Kerry, Swift Boat Kingpin Make Nice

Wikimedia/<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kerry02.jpg">Stlphotog</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Well, if lions and lambs can work things out, why can’t John Kerry and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? Politico is reporting that, in his search for support on a climate change bill, the Massachusetts senator is reaching out to an old political foe: the billionaire energy maven (and brillantly named) T. Boone Pickens.

Pickens has acquired some juice, earned or not, in the past couple of years as an advocate for alternatives to fossil fuels. But he was also the overstuffed wallet behind the Swift Boat campaign against Kerry in the 2004 presidential election—a campaign that’s become, in many ways, the model for today’s GOP and the Tea Parties. At the time, Pickens gave the Swift Boaters $3 million and offered another $1 million prize to anyone who could debunk the group’s attack ads. (He subsequently reneged when some former sailors did just that.)

Back then, Kerry was not a happy camper. “It is disturbing that in reaffirming the challenge you issued, your parsing and backtracking seems eerily reminiscent of the entire approach of the SBVT,” Kerry wrote in an open letter to Pickens during the campaign. “Say one thing, put out an allegation, then duck and weave, hedge and bob when your words catch up with you.”

But none of that seems to matter now. According to Politico, Kerry’s olive branch “suggests that he, Graham and Lieberman are gearing up to try push through a climate change bill before the looming 2010 midterm elections, which are expected to make legislating tougher.” Either that, or Kerry wanted to meet one of the few Americans who are richer than he is, you know, just to change things up.

In other Swift Boat schadenfreude news: Bob Perry, another big donor to the attack-ad campaign, just got socked with a $51 million court settlement for building shoddy homes—a practice that MoJo first reported on five years ago. Which means some GOP candidates and crazy secessionist governors might not be getting their usual campaign contributions from Perry for a while. “One can at least take pleasure in the likelihood that he’s suffering today,” said the Guardian‘s Michael Tomasky. “Not just because he financed a group of ideological hate-mongers, but because he also appears to be at least a partially lousy human being.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate