by John Kerry
I wondered whether the Republicans who had been so quick to insist on this fight would, in retrospect, have rather accepted my proposal for a bipartisan censure. I wondered even more when the heir apparent Speaker of the House had to resign when his own affair was exposed by Larry Flynt later that month. House Republicans scrambled to find a suitable replacement. They landed on Denny Hastert, a little-known former high school coach who eighteen years later would go to prison after being exposed as a child molester. What a strange Washington journey.
Later that year, I was on my way to Myanmar to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi. She was becoming a global symbol of democracy, one woman’s resistance against repression and brutality. She dressed entirely in white to identify with the suffragettes, as did her supporters. She had seen her own father assassinated and had been under house arrest for years, fighting to force her country’s ruling military junta to allow free elections. I saw how hard some people struggled to try to get what many took for granted in the United States: democracy. I wondered whether there was any way to restore some sanity to the institutions we had made work for hundreds of years, some way to make the system work before you arrived at an impeachment vote. I’d be asking those questions a long, long time.
I was in Bangkok waiting for my flight to Myanmar. My phone rang. There had been a tragic fire in Worcester, Massachusetts: six firefighters were dead in the old abandoned Cold Storage and Warehouse Company on Franklin Street. The insulation of the building had turned it into a fire-trapping furnace. The brave men who had run into danger were dead.
I immediately canceled the trip to Myanmar and booked the next flight to Boston. I needed to fly twenty-seven hours back to the other side of the world because I wanted to be there to stand in solidarity with the families of the fallen. In a job too often consumed by political theater, the tragedy of real life and the courage of real-life uncelebrated heroes hit home again. As the bagpipes wailed at the memorial service, as Democrats and Republicans stood side by side in prayer, I was reminded again not just how fleeting life can be, but how these first responders got up that morning, kissed their wives and kids goodbye, and hours later ran into a burning building for the very last time. They did the right thing, instinctively, without fanfare, and gave their lives for it.
How wasteful it seemed that we were all spending so many of our extra days in the pointless noise machine that had become Washington. It was an insult to those firefighters, to everyone who depended on their leaders acting like adults.
• • •
BACK IN WASHINGTON, the presidential campaign to succeed President Clinton was soon in full swing. I had some hope that after the division of the last years maybe, just maybe, an opportunity to turn the page might finally be at hand. The country hungered for a different kind of politics, and that spirit evinced itself in different ways. While he didn’t have the president’s natural political gifts, Al Gore could claim the mantle of being Bill Clinton without the personal scandals. He was smart and capable, and I believed he would be the first Vietnam veteran elected president if a Republican friend of mine didn’t beat him to it: John McCain was mounting an insurgent challenge in the GOP field and was striking a chord in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary.
I agreed on most issues with Al Gore, and I particularly respected him for the work we’d done together on global warming long before it was a household term. But John’s campaign on the Republican side was much more compelling viewing. He was tapping into an enthusiasm in the country for something different: a selflessness about country and a determination to shake up Washington that was refreshing. But his well-funded opponent, Texas governor George W. Bush, wasn’t going down without a fight. Bush had bet his campaign on claiming the outsider lane as well, running as a champion of change from far outside Washington, an impressive claim given that his father had been president and his grandfather a U.S. senator. After McCain trounced Bush in New Hampshire, the two dueled in South Carolina. I was watching CNN when I caught a glimpse of a familiar face from the distant past standing behind Bush in Sumter, South Carolina, at a rally with veterans: J. Thomas Burch. I turned up the volume on my television. Burch accused John McCain of abandoning veterans. To the average viewer, Burch was described as head of a veterans’ organization, but I remembered something else: he’d been among those who had accused John McCain and me of betraying Vietnam veterans. His crowd was the very crowd that had smeared John McCain as the “Manchurian candidate” and opposed us every step of the way on the POW/MIA investigation. He was a charlatan. He’d blasted Presidents Reagan and Bush along with John and me for finding the truth. Yet Bush was basking in Burch’s endorsement in a primary where veterans’ votes could be the difference.
