Bob Kerrey

When Daily Transom first broke the story about the opening of Greenwich Village High School—a new private school founded by Vanity Fair deputy editor, Aimee Bell—little information was available other than an earnest slogan: "Work Hard, Be Kind, Take Risks."

But in today's Times piece about the high school, we learned that Ms. Bell's little project happens to be backed by some important names including her boss, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, president of the New School Bob Kerrey and his wife, television and film writer Sara Paley, actor John Leguizamo, and President of Scholastic Richard Robinson.

The Daily Transom asked Mr.  read more »

I can’t help but think of Bob Kerrey right now. In 1992, the then-Nebraska senator (and current New School president) was one of Bill Clinton’s two vice-presidential finalists, and conventional wisdom strongly suggested Kerrey would get the nod.

The reason was simple: Clinton was an inexperienced small-state governor whose Vietnam draft avoidance would be a major issue in the fall – especially since he was running against a World War II hero, George H.W. Bush. The presence of Kerrey, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran widely celebrated for his sacrifices, would inoculate Clinton against the G.O.P.’s ugly attacks, just as Kerrey’s Senate experience would complement Clinton’s gubernatorial resume.  read more »

It’s long been obvious that Bill Clinton believes he was wronged in this year’s Democratic primary campaign, his words and actions deliberately twisted and distorted by his enemies and their accomplices in the press to turn him into someone and something he is not.

Two months after his wife formally conceded to Barack Obama, the former president is still pouting in full public view. In an interview with ABC News last weekend, he was noticeably stinting in his praise of the presumptive Democratic nominee while making it clear that he has some primary-related grievances to air just as soon as this election is over.  read more »

Eliot Brown asked the New School's president (and former senator), Bob Kerrey, yesterday about Hillary Clinton's standing when, assuming she doesn't end up on the Democratic ticket this year, she returns to the Senate. In Kerrey's assessment, "She will be immeasurably more capable and more powerful.”

Here's some of Kerrey's explanation:  read more »

Bob Kerrey, the onetime Clinton family antagonist who now supports Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, believes that “if things stay the way they are now” his candidate will withdraw from the race sometime between now and June 3, when the primary season concludes in Montana and South Dakota.

He did say that there was no reason for Clinton to yield to pressure to get out of the race before then, even as a famous South Dakotan, George McGovern, renounced his support of Clinton and called on her to quit.  read more »

Kerrey—who called Bill Clinton ‘an unusually good liar’—is suddenly a Hillary guy.  read more »

The news that New School president and former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey plans to endorse Hillary Clinton and campaign on her behalf in Iowa is noteworthy for its irony. Perhaps no Democrat in the 1990’s was as persistent a thorn in both Clintons' sides as Kerrey was.

A brief rehistory after the jump.  read more »

Some more comments on Don Imus' return to radio that didn't make it into the print story...

Bob Kerrey, New School president and former U.S. senator, told The Observer he'd go back on the show. "Look he apologized and he paid the price. Did Isiah Thomas apologize yet?"

Democratic political consultant Paul Begala said he'd go back too. "I shoot my mouth off all the time. If there was a death penalty for that I would have lost my job a long time ago … I am Catholic, we forgive the sin when asked to."

Brill's Content founder Steve Brill agreed. "If you think about Imus' show and Imus' appeal for the last four or five years, I think it had almost nothing to do with making comments like that racist comment. I think he can be every bit as provocative without getting into that kind of trouble. For example, he habitually calls Senator Clinton 'satan'. He can do that. It’s fair game. It’s funny."

At long last, some good news for Senate Republicans.  read more »

Bob Kerrey thinks boosting the Democrats' chances of increasing their Senate majority is not a good enough reason for him to leave his job and run for office.

Talking about his decision, made public today, not to seek the Nebraska Senate seat vacated by retiring Republican senator Chuck Hagel, Kerrey told me a few minutes ago that he was less worried about the Democratic majority than he was about the country as a whole.

"What I feel responsibility for is the possibility of putting the country in danger," Kerrey said. "I do worry about the direction and don't like the direction the country is going in a number of areas." 

