Kerry During The Reagan Years

The National Review Online’s Kerry Spot features quotes by Kerry and others said while President Reagan was alive. Kerry is saying all the right things about the president now and is being very respectful (which he ought to be anyway), but Jim Geraghty suggests that Kerry ought to think about these comments made in the past and maybe re-evaluate some of his own priorities.

President Reagan should reorder his priorities. We don't need expensive and exotic weapons systems." (Lt. Gov. John Kerry, Letter To Constituent, April 1983)

The defense expenditures of the Reagan Administration are without any relevancy to the threat this nation is currently facing...." ("Kerry Asks $54 Billion Cut In Reagan Defense Budget," Berkshire Eagle, 5/30/84)

Of the Reagan White House, "They were willing to literally put the Constitution at risk because they believed there was somehow a higher order of things, that the ends do in fact justify the means. That's the most Marxist, totalitarian doctrine I've ever heard of in my life.... You've done the very thing that James Madison and others feared when they were struggling to put the Constitution together, which was to create an unaccountable system with runaway power . . . running off against the will of the American people." ("Not Too Late For A War Crimes Trial," OC Weekly, 2/1/02)

I think it was a silly and rather immature approach," of Reagan's dismissal of a "peace offer" from Sandinista junta leader Daniel Ortega.

More Kerry: "I am willing...to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas." (John F. Kerry, The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best, p.217) Days later, Ortega went to Moscow to collect a $200 million loan from the Soviets, leaving Democrats "embarrassed," in the words of then-Speaker Tip O'Neill.
When Reagan bombed Libya in response to a Berlin disco bombing (killed one U.S. soldier and wounded 51): "It is obvious that our response was not proportional to the disco bombing and even violated the Administration's own guidelines to hit clearly defined terrorist targets, thereby minimizing the risk to innocent civilians.... We are not going to solve the problem of terrorism with this kind of retaliation. There are numerous other actions we can take, in concert with our allies, to bring significant pressure to bear on countries supporting or harboring terrorists."

When American troops invaded Grenada, Kerry denounced the action as "a bully show of force."

While ripping Wesley Clark in a Democratic debate: "I'm not going to characterize other people, but while he (Clark) was voting for Richard Nixon and for Ronald Reagan, I was fighting against both of their policies and what they did, frankly, to the average working person in this country and to some of our hopes and dreams."