Kerry On?

John Kerry is thinking of running for President again in 2020.

Don't laugh - and don't send the former Secretary of State a Harold Stassen bumper sticker as a joke.  I started to laugh, until I realized that it actually made sense.  Kerry isn't a man who would consider such a decision lightly.  He's a serious man, and God knows he wouldn't do anything without careful consideration.  He's been considering a run because of Donald Trump's completely disastrous foreign policy, from his withdrawal from trade agreements, a climate change agreement, and several other agreements to his thorough trashing of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.  In fact, Kerry intimated as much to an interviewer for an Israeli newspaper who has close ties to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.  He also relayed to Abbas through this interviewer that the Palestinians should advance a pro-active peace plan and "hold on and be strong" against Trump's desire to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognize the city as the Israeli capital, something Trump insists will bring peace (do I have to bring up the curious case of Danzig again?).

But Kerry for President? Another geezer?  Yes, but a geezer who is smart and energetic, and someone who might have defeated George Walker Bush's bid for a second presidential term if not for the Iraq War and the mood in the country to stick with someone who vowed to see the war through after having instigated it.  (Ironically, Kerry voted to give Bush the authorization to go to war, based on what he thought was true about Saddam Hussein's arsenal, but as Michael Moore later said, Kerry didn't vote to start a war; he voted for Bush to use his judgment in dealing with Iraq.  Kerry's biggest mistake?  Thinking Bush was a man of sound judgment.)   

Here's the thing.  John Kerry is a man of integrity and a man of duty.  He served his country in Vietnam, he's been a U.S. Senator, and he values service above all.  And while he didn't quite win the Presidency in 2004, he now at least knows how not to run a presidential campaign.  He wanted to answer the "swift boat" charges against his Navy service as a river patrolman in Vietnam, but his aides advised him against it; this time, he's ready to fight back hard against that noted draft-dodging carnival baker Trump if #45 tries Swift Boat Mark Two against Kerry in a general election match-up.  Kerry's not going to talk too much, and he's not going to let his wife say anything.  He's also going to explain his Senate votes more clearly, and he sure ain't gonna be caught windsurfing! 

Also, Kerry represents the best of an underrated generation.  He belongs to the Silent Generation, the Americans born between 1928 and 1945, the generation between the World War II generation and the Baby Boomers - the Americans too old to have been at Woodstock and too young to have been at Guadalcanal.  Kerry's generation has never produced a President - it's only produced unsuccessful presidential candidates, including Walter Mondale, John McCain and Kerry's old boss Michael Dukakis (Kerry served as lieutenant governor of Massachusetts under Governor Dukakis before Bay Staters elected him to the first of five U.S. Senate terms in 1984) - but it's long overdue to put one of its own in the White House.  It may the best, most productive generation this country has produced, apart from the World War II generation.  The Silent Generation - or the "Depression babies," as they're sometimes called - was the generation of Americans that took part in the Freedom Rides, fought the Korean War to make eastern Asia safe for democracy, campaigned for John F. Kennedy, voted for John F. Kennedy, joined the Peace Corps, gave the world James Dean, invented rock and roll, and sired and raised the free and independent thinkers who became Generation X.  Baby Boomers may idolize Martin Luther King, Jr., but the Silents marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., one of their peers.  Baby Boomers may take to heart the lyrics of Bob Dylan, but the Silents gave us Bob Dylan.

It is from this group of Americans that only someone like John Kerry could emerge - a man who, as freelance writer David Klion wrote on Twitter, is of a "rich northeastern liberal noblesse oblige, saw combat when he didn’t have to, believes in high ideals," and is "way more admirable than most politicians his age."

Politicians his age - or close to it, at least -  include Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.  Both are in fact slightly older than Kerry - two years and one year, respectively - and yet both are taken seriously as presidential contenders.  And as Ed Kilgore noted in New York magazine, Kerry "came within an eyelash of defeating an incumbent President who was (at the time) a lot more popular than Donald Trump is likely to be in 2020."

Kerry still has his drawbacks.  He left a lot of campaign money unspent in the 2004 election, angering Democrats who thought that money could have made the difference between victory and defeat in a close race.  His defeat made the Supreme Court appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito possible, and for that many Democrats can never forgive him.  Democrats in 2004 never really voted for Kerry as much as they voted against Bush. He also chose John Edwards as his running mate, suggesting an inability to accurately judge another person's character. But he has his strengths.  He's since served as Secretary of State.  As Secretary of State, he helped negotiate the now-imperiled Iran deal.  He doesn't owe allegiance to either the centrists or the progressives.  At a time when there are still hard feelings between the two wings, that can be an asset.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still for Martin O'Malley.  But I wouldn't dismiss Kerry, who will be 77 in January 2021, out of hand.  Incidentally, he would not only be the oldest man elected President if he won, but he'd be the first failed Democratic presidential nominee to get another shot at the White House since Adlai Stevenson in 1956.  To respond to the inevitable point that Stevenson still lost, I would argue that Stevenson didn't have the luck of having as an opponent a man like Donald Trump.

Stevenson lost a rematch with President Eisenhower . . . a man who was in some ways like Kerry.