"The idea of increasing the Democratic majority is not a motivator for me," he said. " Because it is me personally. I cannot run just to increase the number. If that's all that's motivating, that's a very, very small factor."   

More after the jump.  read more »

Bill Clinton rallies support around a name he once sullied.  read more »

It looks like Bob Kerrey, the New School’s President since 2001, has backed off just a little from his earlier statements that he wouldn’t head back to Nebraska to run for the Senate next year.

This means several things:

1) Chuck Hagel is not running for re-election: Kerrey, who represented Nebraska with his fellow Vietnam veteran in the late ‘90s, had promised to write Hagel a check if he ran for a third term in 2008. Now Kerrey is saying publicly that he doesn’t think Hagel will run – which probably means that he got something approaching an iron-clad guarantee in private.

2) Chuck Hagel is either running for President or retiring from politics: If he wants to seek the White House, it almost certainly has to be as an independent. Given the shortcomings of the top G.O.P candidates, there’s a theoretical vacuum in the Republican race – but Hagel, who’s been branded disloyal for his war opposition, is unlikely to fill it (even though he would give the G.O.P. its best – and perhaps only – shot of retaining the White House next year). An independent bid would be tough because of Hagel’s modest name recognition and campaign treasury. A teaming with Mike Bloomberg seemed to be his most logical option, but did Bloomberg’s comments to Dan Rather kill that idea? Would a Hagel independent bid now be doomed from the start to Ross Perot ’96-land? Maybe, at 62, he will jut hang it up in ’08.

3) Democrats are poised to expand the ’08 Senate playing field: Nebraska is a red state, but Kerrey is one of the few Democrats who can win it. (He previously won the governorship in 1982 and Senate races in 1988 and 1994 and has never lost in the state.) The Republicans seem poised to nominate Jon Bruning, the conservative state attorney general, who had been planning to challenge Hagel from the right in the G.O.P. primary. Against the other Democrats who have been eyeing the race, Bruning would have been the favorite. Against Kerrey, he’s probably an underdog. Republicans have a lot more turf to defend than Democrats in ’08 – 22 seats to 12 – and Nebraska is yet another G.O.P. seat that the Democrats are primed to pick off. The G.O.P. will obviously brand Kerrey an opportunist and a sort-of carpet-bagger (remember how he flirted with running for mayor of New York in ’05?), but even if they beat him, they will have to expend considerable resources to do it.

4) The New School will need a new President: Is there another retired politician in New York who could take over for Kerrey? Doesn’t George Mitchell live here??

Some other interesting bits from my interview with New School president and former Senator Bob Kerrey that didn't make it into  today's paper... 

Kerrey, a Democrat, thinks that the Virginia Tech shootings do not directly raise the question of gun control, but rather of mental health on American campuses.

"This is a largely a university problem, not a gun control problem," he said. "This is the issue of in loco parentis. We have a significant fraction of undergraduate students who are going into universities and colleges across the country who have mental health problems. Maybe one out of five that are on medication of some kind."

He said that the widespread policy of keeping of students' health problems confidential from their parents should be revisited.

"All of us in higher education are really having second thoughts about this because that's the real question," Kerrey said. "This is really about how you govern higher education. I do not think gun control is the first issue."

On the suddenly news-y topic of gay marriage, Kerrey explained how he thinks Democrats should frame the issue, and used the John Kerry 2004 campaign as an illustration of how they shouldn't. 

"I think John missed an opportunity," Kerrey said. "A woman asked him do you think people are born gay or straight, and John didn't answer that question and that it is the most important question."

Kerrey said the lesson about the gay marriage debate is that Democrats need to engage social conservatives on their ground by a clear moral argument.

"I would recommend that a candidate answer the question saying, 'Look, I think God puts people on earth gay and straight.' I would start with that. It's a religious belief."  read more »

The former Senator has some questions about Rudy’s security credentials and likes Obama’s name.  read more »

Bob Kerrey moderates a discussion of the Roberts Supreme Court at the New School.

