Helping With Heavy Lifting In Congress
Is Where Sen. John Kerry Will Be Needed

by William Finucane

Winning the United State presidency in 2008 will hopefully provide a wholly new opportunity for presidential candidates.

U.S. Senator John Kerry, D-Mass., however, is not the candidate who should run for the presidency in 2008.

Both legislative bodies – the Senate and the House of Representatives – are obviously going to belong to the Democratic Party between now and the presidential election of 2008, and in all likelihood for some additional period. Republicans will spend a few years licking their wounds and honing a new identity.

The one thing that makes November’s Democratic victory even more thundering in its impact is the relative position lobbyists have had with Democratic members. Since Republican members held such a complete stranglehold on all the committees and all the federal offices, they got all the lobbying action. In fact, the GOP created a situation whereby lobbying firms were afraid to hire lobbyists who were Democrats because they had been warned of retribution. So how much influence did Democrats have in the federal government over the past six years?

None.

Lobbyists could and did ignore them for six years.

So, whatever sudden lobbying comes the way of the Democrats will have the aroma of a new baby, new and pleasant. And they are coming already. But there is a very short period when the Democrats are relatively un-influenced. That is a wonderful chance.

Democratic candidates for the 2008 presidency are lining up their campaigns now, with all the old, tried, tested and some might say tired and clueless names popping up. Right now, when Democratic government is waiting to play its new role, is the ideal time for new candidates to emerge. In January, all the old ways will return. Big money will wash over to powerful Democrats and curry lots of favors and votes. That will take a frighteningly short time.

Still, at least a whiff of hope lingers that business might be done just a little bit more honestly come January. People who have no strong ties to big lobbies might still have time to actually stand a chance to run a successful presidential campaign. Let’s at least hope so, because the Republican Congress and the presidential administration of George Bush have mismanaged nearly every square inch of Capital Hill they have touched.

Democrats have two years to pick a president and they should be working hard at doing that. But those in the Kerry camp must see that the change that the 2006 election brought to the Senate and House of Representatives also worked a vast difference in the nature of the presidency, should they successfully put forward a candidate. It will no longer be the lone Democrat struggling to keep a dying party alive, such as it was with Bill Clinton; it will be a new face in the White House with new strength because of a Democratic Congress. But the Democratic president will have to be someone who can state a program and rally the Democrats around him.

That is not Kerry.

Kerry is deep, thoughtful, complicated and given to occasional tongue tie-ups that often lead to new controversies. Of course none of the current Kerry controversy has anything to do with 2008 and beyond. That is key – beyond. This will not be the time to declare all is well and send the rest of Americans back home assured of themselves and their safety.

America’s next president will be the head of a new nation, the head of a nation that no longer sees the country as isolated from other countries, who will try to re-establish the ties with other forces in the United Nations, who will decide what to do about the more than 700 laws that Republican President George W. Bush muted with "signing statements," making them into laws for the common American, not for the Imperial President Bush.

The new president will hopefully reconstitute the arts and sciences, and do hundreds more things to restore the presidential honor that Mr. Bush has stripped away. Most of all, America needs to identify itself.

That will be the next president’s challenge.

It is clear that all that Kerry will do is confuse and dilute the field of Democratic candidates. Now, there are a dozen candidates who might run, including Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois; Rep. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Al Gore, Wesley Clark, Joe Biden and many others.

If Kerry bows out, what he can do is take up a senior position in the U.S. Senate alongside Sen. Ted Kennedy. Together in their posts as Senators, these two veterans could move huge pieces of legislation through the Senate. Given what Bush has done for six years – ignore the legislature completely when not using it as a rubber stamp – this is a monumental task. Kerry can do the work that is needed because he is a polished senator. He can put together coalitions of senators and press his arguments; he can offer help on other bills and do all the things a solid senator can do if he has all the tools Kerry has them.

But Kerry is not America’s next president because he is not cut out to lead the nation boldly into its next phase. America very nearly slipped down the slope of Caesarean dictatorship with Bush. The new chief executive has to move the country away from that precipice and back into the posture of a strong but cooperative country that seeks to unite all people – in other nations in all religions – in efforts toward common goals, and without the threat of military belligerence or war. We have won no wars since World War II, with the exception of the international efforts in the Gulf War, and we likely won’t win any others if, as the world’s great superpower, the nation is unable to get out of Iraq.

Of course the nation will also continue to be afraid of terrorist attacks. But guess what? The residents of the greater world all worry about terrorist attacks all the time. The GOP tried to make fear of terrorism into a national phobia that would freeze people into thinking they need to give up their rights to avoid the terrorists.

Terrorists exist, be certain of it, but clearly it makes little sense to give up everything that makes America what it is in order to fight them. If one does that, one has already lost.

It it worth recalling that, in one fashion or another, terrorists have been threatening people the world over since the dawn of time.

New eyes to these problems: that is what a new president must bring to bear.

John Kerry can do enormous good for the Democrats and the nation if he returns to a Democratic Senate and helps put the nation back in some semblance of order. He is a master debater, a ‘convincer,’ to paraphrase a Bushism; he can argue a point both ways, as a senator should, and lead his listeners toward his ultimate goal. He can win his point in a civilized conversation. But running for the presidency differs. It is winning the people’s trust in what they see in his face and bearing. Being presidential is a very complex process that often devolves around simple things, since people often have to make decisions based on available images and fragmentary information. The voting public, among other things, needs to have faith in the candidate.

Kerry is a very complex a thinker, and something of tendentious speaker, so he often appears aloof and detached, and unfortunately too often seems to be talking down to the people he’s addressing. That may and probably is an unfair vision of the man, but it is the reaction the nation now has to his picture.

John Kerry can start hitting Bush hard if he just goes back to his job in the Senate. He recently told us he would reach his decision over the holidays, but now he says he'll wait until the spring. Let’s hope he decides to help the country, not his ambition.