Kerrey

That was quite a riveting speech Sen. Bob Kerrey delivered in casting the deciding vote for passage of President Clinton's budget bill. It was riveting, right-on in its moral message and quite wrong in suggesting that a president alone can overcome the political cynicism of institutional Washington.If Mr. Kerrey instead of Mr. Clinton had been elected president last year, would he still be on the "high road" of "shared sacrifice," or would he, too, have taken "the low road of the too-easy compromise or the too-early collapse"?

NEW YORK - On Sept. 10, 2001, his son Henry was born. On Sept. 11, his adopted city was attacked and 2,749 men and women died in a cascade of concrete and steel. A few months later, Bob Kerrey - the high-profile bachelor senator from Nebraska who has reinvented himself as a New York college president and second-marriage "geezer dad" - wrote a Christmas-card poem that he sent to family and friends. The last two stanzas are infused with the kind of stubbornly sunny optimism that seems to shine especially bright in his native state: Hearts brought down by bitter fall Hear laughter and resist.

I have long believed that political humor is to humor what Velveeta is to cheese.I don't think I have ever heard a presidential candidate tell a really funny joke. And if I did, I'd wonder whom he had stolen it from.Presidential candidates are many things, but Henny Youngman they are not."Hey, take my tax plan, please. George Bush really has a Midas touch. Everything he touches turns into a muffler!"Sha-boom.So it was no real surprise that when Bob Kerrey, Democratic presidential candidate and senator from Nebraska, attempted humor last week, it was a disaster.

WASHINGTON - Laughs, boos and applause created an off-camera soundtrack to the Sept. 11 commission hearing yesterday. Much of the noise came from relatives of victims of the attack, who made up about half the audience when National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice testified about her actions before the terrorist strike. Rice's voice was firm and confident throughout most of the testimony - although it wavered during acrimonious exchanges with former Sen. Bob Kerrey, whose 10-minute portion of the hearing stirred the greatest passions.

DALLAS -- There was a bit of irony in the timing of Sen. Bob Kerrey's announcement that he was ending his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. It came only hours before he was to take part in another debate here, and Kerrey's performance in the debates was one of the high points of his campaign.In most of them, the Nebraska senator was lively and combative without being offensive, drawing out the others candidates on positions which with which he disagreed and forcefully and feelingly making the case for the one issue on which he managed to identify himself -- national health insurance.

WASHINGTON -- Adding an unpredictable new dimension to the 1992 presidential contest, Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska signaled his intention yesterday to enter the Democratic race.In a two-sentence statement released by his Washington office, the 48-year-old Vietnam War hero said he would make a formal announcement of his plans later this month. A Kerrey aide said the announcement was likely to be made two or three weeks from now in the senator's hometown of Omaha or in Lincoln, Nebraska's capital.

WASHINGTON -- In a bid to occupy the anti-politics high ground in the 1992 campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Bob Kerrey proposed a wholesale shake-up of the federal government yesterday.His extraordinary proposal, which includes abolishing half the president's Cabinet and laying off nearly one-third of congressional staff members, was a clear attempt to bolster Mr. Kerrey's outsider credentials and help him surf the anti-Washington currents sweeping the country this fall."The 1992 presidential election is going to be different than our most recent contests," the Nebraska senator said.

Although Bob Kerrey has no plans to visit Maryland, he hopes to gain voter support with radio advertisements and surrogate campaigners.Martin O'Malley, Maryland coordinator for the Nebraska senator, said yesterday it was still possible the candidate would appear before Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary. Mr. Kerrey is concentrating on primaries in Colorado and Southern states after winning the South Dakota primary this week."Sometimes you're called on to lead the charge; sometimes you're called on to lead a flanking movement," Mr. O'Malley said philosophically.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. -- A buoyant Sen. Bob Kerrey headed south today to challenge Gov. Bill Clinton in Georgia, after his impressive victory in yesterday's South Dakota primary.Mr. Kerrey of Nebraska, proclaiming he had "struck gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota," broke into the winner's circle for the first time this primary season by establishing his affinity with the dominant farm community here, as a concerted effort to do the same by another South Dakota neighbor, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, fell short.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton came out swinging at his Democratic rivals yesterday, accusing Paul E. Tsongas of advocating "trickle-down economics" and bringing in a Vietnam veteran to accuse Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey of being "AWOL" in the war on drugs.At a speech at the Radisson Hotel in Denver in the morning, Mr. Clinton dismissed former Massachusetts Sen. Tsongas' economic proposals as smacking of "trickle-down economics." He mocked Mr. Tsongas' concern for investors and entrepreneurs, saying it comes at the expense of everyday workers.

