John F. Kerry

John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is a United States Senator from Massachusetts, and the leading contender for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.

Early life

Kerry was born at the Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Aurora, Colorado, outside Denver, where his father, Richard Kerry, a test pilot for the Army Air Corps (predecessor to the USAF), was undergoing treatment for tuberculosis. His family returned to their native state of Massachusetts shortly after John's birth. He was raised as a Roman Catholic.

His father, Richard, was a lawyer who later joined the United States Foreign Service and worked for the United States Department of State. His mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who was born in Paris, France, was apparently a homemaker. The daughter of an international businessman, Rosemary grew up mostly in France, where the family still has a home on a bluff in Brittany. Rosemary and Richard met while he was visiting the French coastal town of Saint-Brieuc in 1937.

Kerry's paternal grandfather, Frederick A. Kerry (born Fritz Kohn), was born in Horni Benesov in what is now the Czech Republic, grew up in Mödling (a small town near Vienna in Austria) and emigrated to the United States. He arrived at Ellis Island with his wife Ida (who was born in Budapest, Hungary) and son Erich on May 18, 1905. The Kerry-Kohns were Jewish, but the family concealed its background upon immigrating to the United States, and raised the Kerry children as Catholics. Frederick committed suicide on November 23, 1921 by gunshot to the head at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts. His second son, Richard was only six at the time.

Kerry's maternal grandfather, James Grant Forbes, was an international lawyer and banker who was born in Shanghai, China. His wife was Margaret Tyndal Winthrop, whose ancestry extends far into Massachusetts history. Through Margaret, his grandmother, Kerry can trace descent from James Bowdoin, former Governor of Maine, and John Winthrop, the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This branch of Kerry's family tree also shows a common ancestry with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jane Addams, Calvin Coolidge, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.

Throughout his youth, Kerry and his parents would often spend the summer holidays at James' and Margaret's grand house at Saint-Brieuc, where Kerry would race his cousins on bicycles and challenge relatives to games of "kick the can." One of his cousins, an East Anglia geography teacher named Kevin Armstrong, later recalled, "I remember him on his bike. He always looked like he was in a race. He was never just pedalling along, he would be going like crazy. We always knew he would win."

Armstrong, describing the Kerry household, said that he never talked of presidential ambitions, but "there would always be political discussions. Johnny's dad, Uncle Dick, was very serious about politics. There were high-level arguments going on. You had the feeling you were expected to know a lot."

Because Kerry's family moved around a lot, he attended several schools as a child. Many years later, he said that "to my chagrin, and everlasting damnation, I was always moving on and saying goodbye. It kind of had an effect on you. It steeled you. There wasn't a lot of permanence and roots. For kids, [that's] not the greatest thing." He went to a Swiss boarding school at age 11 while his family lived in Berlin. When he visited home, he biked around and saw the rubble of Hitler's bunker, and also sneaked into East Berlin, until his father found out and grounded him. The boy often spent time alone. He biked through France, took a ferry from Norway to England, and even camped alone in Sherwood Forest.

While his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, Kerry was sent to Massachusetts to attend boarding school. In 1957 he attended the Fessenden School in West Newton, Massachusetts, where he met his friend Richard Pershing, grandson of the famed U.S. general John Joseph Pershing.

The following year, he enrolled at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire in 1958, graduating in 1962. There he practiced his skills in public speaking, and developed an interest in politics. In his free time, he enjoyed hockey and lacrosse, which he played on teams captained by a classmate named Robert S. Mueller III, who went on to become director of the FBI. He also played electric bass for the prep school's band The Electras, which produced an album in 1961. Only 500 copies were made, and in 2004 one of the copies was auctioned at ebay.com for $2,551.

In 1959 Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day, a group that still exists. It is said he began to emulate President John F. Kennedy while a student, even signing his papers, "J.F.K." Indeed, it was in November of 1960 while at school that Kerry gave his first political speech, in favor of Kennedy's election to the White House.

Encounters with President Kennedy

In 1962, Kerry volunteered on Ted Kennedy's first senatorial campaign. He was known to broadcast "Kennedy for Senate," from a loudspeaker in his Volkswagen Beetle, adding the words "And Kerry for dogcatcher!" In the summer of that year, he began dating Janet Jennings Auchincloss, Jacqueline Kennedy's half-sister. Auchincloss invited Kerry to visit her family's estate, Hammersmith Farm in Rhode Island (home to Janet and Jackie's mother Janet Lee Bouvier Auchincloss and her husband Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr.), on Sunday, August 26. It was then that Kerry met President Kennedy for the first time.

