The phone rang at the KVAL television studios Thursday afternoon. The caller, Eugene Mayor Les Anderson, was trying to reach John Kerry, Massachusetts Congressional candidate, busy McGovern campaigner and prominent member of the Vietnam Vets Against the War, who was expected soon for a taping session.
Anderson was concerned that Kerry, scheduled to speak that evening first at Lane Community College (LCC) and later from the EMU free speech platform here, might incite a restless audience to a thrashing spree on the mall.
When Kerry arrived, he returned the Mayor’s call, saying with his unmistakable Boston accent, “Mr. Anderson, none of my remarks will be so intended.”
A single sidelong glance at the 29-year-old former PT-boat commander would convince most men of that. Kerry is a polished politician, not a street-corner firebrand. Bearing a marked facial resemblance to Sen. Ed Muskie of Maine, the lean, modishly dressed Kerry shows his St. Paul’s to Yale education and the influence of a father who gave a lifetime to the American foreign service.
In the KVAL control room, technicians were getting set to tape an interview with their youthful anti-war visitor. Above banks of monitors with cornflake ads and soap commercials filling their screens, amid an array of dials and knobs, the face of Kerry finally appeared:
“It was the utter absurdity and stupidity of young men looking up at me with their guts hanging out asking ‘why’ that turned me against this insane conflict,” he said.
Kerry comes through with feeling, but it’s hard to visualize dark stains of coagulating blood on the pressed double-knit slacks he wars these days. It’s just that Kerry is no longer as much the deeply disillusioned veteran of the Mekong Delta as he is the bright Kennedy-style novice of the American political scene.
In that role, Kerry has toured 40 states speaking against President Nixon and the war, for George McGovern and peace. And in that role he is very much at ease.
If he was tired Thursday after speaking in Portland, Salem, Albany and Corvallis, Kerry hid it well during his opening remarks before about 100 LCC students.
He old them that 20,000 men have lots their lives needlessly since Nixon took office and they applaud. He told them that 300 millionaires paid no taxes last year and they share his silent frown.
But Kerry’s real message was, “We must get out and canvass for George McGovern if we want to reclaim our country,” This message was not as s passively accepted by the audience, a group geared to take to the streets.
A man in the back shouted his support for the “revolution of today.” Kerry let the man spit out may excited accusations, then patiently painted him into a corner. Suddenly the student said, “All right. I’ll cut my hair and knock on doors for your man.”
If the campaign meeting had been more slickly organized, one would strongly suspect the back-of-the-crowd heckler of being a plant. But with the informal disorder of the gathering, the conversion was written off as just one more odd occurrence during a week full of such happenings.
After leaving LCC, Kerry headed on to the University for yet another speech in the seemingly endless parade of them. When he finished, the remainder of this day was given to such things as taping a interview for a radio station in Klamath Falls and lecturing local McGovern campaigners on the techniques of canvassing.
But for a handsome young Yale graduate seeking to get ahead in the often mad race of electoral politics, such tasks are necessary. Every tomorrow brings a new state of the same.