WASHINGTON - The first question that came to mind after hearing National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission is why President Bush wasted so much time putting her on the stand. Her appearance didn't satisfy all questions about his response to the 2001 terrorist attacks or get him out of the woods. But her sure-footed navigation of the commission's long interrogation showed her to be a confident and highly knowledgeable defender of his actions before and after terrorism's worst day in America.

In the past few weeks, gaps in the record of President Bush's service in the Air National Guard have made front-page headlines. An energized White House press corps has besieged Bush spokesman Scott McClellan in recent days with questions about months for which Bush's activities could not be confirmed. Despite Bush's defense, saying he fulfilled his obligations, reporters have fanned out through Alabama to find anyone who can attest to his presence there. Late-night comics have picked up the topic with glee.

HARD TO believe, but Bob Dylan will be 60 years old today. Although prolific ever since the 1960s, he'll always be associated with that tumultuous decade. We as a society can't seem to get beyond that decade of rebellion, protest and war. The controversy surrounding former Sen. Bob Kerrey reminded us of that. The title from the 1967 documentary, "Don't Look Back," featuring Bob Dylan during a 1965 British tour, seems a painfully prophetic title for Mr. Kerrey's agonizing revelations about a massacre in a Vietnamese village.

SINCE BOB Kerrey's confession that his unit killed about 20 unarmed civilians in Vietnam, there has been a lot of talk about "the fog of war" and the "moral ambiguity" facing our soldiers there. Especially noteworthy is the way other veterans have rallied to his defense. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "The injunction to love all as we would be loved is the first casualty of war." War's traditional first casualty is, of course, truth. The "war is hell" defense was the standard American reaction to the revelations of the My Lai massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in 1968.

Who's lying? It's the question that surfaces from the conflicting accounts given by former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey and another man of a bloody episode involving the killing of civilians during the Vietnam War. The answer, say experts in the science of memory, may be that neither is. Both men may be honestly recalling events that occurred 32 years ago on a horrifying night in the Mekong Delta. But memories are often wrong when they are formed, and tend to shift each time they are retrieved, considered, discussed and tucked away.

FORMER SEN. Bob Kerrey was a young Navy SEAL lieutenant when he commanded a raid against a Vietnam hamlet 32 years ago. The enemy was almost impossible to discern. Was that villager a Viet Cong spy or an innocent civilian who wanted nothing to do with war? The perilous conditions hardly justify Mr. Kerrey's action on that moonless night in Thanh Phong Feb. 25, 1969, when his forces killed at least 13 innocent women and children. They only help explain. Mr. Kerrey, a former senator from Nebraska and now president of New York's New School University, won the Medal of Honor and lost part of a leg in Vietnam.

COLLEGE PARK -- Congress is likely to use health care programs such as those in place in Maryland as models before adopting a national health care plan, U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey said during an appearance last night at the University of Maryland's main campus.But the Nebraska Democrat, speaking at a health care forum sponsored by Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr., told an audience of about 70 not to expect Congress to act on any Clinton administration health care plan this year."The health care debate probably won't be completed until 1994," Mr. Kerrey said.

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Before he left for Vietnam as a young officer, former Sen. Bob Kerrey should have met my grandfather. In 1921, his troops entered Turkey as part of Greece's "Vietnam" -- a disastrous war of liberation of the Christian peoples of western Anatolia. The enemy's tactics were simple but effective: scorched earth and scorched babies. Whenever the Greek army entered any village, they found the Greek population slaughtered and the Greek district in ashes. There was no one left to liberate.

WASHINGTON -- Standing at the Vietnam War Memorial wall the other day, Keith Parks, a salesman from Kansas City, was asked whether he thought former Sen. Bob Kerrey should give back the Bronze Star he got in 1969 for a mission in which the Navy SEAL squad he led killed more than a dozen Vietnamese women and children. "I think Senator Kerrey served his nation," Mr. Parks said of the man who later lost part of his leg in another firefight. "He did probably what he had to do. You can't judge him in today's light on what happened 30 years ago. When the Army ... can give his leg back, I think he can give the medal back."