Rhetoric Matters

John Kerry said something I found quite interesting this morning on Meet the Press. The show was, as might be expected, devoted to memorializing Ted Kennedy.  

When asked about what Kennedy taught Kerry upon the junior senator’s arrival in Washington, Kerry said: “David, when I first got involved in politics, I thought that politics was just about the issues.  You know, you believe this, you believe that, you fight for this, you fight for that.  What Teddy showed me is that politics–and this is slightly contrary to what Tip O’Neill said when he said all politics is local–all politics is personal.  And that’s really what Teddy taught a lot of us, I think.”

What I find most interesting about this lesson is Kerry’s utter inability to bring the lesson about personal politics to life in his ill-fated 2004 presidential campaign. I don’t believe this is the only reason Kerry lost, but I think there’s plenty of evidence that he was simply unable to make a connection, to move people or persuade people that he was the person to lead, the leader to be president, the president to change the country. Unlike Ronald Reagan in 1980, Kerry didn’t ever manage the complicated political task of convincing a broader public of his capacity to be president in opposition to an incumbent.

Kerry’s words echo McGee’s admonition in 1978: “Human beings make up a government, not measures or issues.”