by John Kerry
Three senators and staff were gathered in the forward part of a C-130. In the middle of the cavernous cargo hold was a simple aluminum coffin with a small American flag draped over it. We were bringing another American soldier, just killed, home to his family and final resting place. The starkness of his coffin in the center of the hold, the silence except for the din of the engines, was a real-time cold reminder of the consequences of decisions for which we senators share responsibility. As we arrived in Kuwait, a larger flag was transferred to fully cover his coffin, and we joined graves registration personnel in giving him an honor guard as he was ceremoniously carried from the plane to a waiting truck. When the doors clanked shut, I wondered why all of America would not be allowed to see him arrive at Dover Air Force Base. Why hide him from a nation that deserves to mourn together in truth and in the light of day? His lonely journey should have been enough to compel all of us to come to grips with our choices in Iraq.
More than two thousand brave Americans had given their lives. Iraq had become a breeding ground for homegrown terrorists and a magnet for foreign ones.
I thought we had an obligation to talk about that and offer answers. The country and the Congress were misled into war. There was, as Robert Kennedy once said, “enough blame to go around,” and I accepted my share of the responsibility. But the mistakes of the past, no matter who made them, are no justification for marching ahead into a future of miscalculations and misjudgments and the loss of American lives with no end in sight. We each had a responsibility to our country and our conscience to be honest about where we should go from here.
That’s what I tried to do. I laid out a plan to set a deadline for Iraq to get its political house in order and deadlines to bring American combat troops home. I believed that saying to the Iraqis “We will stay as long as it takes” was an excuse for them to take as long as they wanted. That wasn’t acceptable when Americans were coming home in caskets. By the end of the year, my position would become the Democrats’ position and the mainstream foreign policy argument. I was glad I’d spoken out.
I was also glad that I did something that was long overdue. April 22, 2006, marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of my testimony against the war in Vietnam. So many who hadn’t served at all had smeared that testimony for political gain. I was determined to speak up about the real meaning of patriotism. I thought the country needed to hear it. America was embroiled in a war over the war in Iraq, and too often the flag was invoked to shut people down instead of empowering them to speak up. It all felt so familiar. Too many had made it an art form to wield contrived appeals to patriotism as a means to turn our troops or our flag into the property of a political party. That was wrong. That was un-American. I gave a speech at Faneuil Hall in Boston thirty-five years to the day from when I had appeared in front of the Foreign Relations Committee. The old hall, meeting place of the original patriots and the “cradle of liberty,” held great meaning.
On this bright April morning, it was packed to the rafters with old friends and new activists who had come to hear not about a war from a distant past, but about values at stake today, about how “fighting for your country overseas and fighting for your country’s ideals at home are not contradictory or even separate duties. They are, in fact, two sides of the very same patriotic coin.” I concluded with words I stand by to this day, just as I stand by what I said and did in 1971: “The most important way to support the troops is to tell the truth and to ensure we do not ask young Americans to die in a cause that falls short of the ideals of this country. When we protested the war in Vietnam, some would weigh in against us, saying, ‘My country, right or wrong.’ Our response was simple: ‘Yes, my country, right or wrong. When right, keep it right, and when wrong, make it right.’ And that’s what we must do again today.”
I was completing the unfinished business of 2004. I threw myself into the work of electing a Congress that would make a difference in the country. I helped recruit decorated veterans to run for office, and when they were attacked and when their military records were smeared, I defended them. I applied a lesson learned the hard way in 2004: keep hitting back until the truth is understood.
But it was a lesson about life’s fragility—one in which I needed no refresher course—that punctuated the spring of 2006. In April, Vanessa suggested I call her mom right away. I had a sinking feeling of the reason behind the urgency. Julia was in Texas at MD Anderson Cancer Center, where doctors were valiantly trying all the latest approaches to save her life. It had been a long year and a half against a horrible adversary. She was quite weak after all the treatments. Julia knew she was in her final days and wanted to come back to Massachusetts to die.
We immediately made arrangements to have her flown back to Boston in a private plane. When she arrived, she went to Brigham and Women’s Hospital for a week. When I went to the hospital to visit, only Alexandra and Vanessa were present. Julia shot me her resigned smile. I walked up to the bed, leaned over, and we both wrapped each other in a quiet, intense hug that seemed to last forever. We just hung on to each other as all the differences over the years melted away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the girls slide out of the room sobbing.
Julia didn’t want to pass away in the hospital. She wanted somewhere that was more personal, more connected to her life. She settled on the guesthouse of a great friend in Concord, on a farm where she could open a window to see and smell spring in her final days and spend time with those closest to her.
For the next days, her husband, her children and I—her ex-husband—hung on to precious time as she faded away. On April 27, in the morning, Julia died. Relationships change, and some of the very best of them bend and even break as people grow in different directions. The sadness of our divorce, the sense of failure, clouded our relationship for many years. I was lucky that we both found love again, and that we made peace with each other, and that before it was too late, we had the chance to say goodbye the way we did, to remember the sweetness of early times and to share the gift that endured: our daughters. I will always be reminded of Julia in my memories and in the faces and laughter of Alex and Vanessa.
