Another War He Didn't Like

AMONG DEMOCRATS, it is fashionable to remember the Cold War as a bipartisan effort. "Until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989," former senator Bill Bradley has said, "we were sure about one thing: We knew where we stood on foreign policy." The world was simple, according to President Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright. "There were the Communists, run out of the Soviet Union, and there were us; the good guys and the bad guys . . . it was fairly easy to understand."

We're all Cold Warriors now--now that the Cold War is over.

What about John Kerry? He was definitely not a Cold Warrior, though you wouldn't know it from his campaign, which seldom (if ever) mentions his consistent opposition to Ronald Reagan's foreign and defense policies during the 1980s. Back in those days, Kerry defined himself as the anti-Cold Warrior. At the 1988 Democratic convention, he characterized the Reagan presidency as a time of "moral darkness."

The best place to look for evidence of Kerry's views on the Cold War is his first campaign for the Senate in 1984. Packaged as a candidate who rarely met a weapons system he wouldn't cancel or an international dispute in which America was on the right side, he won.

The race began in mid-January of that year when Massachusetts senator Paul Tsongas announced he was retiring. The foreshortened Democratic primary campaign quickly turned into a four-man race, with Kerry, then lieutenant governor, finding his chief rival in congressman James Shannon. Kerry and Shannon were quite a pair. State secretary Michael Connolly, who was also running, nicknamed them "the liberal twins," while candidate David Bartley, the former state House speaker, referred to them as "litmus-test liberals."

Kerry's platform was among the most liberal of its day. As his Boston Globe biographers write in John F. Kerry, "the main thrust of Kerry's candidacy was an attack on Reagan's economic, foreign, and military policies." On the three big Cold War issues--the nuclear freeze, military spending, and support for the Nicaraguan contras--Kerry was pro-freeze, anti-defense buildup, and anti-contra aid.

The nuclear freeze in particular was a cause celebre. Kerry and Shannon both courted the pro-freeze crowd intensely. This came easily to Kerry, who in June 1982, while running for lieutenant governor, had spoken at a massive antinuclear rally in New York's Central Park. In that race, Kerry had indeed tried to make the freeze his signature issue, but it never gained traction.

Two years later, as Reagan sought reelection, the political action committee Freeze Voter '84--which called for a U.S.-Soviet moratorium on nuclear weapons--released a questionnaire for national and statewide candidates. Paul Walker, a former Freeze Voter '84 executive, says "Every point you won or lost" on the questionnaire, "potentially represented thousands of voters." Kerry and Shannon each filled it out, and Walker graded their responses. Shannon scored a perfect 100, while Kerry scored a 94. So Shannon would receive the group's endorsement.

Or not. Soon afterward, Walker, though he was supporting Shannon in the primary, contacted Kerry campaign manager Paul Rosenberg and explained how Kerry could modify his answers to gain a perfect score. Rosenberg then sent Kerry a memo--dated May 23, 1984--that was made public by the Boston Globe last year. "According to Paul Walker," Rosenberg wrote, "your stated position on the Trident is what marked you down." He continued:

[Walker] feels that the correct position is to say that you are against funding the Trident sub or missile at this time, and that we should rescind funding for the last six subs because this would put the United States in violation of SALT II. . . .

I think it is critically important that we get a 100% rating from this group. You should explain (or Jonathan should explain to Paul Walker) how your position was mis-interpreted so that [Walker] will correct the rating before it is distributed to the board tomorrow evening. . . .

Rosenberg noted that "Walker is favorably disposed to change the grading" because he knows "what you must have meant."

Just like that, Kerry revised his questionnaire and tied Shannon with a perfect score. Freeze Voter '84 decided to split its endorsement between the "liberal twins."