I called my friends among the Senate’s Vietnam veterans: Bob Kerrey, Chuck Hagel, Chuck Robb and Max Cleland. We had to defend John. We had to set the record straight. In half an hour, we’d banged out a letter to Governor Bush defending John’s honor. We faxed it to each other for signatures and off it went. It was a rare moment of genuine bipartisanship; the broken Senate couldn’t legislate, but the five of us weren’t going to let party label stand in the way of sticking by our Republican friend. Service was bigger than party. I will never forget John’s response when he heard what his band of brothers from the Senate had done in his defense: he said our collective bond was “all the honor he needed in his life.” We all felt the same.
But the attacks on John as a veteran, in hindsight, were just a preview of what the Bush campaign had in store for him. Robocalls and anonymous phone calls alleged that John had fathered a baby with an African American prostitute, even as photos were passed around South Carolina suggesting that John’s daughter—adopted from Bangladesh—was the alleged child. It was despicable. Sadly, the Bush campaign’s offensive made the difference in the South Carolina primary, and John McCain’s captivating campaign soon ended. It would be a presidential race between a Bush and a Gore—political dynasties doing battle, and I didn’t need to think twice to know which side I was on.
As the summer began, former secretary of state Warren Christopher called and asked to meet with me. He was heading Al Gore’s team searching for a vice presidential running mate. The campaign wanted to consider me. I agreed to be vetted. I had never thought of myself as a second-in-command in the political arena, but Michael Whouley argued that my political assets—combat veteran, former prosecutor, Catholic, seasoned debater—would all advantage the ticket in the course of a close campaign.
The vetting came at a difficult time for my family. Pa’s cancer was back, and it was in his bones this time. He had decided not to fight it anymore. On the weekends, I had a new reason to get home to Boston whenever possible: I didn’t know if each time would be the last I’d spend visiting him at the hospital.
The Gore campaign was prolific in its leaks to the media about the vice presidential sweepstakes. As headlines blared the rumors that I was one of three finalists for Gore—along with my Senate colleagues Joe Lieberman and John Edwards—it became increasingly hard to visit my Pa with the privacy he deserved and expected. Anytime I was seen heading anywhere—including to the hospital—the Boston Globe tried to read some hidden meaning into it. The paper assigned a reporter to watch my front door in Washington and Boston for any comings or goings. On the one hand, the vetting process kept me busy and at times was a helpful distraction from Pa’s illness. On the other hand, there were many times I just wanted to visit his bedside anonymously or slip away for a long bike ride to take my mind off the inevitable for an hour. No matter how long a parent has been sick or how expected the outcome is, you’re never prepared to say goodbye, and while my Pa was always stoic, his choices and passions in life—including foreign policy, flying and sailing—had been passed down to me, his oldest son. This was not going to be an easy demarcation point in life.
Dad drifted off and died July 29 in Boston. Cam, my sisters and I planned a quiet, private memorial service for family that befitted a ma
n who never enjoyed public attention. Our attention turned to our mother, who had steeled herself for this day but who was now without her partner of sixty years. Teresa and I spent a weekend on Nantucket, where she alternated between encouraging me to talk about my father’s passing and doing anything to lighten the mood.
On a bright Sunday morning, there was a knock on the door. It was Ted Kennedy. He had sailed over from Hyannisport to visit. I wondered how many times in his life Teddy had performed such thoughtful gestures with such uncalculated spontaneity. It was more than just Irish even in the best of ways; it was the act of someone who had endured loss and appreciated the unspoken comfort that came from being with friends at life’s lowest milestones.
Eight days after my father passed away, I was back in Washington. The Senate was soon to recess for the party conventions. On August 8, I woke up to the news on television that Joe Lieberman was Al Gore’s choice. The Gore campaign had leaked the decision but had yet to announce it publicly. The stage was set for an afternoon rally at Veterans Plaza in Nashville. Cameras surrounded our home and reporters melted under the hot August sun. They needed a comment from me before their newspapers would allow them to file their stories back at their air-conditioned offices. The only problem was I hadn’t spoken to the vice president. A busy campaign had not yet called to pass along the news and thus liberate me to make a public comment and escape my media-imposed house arrest. It was comical, to a point. Finally, Gore’s campaign chairman, Bill Daley, called to thank me for having been vetted and officially convey the now well-publicized news. I stepped outside, congratulated my old friend Joe Lieberman, and we were free to go back to our lives.