When Kerry told Kennedy that he was about to enter Yale University, Kennedy grimaced because he had gone to rival-school Harvard University. Kerry later recalled, "He smiled at me, laughed and said, 'Oh, don't worry about it. You know I'm a Yale man too now,' " According to Kerry, "[The President] uttered that famous comment about how he had the best of two worlds now: a Harvard education and Yale degree," in reference to the fact he had received an honorary degree from Yale a few months prior (June 11, 1962). Later that day, a White House photographer snapped a photo of Kerry sailing with Kennedy and his family in Narragansett Bay. They met again a few weeks later while at the September 1962 America's Cup race off the coast of Rhode Island.

Yale University

In 1962 Kerry entered Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut (his father graduated from Yale in 1937), and there majored in political science, graduating with a B.A. in 1966. To earn money during the summers, he loaded trucks in a grocery warehouse and sold encyclopedias door to door.

As a student, he lived in a three-room dormitory suite with Daniel Barbiero, who was a friend from St. Paul's School, and Harvey H. Bundy III. The first time he met Harvey Bundy, they almost came to blows. Bundy was heckling President Kennedy about his sex life during a speech he was giving on the New Haven Green on October 17, 1962, and Kerry approached him to get him to stop. (Harvey, who would become a principal at the investment banking firm of William Blair & Company in Chicago, disliked Kennedy even though he had two uncles—McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy—who served senior posts in his administration. Indeed, it was a visit to Yale by William Bundy, who reportedly told Kerry, "We need people like you to lead over there [in Vietnam]," which influenced Kerry's decision to serve in the war.)

Kerry and Harvey Bundy became close friends despite their tense introduction, and even spent the summer in Europe together in the summer of 1963, after their freshman year. During the trip, they drove from Paris to Austria, where they visited an old ski instructor of Kerry's. They drove through Switzerland on the way but didn't visit anyone there. Then, when they arrived at the Austrian Alps, Kerry insisted on climbing a mountain even though it was only 5 a.m., and then raced his friend down the peak. When they visited London that summer, Kerry delivered an impromptu speech from the famed Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park.

Kerry, who had always been athletic, played soccer, hockey and lacrosse at Yale. He was also on the Fence Club and took flying lessons. Barbiero later recalled, "In prep school, he had a pretty small group of friends—guys who were interested in philosophy and political science...In college, he got to know everybody."

In his sophomore year Kerry became president of the Yale Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and President Kennedy's New Frontier program.

Under the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin Osterweis, Kerry won dozens of debate contests against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, "It is the specter of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism, and thus it is self-defeating." Because of his public speaking skills, he was chosen to give the Class Oration at graduation. The speech was hastily rewritten at the last moment, and was a broad criticism of American foreign policy, including the war.

In April 1965 his friend John Shattuck (who would later become CEO of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation) inducted him to Yale's Skull and Bones secret society, three years before George W. Bush joined the same group. He was joined by friends such as Frederick W. Smith, who would later found Federal Express; his debate partner, William Stanberry, Jr.; David Thorne, who also dated Janet Auchincloss and was the twin brother of Kerry's future wife, Julia Thorne; and a peer from St. Paul's, Richard Pershing, who was probably his closest friend as a young man. A few years later, he thought fondly of this time, recalling that he and Pershing shared "irreplaceable, incomparable moments of love, concerns, anger and compassion... in Bones."

Other members of Skull and Bones that year were Alan W. Cross, George Clifford Brown, John Bockstoce, Michael Dalby, James Ernest Howard, Ronald Singer, Thomas Vargish, Forrest David Laidley and David Rumsey, who would go on to found the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.

A few weeks before graduating, Kerry and all of the Skull and Bones seniors went on a trip together to the fishing camp owned by the organization on the secluded 50-acre Deer Island, located on the St. Lawrence River, just North of Alexandria Bay, New York. They spent the days idly, playing cards and drinking beer. But in an article by Joe Klein for The New Yorker in 2002, David Thorne remembered there was a serious ongoing discussion about Vietnam. He said, "There were four of us [Kerry, Smith, Pershing and Thorne] going to war in a matter of months. That tends to concentrate the mind. This may have been the first time we really seriously began to question Vietnam. It was: 'Hey, what the hell is going on over there? What the hell are we in for'?"

