Kennedy is borking Kerry Healey

Jeff Jacoby:

Kennedy's `borking' of Healey

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist  |  October 11, 2006

TED KENNEDY announced over the weekend that Kerry Healey, the Republican candidate for governor of Massachusetts, is guilty of ``swiftboating." He blasted her ``gutter politics," her ``Karl Rove playbook," and her ``politics of fear and smear." He condemned her for choosing ``the low road" in her campaign against Democrat Deval Patrick.

What had Healey done to provoke such outrage? That's hard to say. As the Associated Press's Glen Johnson pointed out, Kennedy ``did not specify the reason for his criticism." Apparently he was accusing Healey of trafficking in contemptible slurs that no one with a shred of decency should be associated with. If so, he used the wrong word. The term for engaging in groundless character-assassination isn't ``swiftboating."

It's ``borking."

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, after all, were combat vets and POWs. Whatever else might be said about them, they had the moral standing to critique Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War -- and antiwar -- record during the 2004 presidential campaign.

But Kennedy's notorious slander of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in 1987 didn't issue from any moral high ground. When he accused the distinguished jurist of favoring an America in which ``blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters (and) rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids," the bombastic senator from Massachusetts was speaking from liberal malice and paranoia. Now he's doing it again, falsely accusing Healey of foul play without providing evidence for the charge.

The impetus for Kennedy's attack seems to have been last week's Healey TV ad, which highlights Deval Patrick's legal work on behalf of Carl Ray Songer, a prison escapee who murdered a Florida state trooper in 1973. After Songer was sentenced to death, Patrick won a stay of execution and later got his sentence reduced to life. As a result, the thug who ended a young cop's life may eventually make parole. ``While lawyers have the right to defend admitted cop-killers," Healey's ad asks, ``do we really want one as our governor?"

Er, no -- to answer the ad's poorly constructed question, we don't really want a cop-killer as our governor. What Healey presumably meant to ask was: ``Do we really want such a lawyer"   -- i.e., the kind who defends admitted cop-killers -- ``as our governor?"

That's a fair question, and one that reasonable people can debate. Even ruthless criminals are entitled to legal representation, and a lawyer is not necessarily sympathetic to rape and murder just because his clients are rapists and murderers. ``I personally despise criminals," the noted defense attorney Alan Dershowitz has written , ``and always root for the good guys except when I am representing one of the bad guys."

But instead of making a principled defense of his decision to assist clients like Songer, Patrick attacks Healey for even bringing it up. He claims to be ``proud of the work" he did in getting Songer's sentence reduced, yet he trots out surrogates like Kennedy to blast Healey when her campaign makes an issue of it. Well, which is it, counselor -- something you take pride in, or something no one should mention?

Even more muddled is Patrick's stance on Benjamin LaGuer, the convicted rapist with whom he exchanged letters and on whose behalf he twice wrote to the Parole Board -- not as LaGuer's lawyer, but as a private supporter.

Patrick claimed to believe that LaGuer deserved a new trial because the jury that convicted him was tainted by racism -- or perhaps because DNA testing would prove his innocence. He donated $5,000 toward a DNA test in 2001 -- but says now that he never bothered to learn the results. Twice he pleaded for LaGuer to be granted parole on the grounds that the jailhouse letters he wrote were ``thoughtful, insightful, eloquent . . . humane." Yet today Patrick claims that he never wanted LaGuer set free, and ``if I had urged his release, then I . . . made a mistake." But he also insists he is ``proud of what I did" in writing to the Parole Board -- and knowing what he knows now, he says, he would write those letters again.

It doesn't take a cynic or a Republican to behold such a snarl of self-contradictions and wonder whether Patrick has a problem with the truth. Or to wonder if he always sympathizes more readily with criminals than with their victims. These are just the kinds of issues political campaigns are supposed to air. A candidate who raises them about her opponent isn't ``taking the low road." Whether Kennedy likes it or not, she's doing her job.[link]

Unfortunately, Mary Joe Kopechne was not available to comment on Senator Kennedy's pronouncements.

posted by: jrtelegraph

Comments

[Seva Brodsky]

While I have become more ambivalent in recent years about the death penalty, which I used to support wholeheartedly -- precisely for the reason Prof. Levitin mentioned (unacceptably high error rate) -- my experience with criminal defense lawyers has been a largely negative one -- they are, to a large extent, hopelessly leftist, often amoral (if not downright immoral), and interested in money just as much as the "ambulance chasers" -- save for a few idealists. While this is their right, I tend to agree with Vera and Jeff Jacoby.

Yes, dear Lev, we do need more accurate DNA tests and other means of ascertaining the reliability of available evidence. This, however, has hardly anything to do with the substance of the criticisms of Kennedy and Patrick expressed herein.

Besides, assasinating the character of someone who is widely believed to be nothing short of an assasin himself (yes, I am talking about Ted Kennedy) should hardly come as a surprise. Kennedy's murky record leaves a lot to be desired, yet MA voters still seem to prefer wilful ignorance over doing their homework.

But then again, what does one expect in such a blue state, anyway? -- it's all too red (or pink).

[Vera Schwartz]

Of course lawyers defend criminals. This is their job. Deval has developed an unhealthy attraction to cop killers and rapists and went beyond the call of duty in his support of people of this type. This is his right. This is also a very poor qualification for Governor. Deval wants to defend sex predators and killers. Fine. Kerry Healey wants to defend victims. I go with Kerry Healey.

Vera

[Lev Levitin]

Jacoby's article is itself an example of an unfair character assasination attempt. There is no shame for a lawyer to defend criminals, and to insist on better tests that can prove them not guilty. And if Patrick is against capital punishment, I am with him. Remember that 15% of people sentenced to death since 1976 have been later found innocent!