I did my best to help Al’s campaign: I attended the first debate in Boston, and the last week of the race crisscrossed the country as a surrogate at Michael Whouley’s direction. Michael had me puddle-jumping state to state wherever the race was tight, from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania, Nevada to Oregon, and dipping down into California for a quick stop. Vice presidential nominee Dick Cheney had parachuted into conservative Orange County to try to steal a blue state, and Whouley wanted the Gore campaign to counter with a high-profile surrogate. At the Orange County fairgrounds, I held a press conference just a few hundred feet from where Cheney would speak. I presented Cheney’s Far Right voting record as a congressman to put the lie to the ticket’s claims of compassionate conservatism. A crowd carrying Bush-Cheney signs ran after my van as we pulled away, their angry faces screaming all sorts of epithets as they held up a number of one-fingered salutes. I gave them a big thumbs-up and had a good laugh. It was great fun.
On the evening of November 2, 2000, I was back in Boston. Teddy was reelected that evening to his seventh term, scraping by with a mere 73 percent of the vote. Ted’s win had been expected, but I expected the race at the top of the ticket to be tense. I was backstage with Teddy at his victory party when we heard a roar from the partygoers gathered in the ballroom on the other side of the curtains. Ted’s nephew, who was managing his race, yelled across the way: “NBC called Florida for Gore.” It wasn’t even eight o’clock, and I wondered optimistically if maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be such a late night after all. Gore’s big bet on winning Florida, the state where Bush’s younger brother was governor, had paid off. I thought Al would win.
About an hour later, Ohio went for Bush, and Al’s home state, Tennessee, also settled in the Bush column. It had to sting for Al to have lost the state he’d represented, the state where his dad had served as senator. But Ted joked, “It’ll hurt a lot less when he’s sitting in the Oval Office.”
Teddy wisely wanted to address his own crowd while everything looked promising for Al. He delivered his speech and shook hands with his volunteers from the campaign trail, many of whom were veterans of Kennedy campaigns back to Ted’s first race in 1962, including me.
As the hour approached 10:00 p.m., a different murmur, peppered by a few boos, rumbled through the reception area: NBC’s Tim Russert announced they were moving Florida back to “too close to call.”
I invited a couple of friends and staffers back to my home to watch the results come in. The hours ticked by as the electoral map became increasingly red, then a bit more blue when West Coast states went for Gore.
At 2:17, Florida was declared a Bush victory by the Associated Press. A second Bush presidency. I sent everyone home, climbed into bed and tried to sleep. It was futile. I tossed and turned. A couple of hours later, I gave up, went back downstairs, turned on the television and learned that ninety minutes before, the networks had signaled Florida was again too close to call. I texted Michael Whouley in Nashville. “Recount,” he wrote back.
Weeks later, after the recount wound its way through the court system, I sat at the Supreme Court to watch opening arguments in Bush v. Gore. As a citizen, I was riveted. This was history unfolding. I was outraged that so many Americans had been disenfranchised and troubled even more that the recount was covered by the media as an extension of the political horse race rather than a test of our democracy.
Gore lost in the Supreme Court. I was absolutely confident that Al had won the election but was denied the presidency on a technicality. Once more, I would be serving in the Democratic minority under a Republican president.
I thought the newly inaugurated President Bush had a responsibility to unify a divided country. But he proceeded as if he had a partisan mandate. Many of his nominees, like former senator John Ashcroft for attorney general, represented the hard right wing.
The president announced a massive tax cut disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. I opposed it as a matter of fundamental fairness. I didn’t believe that Teresa and I needed a tax cut more than kids needed decent schools or cities needed help repairing crumbling infrastructure.
Bush announced he wanted to open Alaska’s pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, a pointless political decision to destroy some of the last pure wilderness in our country over oil that would be difficult to bring to market. The oil leases themselves would create a scramble of exploratory drilling that would forever mar the unspoiled tundra. I filibustered to stop them. I was whipping votes and keeping a close count on an issue where we had to hold on to Democrats from oil-producing states. A couple of Republican senators from the fast-disappearing Teddy Roosevelt wing of the Republican Party, including John McCain, joined me. We won. It was a good feeling.
