Inside glimpses of the Kerry campaign are starting to leak out. My brother Bill passes along this one by Tim Reid of the U.K. Times Online. Here are a few interesting excerpts:
JOHN KERRY constantly squabbled with his difficult and hypochondriac wife, ran a campaign team riven by internal feuding, and repeatedly begged the Republican senator John McCain to become his running-mate, according to a riveting inside account of his doomed presidential bid. The Massachusetts senator was so obsessed with getting advice from a multitude of rival advisers that one aide confiscated his mobile telephone. His wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, became such a moody distraction that in the closing weeks of the campaign another aide instructed her to stop whispering advice in his ear and back off.
One of the untold stories of the presidential campaign was the erratic behaviour of the candidate's wife, the Heinz heiress Mr Kerry married in 1995, according to Newsweek. She drove her Secret Service detail mad with her chronic lateness, constantly demanded attention, including her husband's (who seemed to tread on eggshells when around her). She even sent him off on errands, such as fetching bottles of water. She clashed with Mary Beth Cahill, Mr Kerry 's campaign manager, and Mr Kerry was caught in the middle.
Mr Kerry...grew increasingly frustrated. After a faltering press conference by Mr Bush in April, and with Iraq in turmoil, Mr Kerry exclaimed: "I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot".
During the early summer, Mr Kerry implored Mr McCain, the maverick Republican who ran against Mr Bush in the 2000 Republican primaries, to become his running-mate, meeting him seven times. He even offered to expand the vice-presidency to include running the Pentagon. "I can't say this is an offer because I've got to be able to deny it," Mr Kerry told Mr McCain. "But you've got to do this."
Mr McCain told him he was out of his mind, and went on to embrace Mr Bush. "Goddammit," a furious Mr Kerry said to an aide. "Don't you know what I offered him? Why the f*** didn't he take it?"
James Carville, Bill Clinton's former strategist [joined the campaign]. So appalled was he by the chaos inside the campaign, and so desperate to see Mr Bush defeated, that in early September he decided that Miss Cahill had to be ousted, and Joe Lockhart, Mr Clinton's former spokesman, inserted as manager. When he called a meeting with the pair, he was so worked up, he began to cry, screaming to Miss Cahill: "You've got to let him (Mr Lockhart) do it!"
None of this is very flattering to either the Senator or his campaign. There's more at the link.
