OT Kerry Siting
In his first wide-ranging interview with a national news organization in more than a month, John Kerry sat down with TIME’s national political correspondent Karen Tumulty last week as his campaign plane flew between a health-care forum in St. Louis, Mo., and a rally in Allentown, Pa.
No Cambodia question. Mostly softball….
The attacks don’t attack me as much as they attack Americans and America.
I would not have turned my back on the international community.
As President, who would be the first person you would phone?
I’m not going to say one, two, three. I will tell you that I have 20 years of experience on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I have personal relationships with leaders around the world. I will not cede our security to any other country. I won’t cede our security to any institution, but I know how to reach out to countries and leaders and build bipartisan-support structures necessary to strengthen the country. [the UN or the French apparently]
People’s views of the strength of your leadership have declined in the past few weeks. Is this in part because you were slow in responding to the Swift Boat ads?
I think we are doing extraordinarily well. If anybody had told me we’d be points apart from the sitting President of the United States, well, would you have believed them? [he can't believe he is dropping like a rock]
They haven’t done port security; they’re cutting cops; they haven’t taken assault weapons off the streets. Firehouses are opened in Iraq; they’re shut in the United States. Port security: 95% of our containers come in, and they are uninspected. [he plans fight the war on terror here]
I don’t know what you’re talking about in terms of the Bush bounce.
