back to them at daylight rallies and wore

dark sunglasses and a hat at night (backstage, the candidate's wife complained

of migraines and sore eyes).  As they reached the climax of the tour, an

hourlong "family vacation" hike in the Grand Canyon, the planned happy-family-

vacation was disintegrating in plain view.  Daughter Vanessa didn't enjoy

being a prop, Teresa was complaining of migraines and telling her husband she

couldn't walk anymore. The candidate tried to bravely soldier on, pulling his

sullen wife and children to show them the magnificent condors flying overhead.

 

    Edwards Campaigns for Veep.  Hours after bowing out of the presidential

nomination race on March 3, the senator from North Carolina convened a small

circle of his closest advisers at his house on P Street in Georgetown.  He

wanted the veep nomination, Edwards told his aides, he wanted it badly, and

from that moment was going to wage "a full-fledged campaign" to ensure that he

got it.

 

    Shades of Dukakis.  In early August, when the Swift Boat story started to

pick up steam on the talk shows, Susan Estrich, a California law professor,

well-known liberal talking head and onetime campaign manager for Michael

Dukakis, had called the Kerry campaign for marching orders.  She had been

booked on Fox's "Hannity & Colmes" to talk about the Swift Boat ads.  What are

the talking points? Estrich asked the Kerry campaign.  There are none, she was

told. Estrich was startled.  She had seen this bad movie before.

 

    Newsweek's 2004 Special Election Issue marks the magazine's sixth

consecutive installment of providing a behind-the-scenes account of the entire

presidential campaign.  The 50,000-word inside story was written by Assistant

Managing Editor Evan Thomas and edited by Special Projects Director Alexis

Gelber.  The project's correspondents are: Jonathan Darman (with Kerry), Kevin

Peraino (with Bush) and Contributing Editors Eleanor Clift and Peter Goldman.

 

 

This is going to be a must-read issue, even for a piece of biased crap like Newsweek.

[Your Paragon of Virtue 0]

What exactly did Bush do to McCain in 2000? I have heard much about dirty political underhandedness (like that doesn't happen in every election) but I was wondering what it was specifically.

[teke184 0]

What exactly did Bush do to McCain in 2000? I have heard much about dirty political underhandedness (like that doesn't happen in every election) but I was wondering what it was specifically.

They accused Bush of having Karl Rove run a covert smear campaign against McCain, including race-baiting, gay-baiting, etc.

 

 

If it wasn't for "Karl Rove did it!" replacing "Not me!" as the mysterious ghost who does everything wrong at the Family Circus house, people might actually take the accusations seriously.

[2GOLD 0]

I do remember that one of the things was someone calling McCain "mentally unstable with anger issues". One person even went as far as to say he wasn't fit for office because of his years of captivity in Vietnam.

 

I don't really remember the race that much now. Sorta a blur.

[The Czech Republic 0]

I'm gonna go across the street to the store and buy it right now.

[The Czech Republic 0]

No place has it.

[Placebo Effect 0]

I just got it a couple hours ago in the mail.

 

Haven't had the opportunity to read it yet.

[The Czech Republic 0]

Tell me what you think of it and if it's worth buying.

[teke184 0]

"In one segment, correspondent Ed Helms jokingly gushed over his favorite, the "Troops-Fog" ad that had featured Kerry's "$87 billion" gaffe. Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" had just won top prize at the Cannes Film Festival—the Palme d'Or—and Helms used the award as a pun. "I award this ad my highest praise," he simpered. "The coveted Palme de Bitch-Slap." For McKinnon's birthday on May 5, his colleagues presented him with a small golden "Palme de Bitch-Slap" statuette. McKinnon stuck it on top of his TV."

[The Czech Republic 0]

I'm browsing Newsweek on the Web here...I never knew how shamelessly liberal this publication was! It's gotta be exclusive to the Web version or something, there's no way this could get published on paper. I always liked Time and thought it to be relatively centrist.

[Guest MikeSC]

What exactly did Bush do to McCain in 2000? I have heard much about dirty political underhandedness (like that doesn't happen in every election) but I was wondering what it was specifically.

Reality: Nothing.

 

Figment of imagination: Bush accused McCain of fathering a black baby and crap like that.

-=Mike

[The Czech Republic 0]

That was obviously false. If he had a mulatto child out of wedlock, we'd have found the light-skinned black kid with the weird neck.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

I'm browsing Newsweek on the Web here...I never knew how shamelessly liberal this publication was! It's gotta be exclusive to the Web version or something, there's no way this could get published on paper. I always liked Time and thought it to be relatively centrist.

Don't let the George Will columns fool you -- I stopped reading that rag years ago. Actually, I read Will, Robert Samulesen (or whatever his name is) and that Fareed Zakara (whatever his name is, too). Otherwise, I'd finish each week of reading Snooze-week thinking "Why the hell did I just do that?"

 

Their Conventional Wisdom section is the worst...