NYT actually has an official correction on their misquoting the $87 billion statement

[karynnj]

It does seem significant that the authors were pushed to correct the story and add an official correction. (I did not see the article before the correction but it sounds from the correction that they did what many on both sides have done which was to make it mean it a completely generic flip flop. ) The ONE response to a heckler will obviously haunt Kerry forever. Here is the NYT link - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/us/politics/after-debate-santorum-finds-himself-on-the-defensive.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

Here is the correction:

Correction: February 23, 2012

An earlier version of this article contained an erroneous quote and said incorrectly that it was featured in a certain advertisement. During the 2004 campaign, Senator John Kerry said, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it,” referring to an amendment that would have rescinded some tax cuts to finance the Iraq war. He did not say, “I voted for it before I voted against it,” and those words were not featured in a political commercial of Mr. Kerry windsurfing.

Kerry, in the primary debates, actually was able to speak of the Senate in terms that squelched a Dean attack on his Senate accomplishments - a tough thing for anyone to do as today's NYT article itself explains here. In a debate, Dean threw out theargument that Kerry did not have his name on important legislation.

Now, Senator Kerry is the front-runner, and I mean him no insult, but in 19 years in the Senate, Senator Kerry sponsored nine -- 11 bills that had anything to do with health care, and not one of them passed. If you want a president who is going to get results, I suggest that you look at somebody who did get results in my state.

That's how we're going to fix Medicare, is to get somebody who has executive experience in governing, particularly in health care, particularly somebody who is a doctor who understands these things, who is willing to get stuff done. And I don't think we are going to do that getting somebody from the United States Senate to be the Democratic nominee.

(APPLAUSE)

BROKAW: Senator, I think you deserve a response to that.

KERRY: Well, one of the things that you need to know as a president is how things work in Congress if you want to get things done.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

And one of the things that happens in Congress is, you can in fact write a bill, but if you're smart about it, you can get your bill passed on someone else's bill and it doesn't carry your name.

In addition to that, we did mental health parity. We did child care -- 5 million children have health insurance in this country. Some of them in Vermont were helped.

And I think that it's time to recognize that we got a lot done on health care. And when I'm president of the United States, I will complete the mission of Harry Truman, and all Americans will have health care in this country.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/transcripts/debatetranscript29.html

(This was the debate in SC immediately after the NH win.) Watching it back then, Kerry absolutely won this point when it was seen - he was not defensive at all and he completely won the crowd. That led me to use google to get the transcript.

In retrospect, a failing of his team was that - to my knowledge - they did not use Kerry's excellent response to get out the details on SCHIP and mental health parity. Kennedy had strongly praised his work on both.

As to the current race, the difference between Kerry (and even more so Obama) and Santorum in speaking of what they did in the Senate is that Santorum reeks of faux righteousness which rejects the very idea of compromise or looking for a consensus - the very thing he needs to describe to explain why EVERY Senator votes for things he is not 100% in agreement with. If they didn't, there would be absolutely no legislation passed.

I think it is harder for a Republican to have been a Senator than a Democrat, is that the Republican party is more radicalized than the Democratic party. In 2004 and now, most Democrats and independents can accept that "compromise" is not a great evil, while that most Republicans can not - or think they can not. Santorum could not have done what Kerry did in the quote which was to turn it around to not understanding how Congress works - knowing that he was indirectly citing a flaw Dean would need to correct if President.

Romney has in debate after debate made asinine comments on things he would unilaterally do as President and neither Gingrich or Santorum has successfully turned the comments on Romney - or pointed out that he really did not control the Massachusetts legislature. (In fact, when Romney hit Santorum on losing PA, he did not point out the obvious - Romney knew he would have lost MA in 2006.)

There likely have been many scholarly papers written on the generic Senator vs Governor contests in most open races. The fact is that each credential has some, but not all of what is needed to be a President. In 2004, where the Senators hit on lack of foreign policy expertise, Dean used all the traditional Governor attacks on Senators - distorting Gephardt on Medicaid by singling out specific votes, to arguing no executive experience, to the attack here on Kerry. 2004 is actually unusual in that it was a year where expertise in the issues that were deciding the election were those NO Governor would have had a natural strength in - and they were smack in the middle of the issues Kerry spent a career on.

