Mrs. Graham received her latest Ladies’ Home Journal in the mail, with the Bushes and the Kerrys each interviewed by editor Diane Salvatore. I’m sure the Bush camp is pleased with their interview, in which Bush sounds very domestically moderate (he looooves Medicare, for example, and touts the new prescription drug subsidies). The questions aren’t hostile. But Salvatore never brings John Kerry up, and neither do the Bushes.
Then comes the Kerry pair. Salvatore asks several please-bash-Bush questions. “Senator, do you believe that President Bush is a false patriot?” (No, but can I tell you about Max Cleland again?) And: “There’s been a lot of discussion about the fact that President Bush has been one of the most vocal Presidents in terms of his faith. Do you find the President’s discussion of his faith as part of his decisionmaking process inappropriate?” Kerry: “I think it crosses a line, and it sort of squeezes out the diversity that the presidency is supposed to embrace.” (When Bush is asked about his faith, among his first few words are “Jewish…Muslim…Christian.”)
Salvatore also asked Kerry blatant questions from the left. “How apt, Senator, do you feel is the comparison between the Iraqi war and the Vietnam war?” (Kerry goes through his usual multilaterlist clucking, and adds how much it would help us fight terror by having more “thoughtful” positions on “North Korea, global warming, AIDS.”) She also asked: “Every major civil rights movement in this country has eventually prevailed. Looking through the prism of history, do you feel that same-sex marriage is inevitable in America as a legal right?” He starts to talk, and then, he has to answer his cell phone! He comes back around to searching for a way of “respecting both” tradition and, well, the utter rejection of tradition.
Salvatore wrote up front that she conducted both interviews as “another effort at keeping the playing field level.” But her liberal bias came shining through, at least during her time with Team Kerry.