by Rich Noyes at newsbusters.org
Nineteen years ago tonight, the liberal media were in full swoon over Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry (yes, that John Kerry!) as if he were some kind of a political champion. TV reporters enthusiastically applauded his middling performance at the 2004 Democratic Convention with the hope that their effusive praise might propel the liberal Massachusetts Senator into the White House.
Kerry began his July 29, 2004 acceptance speech with a heavy-handed reference to his time as a U.S. Navy Lieutenant during the Vietnam War three decades earlier. “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty!” Kerry bellowed as he saluted the Democratic delegates.
The media loved it. “I have never seen the man speak so well,” Time’s Joe Klein gushed on CNN.
“This is the best speech I have ever heard John Kerry make,” CBS’s Bob Schieffer echoed. “I listened to a lot of speeches back there in the primary. This was the best.”
The always-weird Dan Rather proclaimed that Kerry’s speech was greeted by “an almost literal thunder inside the hall, shaking the Fleet Center in a way that it seldom shakes, if ever, even during a Celtics basketball playoff game or a Bruins hockey playoff game. These Democrats, as the speech built, having what amounted to maybe a three-thousand-gallon attack about every three minutes, united in a way the Democratic Party has not been for about half a century.”
“This is the best speech I have ever heard John Kerry make,” CBS’s Bob Schieffer echoed. “I listened to a lot of speeches back there in the primary. This was the best.”
The always-weird Dan Rather proclaimed that Kerry’s speech was greeted by “an almost literal thunder inside the hall, shaking the Fleet Center in a way that it seldom shakes, if ever, even during a Celtics basketball playoff game or a Bruins hockey playoff game. These Democrats, as the speech built, having what amounted to maybe a three-thousand-gallon attack about every three minutes, united in a way the Democratic Party has not been for about half a century.”
“John Kerry went out there and he went right into the teeth of Republican issues,” ABC’s George Stephanopoulos suggested the next day on Good Morning America. “I mean, it was the political equivalent of turning toward enemy fire and charging the hill.”
“When he stood up and said, ‘John Kerry, reporting for duty,’ you could feel the whole room say, ‘Yes!’ Because they realize that in the post-September 11 world, the Democrats cannot yield on the issue of defense or terrorism or values,” Tim Russert beamed on NBC’s Today.
Then-CBS correspondent Byron Pitts was the most pro-Kerry of all of the reporters covering that year’s campaign. He readily repeated the Democratic campaign’s emotional talking points in ways even other liberal reporters might consider embarrassing. “For Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, tonight’s acceptance of the Democratic nomination is more than merely a day — it’s his destiny,” Pitts intoned on The Early Show a few hours before Kerry spoke.
Later in that same report, Pitts cast the career politician in heroic terms: “The day before his speech, Kerry crossed Boston Harbor with some of his crew mates from Vietnam, his band of brothers. They have one battle left. But tonight the loner will stand alone here in his hometown one more time and look to do what John F. Kerry has nearly always done — find a way to win.”
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