Military service

Medals awarded to Lt. Kerry include the Silver Star,
Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts.

On February 18, 1966 Kerry enlisted in the United States Navy. He was ordered into active duty on October 19, and received his Navy commission on December 16. After completing a year of training, in December of 1967 he began his first tour of duty, serving as a lieutenant on the guided-missile frigate USS Gridley (DLG-21).

The Gridley sailed into war to patrol the coast of Vietnam in February 1968. He had no contact with the enemy during that time. His second tour of duty began in December, and did put him in the heat of things. He commanded a Swift Boat Patrol Craft Fast-94 during several operations, including Operation Sea Lords (raids on the Viet Cong-controlled Cua Long River in the Mekong Delta near the Cà Mau province). His arm was wounded during his first combat experience (on December 2, 1968) and he was awarded a Purple Heart.

Kerry lost five friends in war, including his Yale classmate, Richard Pershing, who was killed-in-action on February 17, 1968. The death had a devastating impact on Kerry, who expressed his grief in a wrenching letter to his parents, writing: "If I do nothing more, and if I convince the others to do nothing more, it will be to give every effort we can to somehow make this a better world to live in and to end once and for all this willingness to expend ourselves in this stupid, endless self-distruction." [1]

On February 20, 1969, Kerry earned a second Purple Heart when his left thigh was hit with shrapnel. Eight days later, on February 28, 1969, Kerry's boat, in enemy territory, was hit by a B-40 rocket. After beaching his boat, Kerry chased down a fleeing wounded Viet Cong (who had been shot by another machine gunner) and delivered the "coup de grâce." Kerry came back to the boat with the rocket and launcher. He was awarded the Silver Star medal for his actions.

On March 13, 1969, Kerry's boat detonated a mine (as his position took heavy fire) and his arm was wounded. For his injury and rescuing U.S. Army Green Beret James Rassmann on the same occasion, Kerry was awarded a third Purple Heart and the Bronze Star with Combat V.

On March 17, 1969, Commodore Charles Horne, an administrative official and commander of the coastal squadron in which Kerry served, filled out a document that said Kerry "has been thrice wounded in action while on duty incountry Vietnam. Reassignment is requested as a personal aide in Boston, New York, or Washington, D.C. area." There has been some debate about whether Kerry asked Horne to write the letter, or if Horne did so on his own. Transfer was subject to approval by the Bureau of Naval Personnel, which granted the request under then-existing naval instructions which said those who are wounded "three times, regardless of the nature of the wound or treatment required...will not be ordered to serve in Vietnam and contiguous waters or to duty with ships or units which have been alerted for movement to that area..."

Kerry ended his tour of duty in Vietnam in 1969 after 11 months in-country.[2], but he remained on active duty for two more years with the Military Sea Transportation Service, Atlantic based in Brooklyn, New York. All told, he was on active duty from four years, from 1968 until 1972.

He then joined the United States Naval Reserve where he served from 1972 to 1978, for a total of 10 years of military service.

Anti-war activism

John Kerry speaking at an
anti-war rally.

In June, he joined the newly-formed organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), where he became a prominent spokesman, leading numerous protests, marches and rallies. On September 7, he spoke at an event that the group organized called "Operation RAW", or Rapid American Withdrawal, in which Vietnam veterans marched 86 miles from two Revolutionary War sites, Morristown, New Jersey and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

In 2004, an often reproduced fake photo from the rally in Valley Forge showed Kerry sitting in the audience several rows behind actress Jane Fonda, who spoke at the event, as did her Klute co-star Donald Sutherland [3]. The original photographer, Ken Light, proved it to be a fake; moreover, it turned out that Jane Fonda was not even present at the rally. Someone used digital image tools to place the controversial Fonda in the scene in order to damage Kerry's reputation among those that dislike Fonda for her anti-war activities. Even if it had been an honest photograph of the Valley Forge rally, Fonda was not yet known as Hanoi Jane, as her infamous visit to North Vietnam would not occur until two years later, an action that Kerry did not support. At any rate, this fake photo is more demonstrative of dirty U.S. politics in January 2004 than about Kerry himself.