But I was also frustrated. I was fifty-eight years old and felt like the best I could do as a senator was stop bad things from happening.
I was opening myself up more and more to the idea of running for president in 2004. I began traveling weekends trying to help elect Democrats up and down the ballot. I got to know people and places where I hadn’t spent much time before. I enjoyed the process and I enjoyed getting to know the rhythm of each state—accents, food and people. I hadn’t traveled the country this way since I was working full-time for the veterans in the early 1970s. I liked getting to know local reporters with encyclopedic knowledge of the politics of their states, and I was lucky to have my own political team, led by a tough-talking, savvy southerner named Jim Jordan, who was building a national political operation.
That summer, a few potential 2004 Democratic candidates were invited to Columbia, South Carolina, for the state party convention. The Democratic governor Jim Hodges kindly invited us to stay the night at the governor’s mansion. Late Saturday night, after attending Congressman James Clyburn’s annual fish fry, surrounded by a canopy of old elms, oaks and magnolias, I drove up to the mansion. Under the warm glow of the porch lights, in rocking chairs, sat the governor and my Senate colleague John Edwards, who had been born in Seneca, South Carolina. We sat up together swapping stories and drinking sweet tea with mint. So began a low-key, friendly rivalry.
On September 10, Boston’s World Affairs Council honored John McCain and me for our partnership to make peace with Vietnam. It was a special evening made more so because John had only a couple of week
s before endured surgery. I wasn’t sure he’d be able to travel at all. But with the help of a chartered flight, we made it up to Boston. We both spoke that night about the importance of always finding common ground. John was hurting on the flight back. We landed around 1:00 a.m., said goodbye and each headed home.
I was back in my office in the Russell Building seven hours later. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was one of those beautiful, bright, blue-sky September days you wish would last forever; it was still summer, but the humidity had disappeared. I had to head over to the Capitol shortly for Leader Daschle’s Tuesday morning leadership team meeting. I had the news blaring on the television set next to my desk, the syndicated Imus in the Morning show on which I was a frequent guest. At ten minutes before 9:00, my ears perked up as I heard Imus’s news anchor say that they would be switching to live footage from the World Trade Center, where a plane had flown straight into a building. As a pilot, I was filled with questions. Was the weather in New York bad? A glance at the television footage quickly showed New York’s weather that morning was as placid as it was in Washington. Had the pilot had a heart attack? Was it a suicide? My longtime assistant Tricia, a native New Yorker, rushed in to make sure I’d seen the news. Something felt strange to both of us. It didn’t feel like an accident.
I headed to the Capitol for the leadership meeting. Senator Barbara Boxer of California and I were chatting about the news that was now being broadcast live on all the networks. I was talking about it from a pilot’s perspective when we saw, on live television, United Airlines Flight 175 fly straight into the South Tower. This was no accident. Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic assistant floor leader Dick Durbin, Barbara and I were transfixed. “That’s terrorism,” I said. Jay Rockefeller was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He knew right away that this was an attack. We wondered if it was Hezbollah or Hamas.
Tom Daschle was in and out of the conference room taking phone calls, trying to find out the latest. Jay went to call his office. Something suddenly clicked in my mind: Alex. My daughter, a young actor and filmmaker, was living in New York in an apartment on West 22nd Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, a few miles from the World Trade Center. Plenty of her friends from college worked on Wall Street. Where was she this morning? I called my office and they couldn’t reach her. Finally, she called me from a phone booth. I was relieved to hear her voice. Her cell phone wasn’t working but she’d jammed enough dimes into the phone and eventually reached an operator who connected her to the Senate. Rumors were spreading on her block that Washington was under attack. She feared I was dead. I assured her I was fine, but that she should head to her friend’s house, away from the chaos. We were all going to be all right, but at that moment I knew that she had every reason to be terrified: her adopted city was under attack and her father was in another city she feared was being targeted. Then I heard the sound I will never forget: a boom, followed by billows of smoke over the Washington Mall. It was 9:40. “The Pentagon has been hit,” someone said. I hung up with Alex, and all of us who were meeting in Tom Daschle’s office huddled, watching out the window.
