Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
This is confusing me. (As does much of life.) Do you mean, an antiwar position is risky in that sense, or ANY discrete position is risky, as it may not prevail?
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You'll have to pardon me for conjecture, because in 1971 I was in utero. As a person born after both Kerry's military career and his Senate testimony, I'm at a disadvantage.
From that perspective, it's easy to say now that being against the war was a calculated move in a path toward being anointed King Lefty. However, even with the hindsight of history, it's not easy to say that it was a great way to get elected POTUS.
The facts that followed 1971 don't seem to follow your theory that being anti-war was political opportunism. In regard to this specific case, Kerry went from VVAW to
losing a congressional race. To a Republican. In Massachusetts. In 1972.
So he became a deputy DA. You can't get much more The Man than that. And lo, in 1982 he finally won his first elective office.
I don't necessarily think staking out any real position always kills your chances for election, but it's absurd to say people were joining the anti-war movement because they thought it would be a ticket to leadership in government.
