John L. Perry
Monday, Apr. 05, 2004

Side by side the Heinz-Kerrys sat, leaning forward into television cameras at what must have been a hastily convened news conference. They were without benefit of even a card table separating them from an anxious audience of voters.

On the left of viewers’ screens crouched Teresa Heinz-Kerry, who herself has had to brave it through a difficult life. She appeared pale as a ghost, grimacing down at the floor. To her left (and, come to think of it, just about everyone else’s) sat the scrambling junior senator from Massachusetts, presumed to become the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. At that moment, he was glowering, a far stretch from appearing presidential.

Body Language of Despair

Tie-less, he perched uneasily, knobby knees akimbo. As little boys do when chagrined, he twisted his fingers, alternating with plucking at a hangnail.

He pulled a long face (and when John Kerry pulls a long face, that’s a long, long face), resembling ever so much the funeral director at an undertaker’s interment.

What cataclysmic catastrophe had overtaken the insatiable Heinz-Kerry aristocracy, who, if money could buy happiness, should be giddy with joy?

Empty Ketchup Bottles?

Had she just received word that the World Health Organization of the United Nations and the United States Food and Drug Administration, in an unprecedented joint operation, were shutting down all Heinz 57 varieties of factories, most of which are outsourced overseas?

Had terrorists fire-bombed one of the assorted Heinz-Kerry multi-millionaire mansions? Or all five, valued at a paltry $33 million?

Had John just taken a cell-phone call from Our Hillary of Ste. Rodham-at-the-Ready that the former first lady from an administration that shall remain nameless, since interns and other minors may be reading this, was ready to announce she will exercise her entitlement to the Democratic vice-presidential nomination?

Silence of the Mourners

Obviously, something very bad had happened out there in the land. What a time for the TV remote clicker-thing to be on the other side of the room, left on “mute” during the most-recent onslaught of repetitious commercials. With audio quickly restored, it was about to become apparent what had so distressed the Heinz-Kerry aspirants to the White House.

Collecting a deep breath, and without TelePrompTer, without notes, the morose Massachusettsan began to work his mouth.

Are you quite ready for this? Then here it is: New jobs created were up in March.

Not just any little old up, but way, way big up. Three-hundred and eight thousand additional Americans were at work than a month ago. Three times what even the jobs-hungry administration of George W. Bush had been expecting.

Bad News Comes in Threes

But wait, there’s more! The government went back and recalculated the jobs market for January and February and found – more bad news for the Heinz-Kerrys – that it had undercounted the newly employed by 87,000.

Taking all that into consideration, President Bush was delighted to announce, the number of new jobs on his watch has now reached 759,000 since last August.

If during the remainder of this year the nation’s job increase continues at the same rate as it did in March – which is an authentic “if”– the total number of new jobs under the Bush administration will stand at 3,504,000.

Kerry and his bad-news bearers have been bemoaning that since Bush took office in January 2001, he has been responsible for costing this country – and here they can’t get their math to sit still – anywhere from 2.2 million to 2.3 million to 2.8 million to 3 million jobs. Like Pinocchio’s nose, the fictitious number keeps growing and growing.

There Goes That Campaign Plank

The actual loss was closer to 1.8 million. But take your pick – 1.8 million or 3 million – 3,504,000 new jobs under Bush would trump even the wildest psychedelic Democratic hallucination.

That shock was so gruesome that the New York Times, widely renowned for the conscientious care it takes not to misinform its readers, and the Associated Press, which is even more dutiful not to pass along information it hasn’t read first in the NYT, decided this was too grisly to entrust to the American electorate.

Maybe they surmised only those hundreds of thousands of newly employed Americans, plus their immediate families, neighbors and creditors, would discover this dirty little secret, this calamity too depressing to print. But, the cat is now out of the bag in a big way.

Overcome by Tragic Events

No wonder the Heinz-Kerrys were not merry. The timing could not have been worse. Just as the appalling news of all those new jobs leaked out, the Kerry campaign was blowing millions out of its war chest on a new negative TV commercial excoriating Bush’s job-loss record, “the worst in 70 years.”

That’s the Heinz-Kerrys’ idea of a good-news ad. Now comes along all this increased-employment bad news. If this keeps up, it will appear to the Heinz-Kerrys as an ominous black cloud on the horizon no bigger than the continent of Australia.

The Heinz-Kerrys are right to be concerned. The American people can see through what’s been going on. They know the Jurassic egg of this recent recession was fertilized, incubated and hatched in the eight years of self-indulgent license during Bill Clinton’s administration. They know it was Bush who chased that hatchling raptor around the park until he lopped its head off with his tax ax before it could grow into a full-fledged horror-movie depression.

Stiff Upper Lip

At the uncomfortable Heinz-Kerry televised news conference, Teresa’s John II muttered grudgingly something about everyone being pleased with the job numbers for one month. It came across like consoling someone who has just lost a loved one with the presumptuous thought that it was a blessing.

Kerry then launched into his worn-thin litany about how awful all those job losses had been – painstakingly ignoring that things are headed in a hurry into better times.

After all, isn’t that what he says he wants – more employment? Isn’t that what he’s been promising?

Good Is Bad, Bad Is Good

For the Heinz-Kerrys, however, good news (more jobs under Bush) is bad news. This is goofier than Alice through the looking glass. It’s the Heinz-Kerrys through the upside-down, frontwards-backwards glass.

If every man, woman and child, dead or alive, were overnight to be given a job (probably with the government), Kerry would find something about it to clobber Bush. If Bush could wave a wand and grant Kerry every single thing he has asked for, demanded, or demagogued about, Kerry would find something new to ask for, demand, or demagogue about.

Running for president with the likes of John Kerry and his leftist Democrats nagging at you must be something like being granted an ill-considered wish for a harem of nymphomaniacs. There’s no way in this world you’re ever going to satisfy them.

John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.

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