As part of the VVAW, Kerry organized a non-violent protest of the war entitled "Operation Dewey Canyon III", which occured from April 18 to April 23. The organizers called the protest "a limited incursion into the country of Congress," and named it "Dewey Canyon III" because it followed Dewey Canyon I and Dewey Canyon II, code names for American and then ARVN invasions of Laos in February and March of 1971. On April 19, a procession of about 1,100 veterans moved across the Lincoln Memorial Bridge to Arlington Cemetery, led by mothers who lost their sons in Vietnam, the so-called "Gold Star Mothers". There, a brief ceremony for the war dead was conducted by Reverend Jackson Day on the small plot of grass outside the cemetery beneath the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the grave of John F. Kennedy. In the following days, the protestors, who camped out on a grassy quadrangle between Third and Fourth Streets, took part in "guerilla theatre", marches, and listened to speeches. Senator Edward Kennedy made a midnight visit to the group on the evening of April 21.

On April 22, 1971, while wearing his army fatigues, Silver Star and Purple Heart ribbons, he testified before a special two-hour session of the United States Senate's Senate Foreign Relations Committee.[4]

He spoke out against a war he described as a "mistake" and talked about the VVAW's Winter Soldier Investigation, an event which took place from January 31 to February 2, 1971 in Detroit, Michigan, at which over 150 honorably discharged veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia during the war. He also named William Bundy, the man who had influenced his decision to go to Vietnam, as one of "the commanders who have deserted their troops."

The following day, Kerry and other veterans threw medals and ribbons over a fence at the United States Capitol building to protest the war. Kerry discarded his service ribbons and the medals of vets who volunteered them. (He did not toss away "fake" replacement medals as has been reported, and the tossing place was the Capitol steps, not the Potomac River.) On April 24, the day after this VVAW protest, over 500,000 demonstrators arrived in Washington to lobby Congress and to "stop the government" if President Nixon did not stop the war.

In a secretly recorded White House conversation of April 28, President Nixon discussed Kerry with his counsel, Charles Colson. Nixon said, "Well, he is sort of a phony, isn't he?" Colson agreed, and mentioned that during the antiwar demonstrations that had just taken place, Kerry stayed at the home of a Georgetown socialite while the other protesters slept on The Mall. Colson opined, "He's politically ambitious and just looking for an issue. Yeah. He came back [from Vietnam] a hawk and became a dove when he saw the political opportunities." "Sure," said Nixon. "Well, anyway, keep the faith." In 1993, Colson sent a letter of apology to Kerry for his behavior at this time. He told a reporter for the Boston Globe, "I apologized for having tried to undermine him when he was head of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I think there were some stories that Nixon and I were trying to find ways to discredit him, and I am sorry for past feelings resulting from anything I have done."

In 2004, as part of a campaign to link Kerry's Vietnam War policies with the more radical actions of Jane Fonda, a doctored photograph showing the actress standing by Kerry's side at an antiwar demonstration made the rounds of the Internet.[5] The event, known as the "Register for Peace Rally", occured on June 13, 1971 at the State Supreme Court mall in Mineola on Long Island, and thousands attended, including former members of Congress such as Bella Abzug, Allard Lowenstein and Lester Wolff. Folk singer Peter Yarrow entertained the crowd. Kerry did speak at the rally, but Jane Fonda was not there.

All of the events of 1971 thrust him into the national spotlight. On June 20, 1971, Kerry appeared on The Dick Cavett Show to debate the White House-selected Navy veteran John O'Neill, who represented a group called Veterans For A Just Peace. Kerry was also featured in a Morley Safer segment of 60 Minutes called "First Hurrah," in which Safer asked, "Do you want to be president of the United States?", to which Kerry responded, "Of the United States? No...That's such a crazy question when there are so many things to be done and I don't know whether I could do them." And he was also parodied in a Doonesbury comic strip created by fellow Yale alumnus named Garry Trudeau.[6]

In 1978 he cofounded Vietnam Veterans of America. He maintains a lifetime membership in the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) organization.

Law, politics and public service

Senator Kerry speaks at
Walden Woods in 1998.

He was the first assistant district attorney of Middlesex County, Massachusetts from 1977 to 1979.

In 1979 he opened a private law practice, and in the fall of 1981 began planning to run for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. During the campaign, he separated from his wife Julia, but it had no effect on the election; he won in November 1982, and served under Michael Dukakis until 1984, when he was elected to the United States Senate as a Democrat. He has served in the Senate, as the junior Senator from Massachusetts (replacing Paul Tsongas) since 1985.

