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Danforth empathizes with Bush and even Obama
By STEVE KRASKEThe Kansas City Star
When Jack Danforth speaks, people listen. As a former senator, a former U.N. ambassador and an Episcopal priest, he’s been around.
On Friday, he was particularly talkative.
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Danforth feels sorry for Barack Obama. Really.
Of all the shoulders in the world to cry on, Danforth’s aren’t an obvious choice for the Democratic candidate. Danforth is, after all, a Republican. He’s on board 100 percent with John McCain, and he thinks Obama is woefully unprepared for the White House.
But Danforth admired Obama’s call of reconciliation, his insistence that it’s time for the country to come together.
“During the early part of his campaign, what was really exciting about him was that regardless of his position on the issues, here was this person who was speaking a message of unity and pulling the country together and getting away from all the polarization,” he said.
It was especially potent, Danforth said, coming from an African-American.
But then came the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his inflammatory comments about AIDS, Sept. 11 and Louis Farrakhan.
Now, Danforth opines, the pop in Obama’s punch is gone.
“It’s just lost its force,” Danforth said. “For most people who hear it, they’re going to say, ‘How does this square with belonging to that church for 20 years and for being so close to this pastor?’ ”
Obama still hasn’t answered that question, Danforth said. Still, he said the undermining of Obama’s message is a loss.
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Danforth, you may recall, was on George W. Bush’s short list of vice presidential picks. In fact, Bush spent three hours interviewing Danforth in a Chicago hotel suite.
It was a job Danforth didn’t want, although he told Bush, “If you want me, I’ll do it.”
So what does he think now of the Bush team he came close to joining? Danforth knows how to tread lightly.
“It’s very hard to be a two-term president,” he said. “Everything you do rubs people the wrong way.”
Danforth said he would have voted to go to war with Iraq.
“We’ve never been involved in this type of war before,” he said. The country, he said, is still learning about the post-Sept. 11 world.
He ticked off Bush’s challenges: The war’s unpopular. Gasoline prices are high. The economy is hurting. People are tired of Bush as a personality.
“It’s been,” he said, “a presidency in extremely tough times.”
Some will accuse you of being generous, I said.
Danforth didn’t respond, switching gears to talk about Bush’s work in Sudan. In 2001, the president appointed Danforth as a special envoy to that war-torn region. Danforth brokered a peace deal there and described Bush as particularly engaged.
“I was very impressed,” Danforth said. The peace deal came about “because of President Bush.”
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Different topic.
These days, when I think of Democrat Jim Slattery and his very difficult battle for the U.S. Senate in Kansas — his opponent is two-term incumbent Republican Pat Roberts — I think of two things: Slattery’s struggles with timing, and his commitment to a race that, frankly, needs to be run.
Timing has never been a Slattery strong suit. The former U.S. House member could have walked into the governor’s office and the statewide post he covets in 1990 when the Republican incumbent was an unpopular Mike Hayden.
Surprisingly, Slattery passed in a move that left the state with lost-in-the-wilderness Gov. Joan Finney.
He turned around four years later and made his run for governor, only to get buried by Republican Bill Graves in the Republican tidal wave of 1994.
Fast-forward to 2007. Late in the year, Slattery weighed the Senate race, then backed away. Now we sit here in May, and Slatts has just five months to raise a couple million dollars.
That’s not much time. (And yes, he has a primary battle against Lee Jones.)
But he’s in the race. Roberts didn’t have a Democratic opponent the last time he ran in 2002. He won with 83 percent against a Libertarian and Reform Party candidate.
A lot of big decisions have been made in this country since 1996 when Roberts first ran for the Senate. Give Slatts credit for standing up and making this a race.
There’s nothing partisan in concluding that Kansas deserves as much.