Kerry, John (1943—)

John Forbes Kerry was born in Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Colorado. The son of a foreign service officer, Kerry was raised Catholic and spent his childhood primarily on international soil. After graduating from Yale University, Kerry joined the U.S. Navy and did two tours of duty in Vietnam from 1966 to 1970. He received the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three purple hearts. Upon his return from Vietnam, Kerry became actively involved in “Vietnam Veterans Against the War,” and in 1971, he was the first Vietnam veteran to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the atrocities of the war. In a 2-hour-long hearing, Kerry expressed resentment and consternation about war crimes he had witnessed that were perpetrated by U.S. servicemen sent to “die for the biggest nothing in history.” Kerry posed the compelling question, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” The 27-year-old Kerry contended that the reason for the prolonged fighting in Vietnam and President Richard M. Nixon's recalcitrance in considering its end was strictly political. “Someone has to die so that Nixon won't be, and these are his words, ‘the first President to lose a war.’” Not long after the hearing, in a dramatic demonstration, Kerry, along with 800 other veterans, publicly cast their metals and ribbons over a barrier to the front steps of the U.S. Capitol building.

These antiwar protests, in conjunction with the publication of his first book, The New Solider (1971), propelled Kerry's political career. Following his graduation from Boston College Law School, Kerry worked for the district attorney's office in Massachusetts, and in 1982 won the office of lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. Three years later, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, succeeding Paul Tsongas. Characterized as a left-of-center legislator, Kerry was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996, and 2002. In 2004, Kerry accepted the Democratic nomination for president.

Kerry focused his presidential campaign on a critique of the Bush administration's foreign policy, especially in relation to the war in Iraq, and this largely negative strategy seemed a reasonable basis for running against an apparently vulnerable incumbent.

The campaign failed, however, and, as several commentators have observed, it offered a case study of what not to do in contemporary politics. Kerry proved unable to tell an appealing and coherent story about himself and his ideas, and he could not prevent the Republicans from seizing control of the campaign by defining the Democratic candidate as an irresolute “flip-flopper.”

The foibles of Kerry's campaign surface most obviously in terms of general strategic issues such as timing, emphasis, and the use of media. But a careful reading of Kerry's speech texts reveals a less obtrusive but fundamental problem. Stanley Fish, writing during the course of the campaign, noted that Kerry's speeches violated basic rhetorical principles of composition and coherence and characterized his prose as confused, difficult to understand, and (in the words of one of Fish's students) “kind of skippy.”

As an example of Kerry's rhetorical meandering, consider this excerpt from his most important speech on the war in Iraq (October 20,

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