In the Senate, Kerry serves on the Committee on Foreign Relations, Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and Committee on Finance. He was the chairman of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship from 2001 to 2003 and remains the ranking Democrat.

Kerry is also the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries and the Environment and the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He also serves on the Subcommittee on Communications, Subcommittee on Transportation (both part of Commerce, Science and Transportation); the Subcommittee on Health Care, Subcommittee on International Trade and the Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy (Finance subcommittees); and on the Subcommittee on European Affairs and Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps & Narcotics Affairs (Foreign Relations subcommittees).

Kerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989, and was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (despite the candidacy of popular Republican ex-Governor William Weld), and 2002. His current term will end on January 3 2009.

As a Senator, Kerry headed the investigations into the Iran-Contra affair and the BCCI banking scandal.

2004 Presidential campaign

According to delegate counts and major polls, John Kerry is currently the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in the U.S. presidential election, 2004. He would face Republican incumbent, President George W. Bush in November 2004 if he were to win the nomination.

Kerry campaigning for
the 2004 Democratic nomination.

Primary Election Results

In 2003, Kerry declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the 2004 Presidential Election. Initially the front-runner, he lost the lead and momentum to upstart former Vermont Governor Howard Dean. However, as the actual primary season grew closer, Kerry regained his momentum while Dean's support faltered in the wake of his devastating third place finish in the Iowa caucus.

John Kerry won the Democratic caucus in Iowa over Senator John Edwards on January 19, by a narrow margin, and then won the primary in New Hampshire by a wide margin on January 27.

On February 3, five states held primaries and two held caucuses. Kerry won both caucuses and three of the primaries, with a margin of victory of no less than 16% in any of those five states. Kerry came in second to Edwards by 15% in South Carolina. Kerry came in third in Oklahoma with 27% while Edwards and General Wesley Clark each received 30% of the votes.

On February 7, Kerry continued his winning streak with victories in caucuses in Michigan (52% of the vote, ahead of Dean with 17%) and Washington (48% ahead of Dean with 30%). On February 8 Kerry won the Maine caucuses with about half of the vote, leading Howard Dean who had about a quarter of the vote.

On February 10, he also won primaries in Virginia (by a 25-point margin over Edwards) and Tennessee (by a 15-point margin over Edwards), leaving him with 12 wins out of 14 state primary or caucus contests. Wesley Clark dropped out of the race following the first two Southern primaries (following Joe Lieberman and Richard Gephart out the door), possibly strengthening the hand of the race's other Southern son, John Edwards.

On Valentine's Day, John Kerry won both the Nevada and District of Columbia caucuses--garnering an overwhelming 63 percent of the vote in Nevada, with nearest competitor Dean pulling in less than a third of that—17 percent, and Edwards garnering 10 percent. In D.C., Kerry earned 47 percent, more than doubling his nearest competitor, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who had 20 percent. The February 14 results left Kerry with 577 out of 2,161 delegates necessary to win the nomination.

On February 17, Kerry narrowly won the Wisconsin primary, with 39% of the vote, ahead of Edwards with 35%. Given Kerry's strength in earlier primaries and the apparent inevitability of his nomination, this was considered a poorer-than-expected result.

Endorsements

John Kerry's candidacy has been endorsed by former Democratic primary candidates Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO) and former four-star General Wesley Clark.

Views of Kerry

The official Kerry for President website declares:

"John has a bold, new vision for America. An America safe from foreign threats and greedy special interests. John has the experience and plans to lead America to better jobs, quality health care, energy that is clean, renewable, and independent, and greater opportunities for our children."

The Kansas City Star endorsed Kerry before the Missouri primary and wrote of him:

"Kerry has the right combination of intelligence, experience and thoughtful, progressive views for the job. His military record—he received both a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for acts of bravery in Vietnam—as well as his defense and foreign policy expertise clearly make him the best qualified Democrat to lead the nation in the continuing fight against our adversaries abroad...Kerry has decades of public service that are available for scrutiny and review. It is an excellent record, one that contains abundant evidence of the senator's commitment to the country and its better impulses."

