Smafty Mac: Fighting the kakistocracy!!!

Kerry has class

Aboard his plane as he flew to California from Washington, Mr. Kerry told reporters he admired Mr. Reagan's political skills and liked him personally. "He was a very likeable guy," Mr. Kerry said.



Mr. Kerry said Mr. Reagan "was, as he's been written about, sort of arm's distance from a lot of the stuff" on which he worked with the White House. He said as a senator he mainly dealt with Mr. Reagan's chiefs of staff and cabinet members.



But, he added pointedly: "I had quite a few meetings with him. I met with Reagan a lot more than I've met with this president."



Mr. Kerry recalled one long meeting at the White House in 1985 when he was a freshman senator who had just returned from a trip to Nicaragua and a meeting with the Sandinista president, Daniel Ortega Saavedra. Mr. Kerry brought Mr. Reagan an offer from Mr. Ortega to call a cease-fire if the United States halted aid to the Nicaraguan rebels known as the contras.



Mr. Reagan rejected the offer. "Well, he wasn't thrilled with the proposal because it was contrary to what they wanted to do," Mr. Kerry said. "I might add that the proposal, ultimately, was the foundation for the Nobel Peace Prize that Oscar Arias won."



President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica won the Nobel in 1987 as the driving force behind a Central American peace plan that barred outside aid to guerrillas and their use of foreign territory.



Mr. Kerry played down his role, when asked whether he was an author of the proposal he had relayed to Mr. Reagan, saying it was merely an "early, rustic" version of what became the Arias plan.



Mr. Kerry said he had been impressed by Mr. Reagan as early as 1964, when he was a Yale student and Mr. Reagan gave a televised speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater's candidacy. The speech "was better than anything else you heard from the campaign," he said. "It had a very strong impact. I remember it distinctly."



Mr. Kerry, who came to Los Angeles to see his daughter Alexandra, 30, graduate from the American Film Institute on Wednesday, briefly paid his respects to Mr. Reagan at the presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif., Tuesday afternoon. Momentarily cutting through a cordon of mourners, he saluted Mr. Reagan's coffin with his hand over his heart, bowed his head, crossed himself, saluted again and left - all in the space of a minute.

This is what you do when you have class, not make a huge sceen for the TV cameras just say your respects and not steal the thunder of the event.





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