This month’s Field and Stream features a pair of
interviews with the presidential candidates in which the two men
discussed their mutual love of huntin’, fishin’ and the great
outdoors. All fine and good, and to be expected in an election
year, and as I read through the interviews I couldn’t help but be
pleased that both men at least paid lip-service to maintaining my
Second Amendment rights.
And then, I came upon the following exchange.
Field & Stream: What’s the biggest deer
you ever killed?
Kerry: Probably an 8-pointer, something like that. Nothing
terribly big. I once had an incredible encounter with the most
enormous buck — I don’t know, 16 points or something. It was just
huge. And I failed to pull the trigger at the right moment. I was
hunting down in Massachusetts, on the Cape.
At that instant, it struck me: the “F” in John F. Kerry stands
for “fabulist”.
Like most folks I’m willing to cut a little slack to a fisherman
or hunter who claims to have just missed the big one, as long as
that big one is within the natural margin of error for big ones.
Which, my friends, a Cape Cod sixteen-pointer is clearly not.
In other words, John Kerry was telling a tale. He was fibbing.
Prevaricating. Stretching the truth. All to make himself seem a
little more impressive, a little more manly, a little more like a
regular guy to the regular guys who read Field and
Stream.
JOHN KERRY IS NOT a regular guy. He’s a
Swiss-boarding-school-educated man who’s bagged a billionairess
widow woman, and as a consequence could spend all of his summers
from here to eternity tracking the truly big ones up in the
Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho, a comfortable family-owned SUV drive
from his wife’s opulent ski chalet. But he doesn’t do that. And
because he’s not a real hunter, he doesn’t know enough to say that
that mythical sixteen pointer was spotted on a guided hunt in
Montana, or Idaho, or Wyoming, or anywhere but Massachusetts, where
the largest buck ever taken measured out at only 12 points.
So he lied about a hunting trip. Who hasn’t? In fact, the more I
looked at what John F. Kerry said about himself, the more apparent
it became that John F. Kerry is a man given to puffery. Like some
insecure drunk you meet at happy hour in a cheap bar, he has a bad
habit of gilding the lily where his own accomplishments are
concerned.
By now most everyone knows about the charges leveled at Kerry by
the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, charges that he inflated both
his own war record and the severity of the wounds he received in
Vietnam. Much of this is still in dispute. However, what is not in
dispute is Kerry’s claim that he spent Christmas of 1968 upriver on
a secret mission in Cambodia, a claim he repeated on several
occasions, most famously in 1986 on the floor of the Senate.
“I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in
Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese
and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the President of the
United States telling the American people that I was not there; the
troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared —
seared — in me.”
The “Christmas in Cambodia” story is not in dispute because it’s
been thoroughly debunked. Kerry was never, despite his seared
memory, in Cambodia. Even his hagiographer, Douglas Brinkley, had
to recently admit that Kerry was probably at base camp that day,
writing letters home.
What you may not know about this widely reported story, however,
is that it has props. Like all good fabulists, Senator Kerry has
mastered the art of turning everyday objects into holy relics,
relics that support his tall tales, this one included. In a June 1,
2003, Washington Post profile, it was revealed that
Senator Kerry had a secret compartment in his briefcase, one that
contained a well-worn, green camouflage hat.
“My good luck hat,” Kerry said, happy to see it. “Given
to me by a CIA guy as we went in for a special mission in
Cambodia.”
Kerry put on the hat, pulling the brim over his forehead. His
blue button-down shirt and tie clashed with the camouflage. He
pointed his finger and raised his thumb, creating an imaginary gun.
He looked silly, yet suddenly his campaign message was clear:
Citizen-soldier. Linking patriotism to public service. It wasn’t
complex after all; it was Kerry.
He smiled and aimed his finger:
“Pow.”
Pow indeed.
There’s a phrase that describes men who feel compelled to claim
that they served with the Green Berets, Navy Seals, or CIA special
ops units when they had not. It’s called the Stolen Valor
Syndrome.
THEN THERE’S THE MATTER of whether or not Senator Kerry actually
ran the Boston Marathon. On more than one occasion he says he has,
and the way he’s phrased it, “my first Boston Marathon,” indicates
that he’d done the feat more than once.
But, of course, no one has ever found a record of this, not in
the newspapers, not in the various photographs of the young Kerry,
not even, especially not even, in the records of the Boston
Athletic Association, the group that organizes and sponsors the
Boston Marathon.
When queried by e-mail about Senator Kerry’s marathoning, Jack
Fleming, the director of communications of the Boston Athletic
Association gave the following response.
“It was reported (Summer 2004) to the B.A.A. by aides
of the John F. Kerry campaign for President of the United States
that the Democratic nominee ran the Boston Marathon in the late
1970s [1977, 1978 or 1979 most likely]. He reportedly ran as an
unofficial entrant and finished the entire 26.2-mile race (i.e.,
without an official bib number); as an unofficial participant, his
performance (name, place, time) would not appear among the official
record or in any results book publication.”
Don’t you love that phrase “he reportedly ran”?
So, in other words, in the Summer of 2004, as questions about
Senator Kerry’s veracity grew, John Kerry’s campaign aides
contacted the Boston Athletic Association and told them that the
Senator ran the race sometime in the “late 70s,” but not
officially, although he did finish, just that you didn’t see him do
it….honest.
By the way, for the record, in January of 1993, President Bush
completed the Houston Marathon in exactly 3:44:52, a respectable
8:30 pace. You can look it up.
WHY DOES JOHN KERRY feel the need to brag on his imaginary
exploits? Is he so insecure? I mean the man actually does have some
accomplishments. He has been a United States Senator for the last
20 years, although a singularly undistinguished one.
But then again, being a Senator is plainly not proof against
puffery. Case in point, Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, who claims to
have flown numerous combat missions over Vietnam, but actually only
occasionally ferried planes into the country from his more relaxed
station in Japan. Harkin has recently taken to calling himself a
“Vietnam era veteran”
Speaking of flying, did you know that John Kerry claims to be a
stunt pilot, (Atlanta Journal Constitution, August 3,
2004) rated to fly everything from seaplanes to the Millennium
Falcon?
But who knows if that’s really true or not. At this point I just
can’t be bothered running down every unsubstantiated claim Senator
von Munchausen makes. I’ve got more important things to do with my
time, like trying to invent a carburetor that gets 200 miles to the
gallon.
My ironclad policy is this: when, towards the end of the
evening, the pompous drunk on the next barstool turns to you and
claims to have dated Morgan Fairchild, as both Senator Kerry and
Jon Lovitz’s Saturday Night Live character Tommy Flanagan
the Compulsive Liar have done, you just shrug your shoulders, say,
“Yeah, that’s the ticket,” and turn away.