The Chattanooga Times Free Press endorsed Kerry before the Tennessee Democratic primary and editorialized:

"If Mr. Kerry is, by contrast [to Mr. Bush], a 'liberal,' at least his policies make sense and would benefit all Americans. He has supported the sort of responsible domestic policies that boost education, support job creation and improve health care for all. With his personal war experience and deep background in foreign policy, he would exercise sound diplomacy in foreign affairs."

Fellow candidate, and political rival, Howard Dean, in an appearance in Milwaukee, stated that, "When you act like Senator Kerry does, he appears to be more like George Bush than he does like a Democrat." [7]

Critics of Kerry cite Associated Press reports that Kerry made efforts to keep loopholes for special interests. One loophole allowed American International Group to profit from liability insurance coverage it provided for the "Big Dig" project in Boston. AIG later provided the funds for Kerry's trip to Vermont and donated $30,000 (or more) to a group used to set up Kerry's presidential campaign (Company executives also donated $18,000 to his campaigns). Charles Lewis, head of the Center for Public Integrity, stated that "the idea that Kerry has not helped or benefited from a specific special interest, which he has said, is utterly absurd."[8]

Other politicians, such as Republican opponents and conservative foes, describe Kerry as liberal and out-of-touch with their perception of the mainstream of American society. Commentator Pat Buchanan wrote:

"...[Kerry is] a Massachusetts liberal who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, backs civil unions for homosexuals, voted to defend the infanticide known as partial-birth abortion and wants to raise the federal income taxes that George Bush lowered." [9]

Kerry is, unquestionably, on the left end of the American political spectrum, and can be described as a liberal, but perhaps more specifically as a free-market fiscal moderate and social-values libertarian. The Americans for Democratic Action, a prominent liberal organization, rates Kerry's voting record better than that of Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), causing Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie to joke, "Who would have guessed it? Ted Kennedy is the conservative senator from Massachusetts."[10] (Kerry gets a 93 percent from the ADA, Kennedy an 88 percent.)[11]

Issue stances

Kerry has refused, on 23 separate occasions, to respond to Project Vote Smart's National Political Awareness Test.[12]

Some of Kerry's positions, ideas and experiences with national issues are as follows:

National Service

Kerry supports supplementing national service in nearly all aspects of American life, including requiring community service for high school students to graduate, a "Summer of Service" for teenagers (essentially community service during summer breaks from school, with a U.S. $500 grant for college), increasing the Peace Corps to 25,000 members, requiring universities that receive Federal funding to offer a ROTC, and providing more funding for ROTC scholarships.

Economy

Kerry supports increasing the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation. Kerry believes in "equal pay for equal work." Kerry supported NAFTA and the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act.

Education

Kerry has proposed a "College Opportunity Tax Credit."

Security & Foreign Policy

Kerry voted in support the Senate resolution authorizing the President to use force against Saddam Hussein if he failed to surrender his weapons of mass destruction and related tools for constructing and distributing them.[13] Kerry, in October 2002, declared Iraq was "capable of quickly producing weaponizing" biological components that could be delivered against "the United States". This was in contrast to the skepticism of the National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq's capability, which Kerry had access to. [14]

After the President launched the U.S. expedition against the allegedly terrorist-harboring Hussein-Ba'athist regime in search of WMD, Kerry reconsidered his position and declared the Administration's Iraq policy reckless at best and baseless at worst. He has since been outspoken against the war itself and the Bush Administration's stewardship of occupied Iraq, attacking what he calls poor planning and poor diplomacy on Bush's part, but supports remaining in Iraq until the task of reconstruction and reconciliation is complete.[15]

Kerry has been criticized by Howard Dean for his position on the war. Kerry voted for the resolution in the Senate that authorized President George W. Bush to go to war; however, he has since become a fierce critic of the war effort,

Kerry advocates involving NATO, troops from other countries and the United Nations in U.S.-led efforts to achieve the goals of stable and democratic world. According to the Harvard Crimson, Kerry said in 1970 that the United Nations should have approval over most of our foreign military operations. "I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations." Kerry said he would like to "to almost eliminate CIA activity. The CIA is fighting its own war in Laos and nobody seems to care." [16]

Kerry sponsored the Code of Conduct of Arms Transfers Act, which would prohibit U.S. military assistance and arms transfers to undemocratic nations, human rights violators or armed aggressors.

Kerry cosponsored an amendment to the Department of Defense Authorization Bill that allows the military to transport families of soldiers wounded while on active duty.