Joe Bruno will address delegates at CSEA's Annual Delegates Meeting at the Sheraton Hotel.

David Weprin calls on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage and hosts Volunteer Emergency Services Day at City Hall.

Stonewall Dems hold their monthly meeting at the LGBT Center featuring Leecia Eve, Jonathan Bing, Peter Hatch of the Working Families Party and a representative from the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

New York Log Cabin Republicans host their fall Gala.

The NYC Voter Assistance Commission offers free naturalization assistance as part of Voter Awareness Month at the Salvation Army in Jackson Heights.

U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao speaks to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy Alumni Foundation at the Sheraton Hotel.

Dave Mejias denounces Peter King's support for congressional pay raises at the Mineola Press Room.

—Nicole Brydson

Former House Speaker and potential presidential contender Newt Gingrich showed his compassionate side last night at the New School, discussing educational opportunity for poor people and ways to close the income gap.

"I am very concerned about the disparity of income in America between top and bottom," he said. "The difference is I think it's mostly a function of productivity."

Despite a couple of disturbances -- protesters were escorted out and a fire alarm was tripped -- the event, including a discussion with New School President Bob Kerrey, went pretty smoothly.

Afterwards, at a cocktail party and dinner, Gingrich told the couple of reporters who were there that he didn't intend to make up his mind about running for president until well into next year.

But he did volunteer that he had had some nice things to say about Hillary Clinton in a taped interview on NY1.

("She had the courage to say to the Left Wing of her party: 'that's wrong','' he told Domonic Carter in an interview to air this evening. "Any Republican who thinks they can beat her with a cheap and nasty campaign is crazy.")

As Gingrich also noted, kind words from him may be the last thing Hillary needs.

--Jason Horowitz

While most of Joe Lieberman's Democratic colleagues flock to his opponent, at least one prominent former senator is rallying to him.

Word from the campaign is that Bob Kerrey has offered to stump for Lieberman in the fall, which should, if nothing else, allow Lieberman to paint his coalition of political supporters as Republicans -- whose professions of admiration Lieberman can't seem to get away from -- and "independent-minded" Democrats.  read more »

-- Josh Benson

You'd think that after all the heckling John McCain endured at the New School back in May, conservative Republicans with Presidential ambitions might be a little wary of accepting Bob Kerrey's invitations. But not Newt Gingrich. He is scheduled to give a political talk about the "American Dream" at the liberal school on September 13.

Apparently the spirit of ideological cooperation extends even to the sponsors: The Milano School for Management and Urban Policy and News Corporation.

Ok, kids, get your orange signs ready.

--Jason Horowitz

So it gets a lot worse.

According to Jason, McCain could barely get through his speech - which was nearly identical to the one he gave this week at Columbia -- for all the catcalls, heckling and jeering from the graduating students.

When he got to the part about believing "rightly or wrongly" in his stance on the war, they screamed "wrongly!"

About 100 students stood up and waved the now-familiar "McCain does not speak for us" signs.

And when McCain got to an anecdote near the end of his speech about a Democrat friend of his who died, some of the students burst out laughing. (Seriously.)

Bob Kerrey, one of two Vietnam veterans on the stage, went to the microphone afterwards and told the students that they had witnessed "two acts of bravery": to an initial, harshly critical speech from the student, Jean Sara Rohe, and the way he got his own speech out - gritted teeth and all.

Kerrey also asked the students - and this is Jason paraphrasing - if, when the day comes for them to make a stand and show courage, heckling from the middle of a crowd will not suffice.

Some of the students, apparently, looked embarrassed at the whole episode.

Either way, this puts to rest our in-house theory that McCain's speech was essentially boo-proof: a war hero's war hero asking for civilized discourse over a rational disagreement.

Obviously, we didn't account for the mentality of the audience at the New School today.

Things got off to an interesting start at the New School graduation ceremony at Madison Square Garden, where John McCain is set to give an address.