[ProSense]

1. Isn't

During the 2004 campaign, Senator John Kerry said, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it,” referring to an amendment that would have rescinded some tax cuts to finance the Iraq war.

...it amazing: one line that can be clarified with a simple statement is the source of endless misrepresentation.

Yet Republicans are making crazy statements, lying and distorting daily, and some people still want to pretend that there is anything "fair and balanced" about the political debate and reporting.

Two examples: Dean Baker calls out the NYT for "he said/she said reporting" on oil production.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/president-obama-doesnt-just-say-we-are-producing-more-oil-we-are-producing-more-oil

This was the very tactic the media used to give the Swift Liars constant press. Nothing is challenged and no facts are offered, just "he said/she said" reporting.

Next, from Krugman's latest piece on Romney.

<...>

And therein lies the reason Mr. Romney acts the way he does, why he is running a campaign of almost pathological dishonesty.

For he is. Every one of the Romney campaign’s major themes, from the attacks on President Obama for going around the world apologizing for America (he didn’t), to the insistence that Romneycare and Obamacare are very different (they’re virtually identical), to the claim that Mr. Obama has lost millions of jobs (which is only true if you count the first few months of his administration, before any of his policies had taken effect), is either an outright falsehood or deeply deceptive. Why the nonstop mendacity?

As I see it, it comes down to the cynicism underlying the whole enterprise. Once you’ve decided to hide your beliefs and say whatever you think will get you the nomination, to pretend to agree with people you privately believe are fools, why worry at all about truth?

What this diagnosis implies, of course, is that the many people on the right who don’t trust Mr. Romney, who don’t believe that he’s truly committed to their political faith, are correct in their suspicions. He’s playing a role, and it’s anyone’s guess what lies beneath the mask.

- more -
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/opinion/krugman-romneys-economic-closet.html

This is the person that some media reports despicably try to contrast with Kerry as if to give him political cover.

Ugh!

[karynnj]

2. I wonder if the reason is that many in the media

are prone to trying to turn very complicated reality into a simple narrative where all the facts, logic etc led to predicable and good results. A decisive Bush, who was comfortable in who he was and someone who American felt was one of them and likeable enough to have a beer with.

Kerry was seen, not from who he is, but as the opposite of Bush - so if Bush was decisive, Kerry was indecisive. The "indecisiveness" was that he naturally qualifies everything he says - a trait that also helped him as the full sentence usually could never be misinterpreted. In addition, he spoke of process calming working for the best or least bad outcome - which was nuanced than Dean's speech, much less Bush's. Kerry did not simplify the world with similar stark sentences - "you are either with us or with the terrorist" - nor did he see a world of black and white with no shades of gray. That was combined with the supposed flippflopping.

The flipflopping came not from evaluating positions over about 30 years in the public eye - where I see the same person, matured and ever more diplomatic, but that they accepted prepackaged Bush opposition research. No Senator will agree 100% with any bill including most likely his own. It would be easy to find many "yes, but" votes that are really fundamentally the same as the "no, but" votes - they were close calls to begin with, but they shifted - that look like flip flops. However, you can't have 100% ratings on women's issues, civil rights and a 96 life time LCV score without being very very consistent. Just as consistent - and less popular on the left, Kerry is much more fiscally prudent than most, while being just as consistent on social justice.

As to the other pieces, I think Kerry is incredibly comfortable in who he is - and was so in 2004. He seemed in 1971 to know who he is was and was comfortable in his own skin then. Something Romney has never seemed to be. Not to mention - a silly comparison may say more than any complex analysis. Kerry saved a drowning hamster; Romney put a dog on the roof of a car for 12 hours! Both stories told to show how they were by family. I personally do not think calm, cool management in Romney's case. In both cases, their young kids were witnesses. That is how kids really learn their father's values. I think Kerry's kids got the better lesson and a demonstration of their dad's protectiveness and love.

PS the huge number of Romney/Kerry stories ignores that there was no ABK effort like the ABR theme and by this time 2004 -even with a later start, Kerry had won 14 out of 16 caucuses and was polling double digits againt the media's favorite "sunny Edwards" in the March primaries a week and a half away - winning them made Kerry the defacto nominee. (Oddly, though their preset memes ignore it, this is closer to 1992 where there was an ABC and Clinton did not sew up the nomination until June.)