EDITOR’S NOTE: This article appears in the October 25, 2004, issue of National Review.
Once, years ago, I had dinner with John Kerry. It was almost exactly twelve years ago, on the eve of Bill Clinton’s big election — which is a sentence, by the way, that, if repeated in a pidgin racist Chinese-houseboy accent, produces a hilarious and meaningful double entendre. I’ll pause while you try it.
Got it?
Anyway, twelve years ago, in Boston, on the eve of Clinton’s you-know-what, I was sitting at dinner with a few members of the cast and crew of Cheers–at the time, the highest-rated, longest-running comedy on television–and our guest that evening was Senator Kerry. I was across the table from him, and it didn’t seem to bother him that I was 1) a Republican or 2) 27 years old because 3) I was the co-executive producer of the show, which he clearly thought meant something in the campaign-finance department.
The conversation turned, as it always did back then when I was out with my lefty colleagues, to Clinton’s impending victory. Who, they all wanted to know, did I think was going to be the next president?
Now, this was late October 1992, and the only living creature who didn’t know in his bones that George H. W. Bush was toast was George H. W. Bush, but when I shrugged diffidently and said, “Clinton, obviously,” what I got from Senator Kerry was an incredulous “Really?”
“Looks that way,” I said. “Although, apparently, Joe Biden and Dick Gephardt don’t think so. I heard that both of them have already rented office space in Iowa and New Hampshire for ‘96.”
The senator stared at me. “Really?” he asked, vaguely alarmed. “Really?“
“Well, no,” I said. “That last part was a joke. It’s going to be Clinton, Senator, I’m pretty sure.”
And with his mind at ease, the conversation turned to other things.
So naturally, twelve years later, I’m rooting for John Kerry to win.
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