Kerry detailed proposals for homeland security efforts include enlisting the National Guard and AmeriCorps, creating a community defense service, ensuring first defenders and first responders are equipped and ready, improving information technology, reforming domestic intelligence, implementing public health initiatives and improving infrastructure security.

Kerry and fellow Vietnam-era Navy veteran Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) have worked together in the 1990s to investigate the possibility that there were still POWs in Vietnam.

Immigration

Kerry supports cutting the Bureau for Citizenship and Immigration Services' application pending backlog and reducing the lag for the naturalization process. Kerry endorses benefits to legal immigrants. Kerry supports the "Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors" (DREAM) Act for illegal immigrants.

Kerry supports the proposal of legalizing the status of undocumented immigrants, pending a certain amount of working time in the US and passing a background check. Kerry has proposed border enforcement reformation and increases of border enforcement funding.

Law & Justice

Kerry, personally, has prosecuted armed robbers, rapists, and mob bosses. He is in favor of putting resources in the community, backing the Community Oriented Policing System Act (COPS), and creating laws that lead to criminals being arrested and convicted. Kerry has advocated expanding the COPS program to place 100,000 police officers in community policing assignments. Kerry supports the Police Corps program.

In the Senate, Kerry has advocated for laws against drug dealers and money laundering.

Drugs

Kerry's proposals to deal with illegal drugs include focusing on keeping drugs out of the country as well as reducing demand for illegal drugs. Kerry supports aggressively targeting traffickers and dealers.

Kerry supports funding drug prevention and treatment programs.

Gun Control Kerry is a gun owner and hunter. Kerry believes that law-abiding American adults have the right to own guns, though he is in favor of certain restrictions.

Social Security

Kerry is against budget cuts that cause cutbacks in Social Security benefits.

Gay Rights

Kerry is in favor of civil rights for gay and lesbian Americans. John Kerry is an original cosponsor of the Hate Crimes Prevention bill and supports passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. He introduced a very early bill (1985) into the Senate to statutorily forbit sexual-orientation-based discrimination. Kerry cosponsored the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act (CARE) and also sponsored the Vaccines for the New Millennium Act.

Kerry believes that homosexual couples should be granted rights, supporting same-sex civil unions (though not same-sex marriage). Kerry supported legislation to provide domestic partners of federal employees the benefits available to spouses of federal employees. Kerry voted against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in the Senate in 1996. Kerry did say, on an interview with National Public Radio, that he opposes the term "gay marriage". He claims that "marriage" should only be between a man and a woman, and should only be performed in a religious setting. He disagrees with the use of the term "marriage" to refer to any civil ceremony, heterosexual or homosexual.

Kerry opposes the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and is in favor of lifting the ban on gays in the military.

Since 1995, Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights advocacy group, has given Kerry a 100 percent rating.

Abortion

Kerry affiliates himself with "pro-choice" women's organizations. Kerry is against the criminalization of a "woman's right to choose." In the Senate, Kerry voted against bans on abortions conducted on military bases and military installations overseas, as well as against the ban on partial-birth abortion.

Environment

Kerry advocates removal of toxins from communities, bolstering the Superfund cleanup program, and reducing sprawl and traffic congestion.

Proposals for "Green and Clean Communities" include a Toxics Task Force at the EPA, fighting air pollution, water pollution and fighting other environmental hazards. Kerry has proposed a "Conservation Covenant." As part of the covenant, Kerry will extend the Endangered Species Act for the benefits of wildlife and habitat protection to public and private lands and reinvest public-land royalties back into land protection.

Kerry wants to participate in the development of an international climate change strategy to address global warming.

In 1998, the League of Conservation Voters gave Kerry an award for having one of the best environmental voting records in the Senate over the previous five years.

Personal life

Teresa and John Kerry
on the campaign trail.

Kerry has a younger brother, Cameron Kerry, who is a litigator in Boston, and two sisters, Diane and Peggy.

John Kerry was married to Julie Thorne in 1970, and had two children with her: Alexandra Kerry (b. 1973), currently a film school student in the Los Angeles area, and Vanessa Kerry (b. 1976), currently a student at Harvard Medical School.

Kerry and Thorne were separated in 1982 and divorced July 25, 1988. "After 14 years as a political wife," she wrote in "A Change of Heart," her book about divorce, "I associated politics only with anger, fear, and loneliness." The marriage was formally annulled by the Roman Catholic Church in 1997. Thorne remarried to an architect named Richard Charlesworth, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. She also remained on the the board of the Thorne Foundation, a small, New York-based charity which disburses medium-size grants to such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Frick Collection.