• • •
IN THE FALL of 2006, the tide was turning in the country. We won back the House and the Senate. President Bush was officially a lame duck.
I had decisions to make. I had sought the presidency in 2004 to lead us on a different course. Now the country was voting for the kind of change I’d proposed during a difficult, divided period.
There were powerful reasons to want to continue that fight now. Many of my most loyal friends were urging me to run again. They felt that my 2004 race had been so close and so affected by illegitimate factors that in an open year with no incumbent, I had grown enough as a candidate that I should give it a second shot. After all, they argued, Nixon and Reagan had both done so successfully—Nixon even after running for governor of California and losing.
But I felt viscerally that the country needed a different narrative. The year 2004 was just too close in time, and the current demand for someone new would be too strong, in my judgment, to overcome.
I decided it was time to put my energy to work as part of the majority in the Senate to do all I could to end the war and strengthen our security and our ability to fight the real war on terror. In January 2007, on the Senate floor, as I gave a speech about Iraq, I made it very clear: I would not be a candidate for president. I wanted people to trust that the issues I was talking about were grounded in purpose, not politics.
Ted Kennedy was sitting a few feet away. He rose and spoke about how close we had come in 2004 and how much good remained to be done. Afterward, he brought a bottle of Chivas to my hideaway office in the Capitol. He reminded me that it was after he turned down the chance to run for president again in 1984 that his legislative career really blossomed.
I had work to do. I wanted not just to end the war, but to help rebuild congressional momentum on the environment and climate change so that the next president co
uld actually do something about it.
And I wanted perhaps to have a role in selecting that person. I started quietly considering whether there was someone running in 2008 whom I might help be that kind of president, the transformative, unifying kind the country so desperately needed.
I had Senate friends running—Chris Dodd and Joe Biden. But the strongest campaigns were mounted by two others—Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
We didn’t see a lot of Barack after the campaign began. I would have a brief conversation with him if he came back to the Senate to vote, but most of my contact was with the campaign through friends who were on the trail, particularly in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Initially, I thought hard about endorsing Hillary. We had been colleagues in the Senate longer than I’d served with Barack. I sat down with her to listen to her thoughts about her campaign and offer a few observations from my own. Hillary had always been warm and welcoming to my children and me. I respected and liked her. She was smart and genuinely passionate. I felt she got a bum rap from many in the media. If you were having a casual conversation in the cloakroom, joking around in a caucus meeting or just sitting down for a personal conversation, she was real, present, funny and caring. But I felt powerfully, having run against Bush and lost, and having a pretty good feeling at that point for national politics, and having examined and found wanting the potential of my own repeat candidacy, that the country might want a unifying politics. For some of the same and some different reasons that I thought I shouldn’t run, I felt her campaign would have a hard time.
I felt strongly, as a matter of gut politics, that Barack Obama could provide that narrative. Barack and I had dinner in Washington in the fall, one-on-one. We talked about growing up overseas. We talked and laughed about the ironies and indignities of life on the campaign trail in those early days of a campaign. I liked him. I liked that he didn’t feel the need to sell you on his campaign or his candidacy. Back home there was a generational divide: my sister Peggy, the longtime activist, was firmly for Hillary; Barack was the candidate my daughters were most excited about.
After Thanksgiving, I flew to Bali for the UN Climate Change Conference. I was struck that everywhere I went, countries were so excited that hope was on the way in the United States, no matter who won. But Barack was the candidate they asked me about most often.
I had to decide whether to get involved in the race. Teresa believed I had earned the right to speak my mind. My heart and my gut told me to endorse Barack. Ted Kennedy urged me not to endorse early. He thought it was too big a risk for me, and pressed me to wait until the nomination process was largely settled and help bring the party back together. Many on my staff were nervous, and not without reason. Al Gore had endorsed Howard Dean four years before and been derided when Dean’s candidacy imploded. I didn’t want to blow my credibility as a former nominee on a pyrrhic endorsement.
I was also friends with Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, whose campaigns were stuck, but who were still going to be my friends after they came back to the Senate.
John Edwards was in the race, and he was betting the farm on Iowa. While we had not spoken in months, and no one expected me to be with Edwards, I didn’t want my checkered history with John to be seen as the reason I was endorsing someone else. I wanted to make a statement about the future, not the past.
In December, talks with the Obama campaign about making an endorsement in Iowa right before the caucuses intensified.
We went back and forth. There was a comfort level settling into the campaign that they would win Iowa and it would be better to save my endorsement for a more strategic moment.
Their big win in Iowa on January 3 was a political thunderbolt. They were on their way.
Then a week later came a solid loss in New Hampshire.
Suddenly, the Clinton comeback was the big story.
Around midnight that night, I got a call at home in Boston: “You still with me?” It was Barack. He had delivered his concession speech in Manchester.
I laughed and said, “Yes—for sure. I told you I’m with you and I’m with you. When do you want to do it?”
“Let’s do it this week in South Carolina,” he said, and that was it.
