Word: kerrey
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...thing to remember about Bob Kerrey is not that he's an ornery iconoclast (the man will sometimes disagree for the sake of disagreeing), not that he hates being bridled (just try to get him to follow a schedule), not that he's ambivalent about Bill Clinton (and a lot of other things), but that he's a good soldier...
When Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, asked Kerrey to head the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (D.S.C.C.), it was a downright curious choice. The job, which is to raise money for Democratic senatorial candidates, is usually reserved for a partisan loyalist. Kerrey, the only Medal of Honor winner in the Senate, was resolutely bipartisan and a conspicuous Democratic holdout on the President's 1993 budget. Daschle confesses, "I didn't know what to expect." Kerrey himself was divided (nothing unusual there): he was Bob Kerrey, Nebraska Maverick, not Bob Kerrey, Party Guy. But the situation was grim. The Republicans already...
...Democratic caucus meeting on the budget a few months ago, Daschle asked Kerrey to say a few words about the coming Senate races. Cosseted in the clubbish ways of the Senate, Kerrey's colleagues were expecting gentlemanly homilies on the need to pitch in. Instead, recalls Daschle, "he began shouting like a drill sergeant, knocking out orders for the amount of fundraising he expected: 'Take it out of your own pocket, take it out of your campaign funds, go and raise it!'" Finally, a female Senator interrupted the barrage, saying, "Look, you don't have to shout at us." Kerrey...
From the first, Kerrey saw his role as more than that of a cash machine; he needed to conscript a few good candidates. A record eight Democrats were retiring, and pundits were predicting that the Republicans would increase their advantage. Kerrey wanted Democrats who could win, and to that end he appears to have sought out candidates in his own image: hardheaded businessmen who understood the necessity of reforming entitlements. If the Senate is a kind of state-by-state referendum on the size and scope of government, Kerrey wanted pragmatists the Republicans would have a hard time branding...
With 33 Senate races in November, there's a limited amount that Kerrey can actually do. In a presidential election year, the Senate is like a fun-house mirror image of the race for the White House. Some races faithfully reflect the top contest; others are distorted versions of it. At the top of the ticket are two politicians moving to the middle who will try to depict the Other Guy as a closet extremist. Such is the situation in many states, including New Jersey, where Democratic Representative Bob Torricelli is trying to tar Representative Dick Zimmer with the Gingrich...