Torture of Duty V: Manufacturing Destiny

I didn't read a lot of Tour of Duty over the weekend, but I did make some progress. I'm up to chapter 5, where Kerry is on his way to Coronado for training in small boats. Brinkley is currently creating some context for riverine units, so Kerry isn't present. He's off having a reunion with Julia Thorne, which gives us time to consider.

One thing I've noted is the regularity of mention of Kerry's ambition to become president. It comes every ten pages or so, if not more, with additional oblique references to his constant desire for public service (the first two I cited in an earlier post):

Usually Kerry [John’s father] never editorialized in his log: just the no-nonsense facts. But on this last flight he made an exception, writing something personal: “Flight over Mt. Vernon with Johnny.” The flight lasted for only a brief forty minutes. But forty years later he sent the logbook and wings to his son with a note on his law firm stationary: “Is this last entry prophetic?” Richard Kerry was probably referring to his son’s passion for flying, but the flight over Mt. Vernon may inadvertently [have] touched a different prophecy.
Even when he was an eleven-year-old boy, there was a feeling that John Forbes Kerry was touched with destiny.
--pp18-19.

Richard Kerry believed his boys could accomplish anything in America, even following in the oversized footsteps of George Washington, making it all the way to the White House. --p 19.

Earlier, in the Prologue, Brinkley cites Nixon who remarks about how Kerry stands out from the other VVAW members:

Even President Nixon, who had tried to shut down the VVAW march, couldn't help but be inpressed by this bright young troublemaker with the impeccable credentials. In an Oval Office meeting the next day, the President notd Kerry's distinctivenes from the other "bearded weirdos." He had been the "real star" of the hearing, Nixon told his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger. --p14.

The matter of Kerry's credentials is an echo of page 13, where we see the following from his Senate testimony:

The senators just looked at one another and smiled. They knew a political star had been born. The let the applause continue to rumble on, according the impassioned young officer his moment in the limelight. Finally, Senator Symington, who had served as the first secretary of the Air Force, asked the witness a question: "You have a Silver Star?"

"Yes, sir," replied Kerry, who was wearing the Navy's thrid-highest award for combat at the top of his three rows of campaign ribbons.

"You have a Purple Heart with two clusters?"

"Yes, sir," came the answer.

"I have no further questions," concluded the Missouri senator, having established for the record the caliber of the witness.

"Credentials are something we always think about," Senator Javits chimed in. "Your credentials counld't be higher." --p12-13.

Then there are the Kennedy meetings:

"But there's this guy standing there peering out a window at the bay. He turns around and it's the President of the United States. He walks over to me and I said, 'Hi, I'm John Kerry.' I was so unsavvy, so unschooled. I didn't know what you called him, 'Mr. President' or 'sir' or 'Mr. Kennedy' or whatever."--p37.

A few weeks later, Janet Auchincloss again invited again invited Kerry to Hammersmith Farm, this time to watch the America's Cup race from the U.S.S. Joseph P. Kennedy along with President and Mrs. Kennedy...Later that day, Kerry had a brief private conversation with the President.--p37.

These two meetings took place before Kerry entered Yale as a freshman, and I'm sure that Brinkley is right when he adds, "spending those few hours on two different occasions with President Kennedy was the highlight of his summer." These meetings were important to Kerry, and they are certainly relevant to understanding him, but it's interesting to observe the arrangement. Two Presidents have come to know Kerry before he even gets to college, at least as things are arranged here. Brinkley's choice to open with Kerry's 1971 testimony, allows him to place some very complimentary (and carefully chosen, as there certainly are opposing views to Kerry's conduct in that testimony that are not examined here) material ahead of context. More follows. On page 40, while still at Yale, Kerry tours the White House, including the Oval Office, with his friend, Harvey Bundy whose uncle, McGeorge Bundy, worked there as national security advisor. On page 59 Kerry joins Skull and Bones, "another step in what he had come to see as a natural progression." Whether that progression is natural or not, it's certainly being presented as that here.

On a side note, there is quite a lot of mention of Kerry's father in the early chapters, of his role as bureaucrat working with the United Nations. Kerry's apparent belief that the U.N.can function as a positive force in world politics probably stems from this early exposure. But what is more interesting is the dog that didn't bark: there is little mention of Kerry's mother. She is mentioned in the context of Richard Kerry's courtship and marriage, after which there are very brief mentions in the context of "parents" or "mother and father." This strikes me as odd. One can't help but wonder if her lack of presence in the book mirrors her presence in Kerry's early life. But this could simply be choice on Brinkley's part.

Another interesting note is Brinkley's two references, one right after another, to the times when Kerry, as a young man touring in Europe with Harvey Bundy, ditched the planned agenda and chose to wing it.

The pair next headed to Zurich, arriving at midnight. Everything proved tidily Swiss manicured. sedate, boring and closed. So Kerry came up with an inspired plan. "His brainstorm was: Let's go to Austria. This is typical Kerry--I mean, you're in Zurich, so let's go to Austria; it's only a five-hour drive," Bundy continued. "There was a ski village that he loved and he wanted to look up his old ski instructor, so we took off from Switzerland across Lichtenstein, where we woke up the border guards so they would stamp our passports. They were not happy with that [but] we wanted to show people that we had been to Lichtenstein. Eventually we arrived on the outskirts of this little Alpine village in Austria where John used to ski. It was about five in the morning. We both agreed that it was way too early to look up his ski instructor. There was a mountain outside of town, and John says, 'Let's climb it.' Typical. Classic John."
--pp45-46

This sequence caught my eye because they contrasted with the carefully built up sense of destiny and the building sense that Kerry himself planned from a very early age to aim for and achieve the office of the presidency. Also, Bundy makes it sound as if this is John Kerry's normal mode: "this is typical Kerry," and "Typical. Classic John."

I suspect the intent here is to paint Kerry with the exhuberant brush of youth, to show that he has his "wild and crazy guy" side. But what it did for me was make me wonder just how impulsive he is. It's one thing to ditch the plan if conditions show that continuing with it is foolhardy; it's another entirely to ditch the plan because you feel like it. The recounting of these events reinforces the image Kerry has earned for himself for flip-flipping when doing so suits him. It fits patterns he's created since his youth better than do the claims that Brinkley appears to be building that Kerry planned all along, and is carrying through, his master plan to move into the White House.

But it's possible Kerry can be both of these. He may be flip-flopping purely to strive for the one driving goal he's lived towards. That said, these events stand out as somehow breaking, or at least weakening, the pattern.

Posted by dan at September 7, 2004 09:15 PM | TrackBack