Kerry and Teresa Simões-Ferreira Heinz, the widow of Pennsylvania Senator H. John Heinz III, met at the Earth Summit at Rio de Janiero in 1992. They married on May 26, 1995 in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Today their combined net worth is reported to be between $199 million and $839 million, making Kerry the wealthiest U.S. senator.[17] Kerry has three stepsons with Teresa: John Heinz Jr., André Heinz and Christopher Heinz (b. ~1973).

John Kerry is 6-feet 4-inches (1.94 meters) tall and has been called the "Lanky Yankee." He speaks fluent French, having spent time in Switzerland and France with his diplomat father in his youth. He enjoys surfing, hockey and hunting. Between his first and second marriages he dated actresses Morgan Fairchild and Catherine Oxenberg. Kerry plays the bass guitar. He was diagnosed with and cured of prostate cancer in 2003.

His oldest friends and family call him Johnny.

His favorite books are James Bradley's Flags of Our Fathers and Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage. While campaigning in 2003, he read Clyde Prestowitz's Rogue Nation, and Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed. His favorite films are Giant and Casablanca.

External links and references

Official

• John Kerry for President
• Senator John Kerry

Print Media

• Klein, Joe, "The Long War of John Kerry: Can a Massachusetts Brahmin become President?," The New Yorker, December 2, 2002.
• Kranish, Michael,"John Kerry: Candidate in the making," Boston Globe, June 15, 2003.
• Gibbs, Nancy and Douglas Waller, "What Kind of President Would Kerry Be?," TIME Magazine, February 9, 2004.

Online Media

• Saletan, William, and Avi Zenilman, "Profile: John Kerry" Slate, MSN. June 6, 2003.
• " Profile: John Kerry". BBC News. January 20, 2004.
• "Senator John Forbes Kerry". Project Vote Smart. 2002-2004.
• "Senate Elections, John Kerry (1997-2002)". OpenSecrets.org.
• "Government Information Awareness: John Forbes Kerry". Computing Culture Group (MIT Media Lab), August 3, 2003
• John Kerry’s “Winter Soldier” testimony to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1971. (PDF file)

Information

• Reitwiesner, William Addams, "The Ancestors of Sen. John Forbes Kerry".
• wikisource: John Kerry's letter to his parents about Richard Pershing's death - 1968
• wikisource: Statement on behalf of Vietnam Veterans Against the War - April 1971.
• Ballingrud, David, "What John Kerry did in the war". St. Petersburg Times. February 8, 2004.
• Fournier, Ron, "Democrats rush to beat Bush, let Kerry avoid traditional tests thus far" Associated Press. February 9, 2004.
• Solomon, John, "Kerry Opposed Gay Marriage Ban in Letter". Associated Press. Boston Globe. Feburary 12, 2004.
• Manuel, Marlon, "Jane Fonda defends Kerry". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. February 11, 2004.
• "Kerry takes new fire over Vietnam". CNN. February 12, 2004.
• Flynn, Brian, "New JFK hit by scandal". News Group Newspapers Ltd., New York. February 13, 2004.
• Rothfeld, Michael, "1971 Photo of Kerry Doctored " Newsday.com

Pro-Kerry

• "Why Americans Must Support Kerry", by Norman Livergood

Anti-Kerry

• Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry

Further Reading

• Kerry, John, New Soldier: John Kerry and Vietnam Veterans Against the War, MacMillan Publishing Company, 1971. ASIN 002073610X
• Thorne, Julia and Larry Rothstein, You Are Not Alone: Words of Experience and Hope for the Journey Through Depression, HarperCollins, 1993. ISBN 0060969776
• Kerry, John, The New War: The Web of Crime That Threatens America's Security, Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN 0684818159
• Smith, Gene, Until the Last Trumpet Sounds: The Life of General of the Armies John J. Pershing, John Wiley & Sons, 1999. ISBN 0471350648 (For information on Kerry's closest friends at Yale, class of 1966.)
• Kerry, John, A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America, Viking Press, 2003. ISBN 0670032603
• Brinkley, Douglas, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, William Morrow & Company, 2004. ISBN 0060565233

Referenced By