All Style and No Substance

DAVID NYHAN GUSHED on the Globe Op-Ed page about him recently. Last April, political reporter Robin Toner drenched him with favorable images in The New York Times Magazine. Leslie Gelb wrote in the New York Times last week that folks in New Hampshire were "riveted by his intensity." And New York magazine national affairs writer Joe Klein apologized for many of Kerrey's faults last week, adding that he is "passionate" and "genuine."

Intense. Powerful. Intimate. Persistent. Personal. The press has made Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey seem like the most attractive candidate the Democrats have snookered into running for president in years.

If the momentum continues, Kerrey could turn out to be another Gary Hart (before the scandal, obviously) or Jimmy Carter--a dark horse who basks in media coverage bright enough for electoral success.

But let's hope not. Behind his veneer of good looks and a down-home spiel lies an uninspiring acuity and a frightening tendency to personalize public policy.

THE POLITICAL HACKS and national beat reporters see Kerrey as the ultimate outsider. His Nebraska freshness gives life and some measure of purity to a dirty game.

Indeed, Kerrey's past is impressive, and his penchant for self-deprecation makes him likeable--and extremely unusual for a politician. With term limitations becoming more popular (California's recently passed Proposition 140 shows the movement's strength) and anti-Washington feeling in general skyrocketing, Kerrey's story is a godsend for Joseph Rothstein, his '88 campaign consultant who's now on board for the presidential bid.

The story is devoid of scandal and full of heroism. As part of the elite Navy Sea, Air and Land corps (the SEALs), Kerrey got his leg blown off in one exchange but still managed to call for support and command his troops. (Nyhan really loves this story. So does everyone else. You'll hear it about a thousand times over the next 13 months.) He got a Congressional Medal of Honor for it, but he initially turned it down. No kidding. He accepted it later on behalf of his platoon.

When he came back home, he made himself a millionaire in the restaurant business. He's not a lawyer or a banker. There's no Chappaquidick, no Silverado Savings and Loan, no Anita Hill. He did let Debra Winger sleep over at the mansion when he was governor and drive around in state cars (certainly a bad judgment call), but Nebraskans didn't say much--they thought she was cool.

And after a single term as governor, Kerrey actually left politics. He felt no more "call" to do it, he said. Usually, this means the departing public servant hasn't got a chance in hell of winning again. But Kerrey had favorable ratings in Nebraska that rivaled Ronald Reagan's. He said that the fire in his belly had been doused by the prosaic ins and outs of running a state. It was hard for him to "[do] things that aren't you," as The New Republic quoted him in 1989.

Kerrey exudes honesty and fairness in a country where a politician's false claims to virtue are often tolerated and constant wheeling and dealing can be respected. He appeals (with no small effort) to some basic "Americanness" many of us identify with--a Western sort of freedom (he wears cowboy boots a lot), a blue-jeaned individuality (he's not tied down by marriage) and a populist fear of Washington (to which the AIPACked and Farmer's Unioned Tom Harkin has much less claim).

Cynical reporters tired of the bickering and half-truths which make up politics eat this stuff up. Bob Kerrey would never hire John Sununu, turn a blind eye to CIA shenanigans or pick an unknown for the Supreme Court. J. Robert Kerrey would not be president of the United States, they reason. He would be president for the United States.

BUT HOPEFULLY, he will be neither.

At least I hope he won't be the Democratic nominee. The good press Kerrey has received simply has excused too much. The problem is that he either has not formulated--or is unable to articulate--any set of ideas he believes in. This is not your normal case of campaign dodging. Kerrey is not simply avoiding talking about specific policies he would support as president. Everyone does that.

Kerrey dances around everything. So far in his nascent stumping, he's shown a tendency to spout support for whatever sounds interesting or popular, and a refusal to mount a strong offensive against President Bush--without which the Democrats will self-destruct. Beyond some broad strokes of Democratic posturing, Kerrey's just not there. And when you do pin him down, his ideas all seem just to come down to personal experiences--especially Vietnam.

On foreign affairs, Kerrey is least articulate. For example, according to New York magazine, he though it was just dandy that Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire."

"I hadn't realized what an impact Reagan had on both the Soviet leadership and the people [of the Eastern bloc], letting them know that we were with them," Kerrey told Joe Klein, New York's top political reporter.

This is pretty disturbing. Only the most cursory (or the most Republican) look at the 1980s would yield such a cut-and-dried picture. Sure, the autocratic regime was evil. But Reagan's phrase was not intended as support for democracy in Eastern Europe, as Kerrey says and as Reagan would have us believe now. There wasn't a chance for democracy then. The Soviets weren't scared into negotiation by Reagan--in fact, his hard line was a setback for detente. Only the Soviet economic implosion, a process decades in the making, would eventually chop the Soviet Union's tentacles into Eastern Europe that had choked off democracy there for so long.

It's strange that Kerrey forgets that "evil empire" was the keynote for the arms buildup in the Reagan years--a buildup which doubled the defense budget in five years and which, incidentally, Kerrey believes was a mistake. Kerrey's antipolitician rhetoric may be charming, but he can seem out of touch.

Kerrey's also a mean-spirited Japan basher, an arch-protectionist and a supporter of massive and terribly inefficient farm subsidies. There's nothing charming about any of this. Despite his touchy-feely reputation, these views are cold, calculated politics designed to get the Gephardt vote and neutralize Harkin. Too bad the U.S. cannot afford to fight a trade war with Japan--not since the American share of world trade has declined by one-third in the last 20 years.

Then there's the litany of Vietnam War-inspired policies. On his pet issue, health care (which Bill Clinton--who focuses on education--is at least as knowledgeable about), Kerrey advocates national health insurance for one major reason: "Government saved my life" in a vets hospital after the war, he told The New Republic and New York.

On flag burning, he first opposed the Supreme Court's sensible 1989 ruling which upheld the right to torch Old Glory (another purely political decision, which played well in Lincoln), and then supported it. Why? Chief Justice William Rehnquist pissed him off when he wrote in his dissent that people during the Vietnam War were defending the flag. Kerrey said he personally was not, and that he had therefore decided that the court was right--the flag was just a symbol.

On the Gulf War, Kerrey did not voice principled foreign policy theories, but personal objections--it would be another Vietnam, and no one should have to get a leg blown off. All this is understandable, but it's not presidential.

Finally, Kerrey told a crowded ARCO Forum a couple weeks ago that he has no urban policy prepared. He lacked specifics on the deficit, crime, housing, drugs, education and everything else that he didn't face in Vietnam.

THE PRESS still loves him, though. He's the perfect foil of most other presidential contenders--he is quick to admit mistakes, doesn't mind being called a political lightweight and tries hard to answer questions honestly. And he's not afraid to stand up and do hoaky things for audiences--the most cited example being his election night a cappella rendition of "And the Band Played 'Waltzing Mathilda,'" a song about a soldier who loses his legs in World War I.

Still, Bob Kerrey has little idea about where the United States is going in 1992. He has great strength of character, but that's about all he has.

Bob Kerrey thought the phrase 'evil empire' was meant to show support for the people of the Eatern Bloc.