Two days later, I was headed to Charleston, where I’d begun my own presidential announcement tour in 2003 at Patriots Point, only this time it was to help choose a new standard-bearer.
One of the hardest calls I ever made in politics was to Hillary Clinton that morning. I wanted her to hear from me personally that I was going in a different direction. She is a professional. The call was cordial. But I could tell that this was a moment in party lore, like Carter versus Kennedy in 1980: everyone would remember who supported whom in the race between Clinton and Obama.
We landed in balmy, beautiful weather in Charleston. Barack’s campaign plane was across the tarmac. I climbed into his waiting Suburban and together we drove to the College of Charleston. He looked thin, run down by the miles on the road and the hectic pace. But he was calm, as always. He never seemed to get too high or too low. He was a profile in contrasts. He was just a bit beyond two years in the Senate, running for president, and it struck me that even as he had extraordinary political talent, he was also a somewhat shy person. He seemed intellectual enough that some of the requisites of campaigning—perhaps even public life—didn’t necessarily sit well with him. He could be naturally gregarious, exuding that big, warm, flashy smile, but he didn’t seem to exult in the give-and-take or love the process. It became tedious and mechanical faster than it might have for other candidates. But he was disciplined; clearly, he kept churning through so many events with such great talent, even when his body or his mind wanted to do something else.
At the college, I spoke first. I talked about choosing a president who could offer America a transformation. I was glad to be part of the journey. Obama bounded down the steps, basked in the applause of the crowd, thanked me, made his obligatory recognitions of the assembled political world, delivered his speech and disappeared.
I flew back to Washington to resume work in the Senate. When I landed, my cell phone was buzzing: eight voice mails. There was one from Teddy, congratulating me on my decision. But there were seven from friends of mine who were raising money for Hillary—messages of profound disappointment. One was even explicit: “Don’t come near my boat on Nantucket this summer, asshole.”
Politics is a tough business—and nothing rubs emotions rawer than being in the foxhole of a presidential campaign.
Over the spring and summer, I campaigned hard for Barack. It was exhilarating. I’m competitive to begin with, but I was reminded how much fun it is to walk into a town hall meeting, community center, church or VFW hall and be an advocate for a cause you are excited about. At the convention in Denver, I took on my friend John McCain, the Republican nominee, on foreign policy and made as strong a case as I could that Barack Obama was the best person to lead America in these difficult times. It was tough to criticize McCain. We’d lived a lot of history together. We fought and loved each other like brothers. But in a political party that demanded ideological purity to win a nomination, I was disappointed that candidate McCain wasn’t able to speak what the real John McCain means to America.
I was in Boston on Election Day for my own celebration: despite having earlier faced a spoiler primary opponent in my Senate reelection campaign who had been put on the ballot in part to punish me for endorsing Barack, I was reelected to a fifth term in the Senate, with 66 percent of the vote. Later that night, Teresa and I sat together and watched one of the great tableaux of all my time in politics—that extraordinary moment when President-elect Barack Hussein Obama walked out on the giant stage in Grant Park, Chicago, hand in hand with his family. The young president-elect, the first African American president in our history, was now making himself history. The tears of joy were profound.
CHAPTER 14
New President, Broken Senate
ON JANUARY 5, 2009, Ted Kennedy once aga
in walked me down the aisle of the Senate to be sworn in for a fifth term—a wonderful tradition, but particularly bittersweet this time since we both knew it was the last time. I flashed back to 1985, the first time I was sworn in. That first day Ted took me around the Senate floor and pulled me into the huddle of his seasoned colleagues as if it were a fraternity mixer. It was a different Senate now, of course, and we were both living different seasons of our lives. We had each put countless miles on our odometers since that first day, each added a lot of gray hair. More important, our relationship had developed into a genuinely deep friendship over the intervening years, tested by campaigns and cancer, and strengthened by shared issues to tackle and ideologies to lean on, reinforced by faith and fun. It was quite a journey together.
We were the longest-serving senior-junior senator combination since old Strom Thurmond and Fritz Hollings. My God, how did that happen? Where did those years go, and how did they fly by so quickly? Today, Ted seemed to be doing well, despite his terminal cancer, walking with a cane and husbanding his energy for the times he really needed it. Maybe he was leaning a little more on me as we made it down into the well of the Senate, but he was still very much Teddy, very much present. It was one of those moments Ted just wouldn’t miss being a part of.
“Vice President Cheney, are you ready to swear in the five-term junior sena-tah from Massachusetts?” Teddy bellowed theatrically, and that big, broad smile was back for a flash, the deep, unmistakable belly laugh. He slapped the back of President Bush’s famously dour vice president. I’m not sure I’d ever seen Cheney crack a smile before, but he did for Ted.
There was a surreal symmetry to being sworn in by Vice President Cheney, who had represented so much of the last eight years that I’d spoken out against, while just feet away stood the vice president–elect, Joe Biden, whom Cheney had sworn in just moments before to Joe’s seventh term representing Delaware, just weeks before Joe would resign his Senate seat to succeed Cheney.