John Kass
With 1 remark, Kerry shows his other face
Published October 17, 2004
In one of my favorite westerns, a skinny Marlon Brando turns to his betrayer, Karl Malden, and says:
"You're a one-eyed Jack around this town, dad, but I've just seen the other side of your face."
The movie was aptly titled "One-Eyed Jacks." I thought of it during last week's presidential debate, while listening to the ostentatious sincerity in a politician's voice.
I heard the words, "We're all God's children," and then, "... Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian."
That's when Sen. John Kerry became a one-eyed Jack.
He delivered the other side of his old altar boy's face on national television, moving eagerly from the Almighty to the knife.
You might not see it that way. It certainly won't have any long-term effect in the Republican-Democratic brawl over same sex marriage, despite the fresh Republican effort to turn it to their advantage.
Reporters look for style in presidential debates, but the public looks for gut checks.
And Kerry offered something unsettling about himself, something oily and quick, perhaps something quite treacherous.
The one-eyed jack drops to all politicians. It has happened plenty to President George Bush. His painful refusal to answer a simple question about whether he'd made any mistakes hurt him terribly a while back, since it didn't mesh with the crafted image of the forthright, humble man of the West.
There was a painful rip in the screen for Bush, and reality bubbled through. When reality interferes with advertising, there is danger.
Kerry's bumbling is stretching into this weekend's news cycle. The Washington Post published a poll on Friday that an overwhelming majority (64 percent) of voters viewed the Kerry remark as inappropriate. This includes half of all swing voters and four in 10 of Kerry's own supporters.
Debate moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS asked Bush and Kerry whether they believe that homosexuality is a choice.
The president said he did not know. I don't know anyone who truly believes this. Yet that was his answer, political and careful.
Then it was Kerry's turn to speak. He knows he's quite good in debates. He wasn't careful.
"We're all God's children, Bob," Kerry said as if he meant it. "And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as."
Right then, there was a groan among reporters covering the debate, the way you might groan if your favorite football team fumbled on the goal line.
Kerry obviously wanted to charge Bush with hypocrisy for opposing same sex marriage. But it wasn't the Democrats' first use of Mary Cheney in national debates. That took place earlier, in the debate between Vice President Dick Cheney and Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards.
Edward's bit was smoothly done. Cheney acknowledged as much, quietly thanking Edwards for kind words said about his family.
Edwards is a practiced trial lawyer and has an ear for variance in tone. Kerry has been a senator for so long he hears only the tone of his own voice.
So when Kerry mentioned God's love and publicly wrapped himself up in it before transforming Mary Cheney into a rhetorical shiv, we weren't seeing something spontaneous.
It was a tactic previously employed. He was eager to use it himself.
Imagine if President Bush had said something like that about a Democrat's daughter, to explain a Democrat's support for same-sex marriage.
We'd be swimming in national outrage, in angry news stories about how candidates should never use another's child as a weapon, about those Republicans "in thrall" to some intolerant Christianity. But Bush didn't say it, Kerry did, and now the journalistic attitude is one of mitigation.
Republicans are beating the story. The vice president's wife, Lynn Cheney, is in the lead, calling Kerry's remark a "cheap and tawdry political trick." Yet she did not shout so after Edwards' remarks, and it smacks of feigned political outrage.
Democrats tried playing it down, but then it got uglier, with Edwards' wife suggesting the Cheneys were ashamed of their daughter.
We all know what we're being served: Democratic and Republican attempts to use any lever, a mother's anger, a daughter's sexuality, God's love, to pry votes out of the swing states.
Still, Kerry was doing so well in the debates. Then something prideful pushed him into one-eyed jack territory. Whether he pays for it in votes, I can't say.
Americans were looking for a glimpse of the real man inside the suit. And he provided an eyeful.
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Damn it. I knew I was doomed.
... thanks Nimh!
