When the chair of the House Republican Conference put out a statement this week criticizing Teresa Heinz Kerry for not being sufficiently appreciative of the term “first lady,” you knew the season of the Big Blow had arrived. The next three weeks, or however long it takes for Congress to get out of town and begin full-time campaigning, is going to be a huge swirl of nasty political moments.
Quoting the New York Post (quoting Harper's Bazaar), Representative Deborah Pryce took issue with Heinz Kerry's response when she was asked how she felt about the term.
“Ick,” said the ever-quotable Heinz Kerry.
Pryce pounced.
“As the American public continues to evaluate the candidates for the presidential election, comments like Mrs. Kerry's provide an authentic glimpse at this year's prospects for the White House. … A president's job is hard enough. He needs all the support he can get -- support that starts at home.”
Even by the less than rigorous standards of the discredit-and-disqualify-John-Kerry strategy employed by the Bush campaign, this seemed a little bit of a out of bounds -- unless you know that Pryce is from Columbus, Ohio, and that whatever she says will get reported by the hometown newspapers. Suddenly, Ohio is once again the Holy Grail. Republicans know they have to win it to keep the White House, and despite their recent good news that George W. Bush has pulled ahead and is solidifying his lead, Ohio will remain a question mark until election day.
One reason is that there are now 200,000 more African Americans registered to vote in Ohio than there was in 2000, when Bush won by 166,000 votes out of 4.7 million counted. Add to that the fact that more than 94,000 votes for president in 2000 were not counted, the highest numbers occurring in the black precincts of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. In fact, there were more spoiled ballots in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 2000 than there were in Broward County, Florida. History predicts that a lot of these voters are not going to show up to vote in November, but how many of those people need to sleep in for the GOP to rest easy?
No one really knows, so everything is fair game. What Heinz Kerry actually said, beyond the “Ick,” was: “There will be a first man one of these days, a first gent, I hope. First lady, I don't know.”
It does not quite sound like the desecration or betrayal Pryce suggests, but this is no time for niceties.
In that same Harper's Bazaar interview, Heinz Kerry also said that green was her favorite ketchup color. Now there lie the makings of a scandal: Watch for someone from Wisconsin or West Virginia or Iowa to take issue with that. Green ketchup? Un-American.
Strange thing: The gloom that enveloped some Democrats after their presidential candidate came out of the Republican national convention bleeding in a way that might meet with Bob Dole's approval has not taken hold on the Hill.
Although they are no longer crowing the way they did in the early summer, they are not wringing their hands in despair, either, as one might expect of Democrats. “I think we are all worried about where Kerry is right now,” allows Minority Whip Steny Hoyer. And maybe it is just the absence of panic that looks like confidence, but the optimism of the late spring and early summer seems to have survived the GOP's August offensive. And so, despite all the analysis that has pronounced Kerry down and dying, Hill Democrats remain confident not just of their own chances but of Kerry's as well.
Setting aside the obvious pre-election self-delusion, they genuinely do not seem as depressed by Kerry's slippage in the polls. And while much of the reasoning sounds like spin (it's hard to explain why you're not depressed), I think there are three main reasons for their persistent hopefulness.
First, the run of good news in the spring and summer created a reservoir of confidence that a single month of bad news could not completely eliminate: Iraq hasn't gone away, the economy is still a teetering, and, most importantly, it's clear that Bush is not invincible.
Two, despite his poor showing on the “Swift”-boat issue, Hill Democrats are more confident of Kerry's ability to mount a counteroffensive than they ever were of Al Gore's.
Three, they think that the conversation will eventually turn to issues, particularly domestic issues, and when that happens they will have the advantage. What they are hoping for, clearly, is a momentum shift, and the most hopeful sign of that so far has been the recent news on Medicare. Since the passage of that Medicare bill last November, Democrats have been fuming about the underhanded way it passed the House and have vowed to use it against the GOP this fall. It has been like an eternal flame for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. So when the administration announced that Medicare premiums were going to increase by 17 percent next year, Democrats felt like they were back in business. They attacked the hikes and promised a fight to stop them. GOP Senator Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Finance Committee, called the Democratic attacks unfair and disingenuous. “To me it's either intellectual dishonesty or political demagoguery,” he said.
Ick.
Blow, baby. Blow.
Terence Samuel is the chief congressional correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. His column about politics appears each week in the Prospect's online edition.
