Mr. Kerry chose to remain and to get wet, if necessary, while doing the nation's work and his party's bidding, rather than running for the heights like an ordinary shirker. and it took a great deal of courage to race from house to office, from cab to door, attired in a summer weight raincoat, with an umbrella held jauntily aloft in the downpour, feet splashing in the seemingly endless puddles, with the latest editions of the New York Times and the Boston Globe clenched in closed fists.
The saga began early last week as news of the impending flood began to trickle into the nation's sleepy low lying summertime capital.
Sure other things were occupying the usually empty minds of that singular body of geniuses, the Democratic members of the US Senate, with all the folderol about our upcoming defeat in the Iraq War, the calls for immediate surrender, the immediate dispatch of the keys to New York City to Mr. bin-Laden's last known address, the printing of millions of pre-signed US citizenship papers for the untold numbers of scalliwags without whom the country would falter and crash upon the rocks of economic doom, Chuck Schumer's calls for the arrest of all oil company executives, Hillary Clinton's militant conversion to Christianity, and Howard Dean's full and spontaneous fall from grace.
But the liberal solons were able to bulldoze those small matters aside and begin to concentrate their vast powers of deliberation on the approaching storm and the calls for a stratospheric pow-wow to discuss their strategies in the face of this unheralded calamity.
and John Kerry, the noted yachtsman, naval hero, former Presidential candidate, and Vietnam veteran was not about to be shunted aside and left behind as plans were laid on the table about the possible declaration of the nation's capital as an "open city" while the formulation of the shadow government's wholesale retreat to high ground were presented.
after all, there were valuable objets d'art, registered gifts from foreign governments, autographed photographs of rock stars and Bill Clinton, paintings, and all the valuable impedimenta of his many years of travel while representing the party and people, which had to be rescued from his office.
No, Mr. Kerry would be a leader of this exodus and, if push came to shove, after the proper amount of deliberative thought, of second guessing, of hemming and hawing, of going over and over his options, of retracing his steps, in eliciting comment after comment from his harried staff on his options, he would make decisions that would matter.
Or, if it seemed to make political hay to remain in a capital under siege from storm run off, a lack of electricity, while being cut off from a majority of human contact, and forced to rely on the vagaries of cell phone communications and satellite TV, he might do that, too.
But Mr. John Kerry of Massachusetts would have to make up his mind. and that is where the courage came into play and where his nautical experience would serve him well.
John Kerry is used to water and the seagoing arts come naturally to him.
Boston is a seaport. From Beacon Hill you can see the ocean, depending on the breaks. Nantucket is surrounded by the sea and his beloved motor yacht, Scaramouche, is tied up there. Mr. Kerry was assigned to fast boats in Vietnam as a direct result of his early submersion in the ways of the sea. and when one merely mentions the lonely sea, Mr. Kerry's firm resolute well-coiffed visage is immediately conjured up.
In fact St. Paul's School, his secondary alma mater, was also under water this spring, in New Hampshire, necessitating its closing, though the precariousness of its situation precluded Mr. Kerry's direct involvement in its rehabilitation.
So John Kerry of Massachusetts, late of Davos, often of Nantucket, usually out to lunch, after due consideration, and relying on the courage of the jack tars of yore and the commodores of courage, decided to stand and fight the precipitation rather than cut and run for drier climes and higher elevations.
He would stay the course in Washington, unless he strayed outside the soggy Beltway to make a speech vilifying the war for which he had already called a hasty retreat or to stump for his vision of an energy policy.
and so Mr. Kerry journeyed north for a speech in Boston on June 26th, in historic Faneuil Hall, where he blasted Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and the secret cabals of big and little oil and those of Freemasonry, leaving the problems of Washington behind far behind him, where he was beset by just a few passing showers.
But John Kerry had remained resolute for those few brief shining moments in a Burberry raincoat. and for that he can be very proud.
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