About a month ago, The Nation’s Ari Berman wrote an interesting piece on the “new” [tag]John Kerry[/tag]. As Berman explained, like [tag]Al Gore[/tag] after the 2000 campaign, [tag]Kerry[/tag] has become more assertive and less cautious after his [tag]defeat[/tag].
In the past few months Kerry has presented a side of himself very different from the one the public saw during the 2004 campaign. Freed from the grip of consultants, the spotlight of the national media and the Republican attack dogs, he is looser, clearer and more compelling. Call it the Al Gore Effect. At the end of a presidential campaign, losing candidates either retreat, keep up the good fight or attempt the arduous task of redefining themselves. Kerry’s both fighting and redefining these days. […]
The notoriously cautious Kerry has gone bold, conveying his views on Iraq and national security through an aggressive schedule of speeches, op-eds and talk-show appearances. Into the void of Democratic Party leadership, he’s speaking for the vocal opposition — even endorsing Senator Russ Feingold’s resolution to censure President Bush.
Now, some might question Kerry’s motivations. He’s obviously expressed interest in running again in ’08, and perhaps, some might say, Kerry’s aggressiveness is geared towards impressing the party’s base and early primary voters, many of whom will be reluctant to give him another chance after he came up short in ’04.
Or perhaps Kerry is doing what Gore did — ignoring the safe road presidential candidates are supposed to follow during a campaign and saying what he really believes. Take, for example, Kerry’s terrific speech in Boston yesterday on [tag]energy independence[/tag].
Decrying political timidity in Washington and denouncing the Bush administration as anti-science and pro-Big Oil, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) yesterday outlined a program to combat climate change and move the United States toward energy independence, including mandates to cut consumption of foreign oil.
Kerry decried more than two decades of government inaction to lessen dependence on Middle East oil. Both parties share blame, he said in a speech at Boston’s Faneuil Hall, calling the country’s lack of progress toward energy independence “politics at its worst — ducking the difficult choices, giving in to the big contributors, substituting words for deeds, postponing the reckoning until the day after tomorrow.”
But Kerry saved his harshest words for President Bush, whom he portrayed as unwilling to push the public or special interests to change long-formed habits that have made the United States the biggest energy consumer in the world.
“George W. Bush now says that ‘America is addicted to oil,’ ” Kerry said. “His preferred policy has been to feed the addiction; his attitude on greenhouse gases is to let them increase; his energy alternatives are token; again and again his approach to crisis is to denigrate the environment.”
Carpetbagger regular Hark alerted me to the full text of Kerry’s remarks, and I have to say, they’re worth reading. He stressed the crisis of [tag]global warming[/tag]; he characterized reduction of oil as a national security issue; and he offered to pay for the policy proposals by rolling back tax breaks for the oil industry and recapturing them into a dedicated fund.
It’s a solid, progressive policy that addresses serious challenges head-on. Putting presidential politics and [tag]2008[/tag] aside altogether, Kerry deserves kudos for telling it like it is.