Jason Horowitz just called in to say that a student who was scheduled to perform a song and give a short speech departed from her prepared remarks at the beginning of the event to deliver a somewhat ruder introduction than school officials were expecting.

After finishing her song - it was about world peace - the student laid into the Senator from Arizona, saying that he didn't reflect the ideals of the university, and objected to his support of the war in Iraq.

McCain was about five feet away at the time. He didn't seem to have much of an immediate reaction.

The student returned to her seat with her arms raised in triumph as the crowd applauded.

Said New School President Bob Kerrey when he got to the microphone moment later: "We're having fun now, aren't we?"

We'll bring you reaction from McCain - who used a speech earlier this week to call for civility among people who disagree over the war - shortly.

After the New School's announcement that Sen. John McCain would be giving next month's commencement speech caused an angry backlash, Bob Kerrey will tonight play host to a politician (and presidential candidate) more amenable to the left of center school. Delaware's Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will speak at the school tonight, though he is expected to steer clear of presidential politics. The topic for discussion, economic issues concerning India and China, is not exactly the stuff that is likely to stir any controversy, or petitions. —Jason Horowitz

The endorsements wheel keeps churning, churning...

Attorney General candidates Mark Green and Andrew Cuomo both picked up endorsements today. Green was "gratified" to receive the support of former Nebraska Senator and current New School chief Bob Kerrey (what his campaign called a "major endorsement), while Cuomo was "honored" to accept the support of former City Council Speaker Peter Vallone.

We congratulate both candidates on the new names they can add to their mailings, but we've got to ask: is anyone going to vote for Mark Green or Andrew Cuomo because Peter Vallone or Bob Kerrey gave them the thumbs up?

(Over at the Daily Politics, Ben has a nice description of the Green-Kerrey endorsement press conference this morning, during which even Green couldn't resist asking, does-this-really-matter?)

-- Lizzy Ratner

Was it enough for Vanity Fair to reveal that former F.B.I. official W.  read more »

Arianna Huffington will be trying on Freddy Ferrer's old platform as the guest of honor (along with Harry Belafonte) at the Drum Major Institute's annual benefit on June 8.

Testing the waters, perhaps? That blog isn't working out so well...  read more »

(Yes, Monday is the day on which we float improbable rumors. And Bob Kerrey was busy.)

The general feeling among GOP types we spoke to about Bill Weld over the weekend was more Bob Kerrey, less Bobby Kennedy.

But the news did put us in mind of a conversation we had with Weld during the Republican National Convention, where we found him leaning up against a wall during a Republican Majority for Choice event:

"I can't talk about it until after the election," he was saying, "But I've been out of office for seven years. I've tried to do something different every half-dozen years, so I'm over my quota."

We tried to get him to elaborate.

"Call me after the election," he said.

We told him we'd call after the election.  read more »

"I doubt you'll be interested in me then," he said.

But we were, and he didn't return the call!

In speedy fashion, the princes of the Catholic Church have chosen the German-born Cardinal Joseph Ra  read more »

Today's headline in the Omaha World-Herald: "Contradictory musings 'classic Bob Kerrey.'"  read more »

We in no way mean to throw cold water on the Times's excellent scoop that ex-Senator Bob Kerrey is thinking about running for Mayor, a story which brightened our Sunday. (Though we don't blog on Sundays. Sorry!)

But we did do a quick Nexis search of "Kerrey" and "considering," and it gave us some caution.

First of all, Kerrey was widely reported to be considering a 2004 presidential bid -- until the New York Times Magazine carried an article accusing him of war crimes in Vietnam.

Concord Monitor, November, 1997: ""I haven't made that decision yet. I'm widely rumored to be running" [for President]."

Manchester Union-Leader, July 1994: Bob Kerrey "has told at least one high-ranking Democrat that he is seriously considering taking on the sitting President in a 1996 primary battle."

Kerrey did run in 1992, but later said this:  read more »

"That was the problem last time.... I only threw my hat in. If I do it this time, I put a lot more in."

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has agreed to be interviewed by the bipartisan 9/11 commi  read more »

Bob Kerrey, the two-term former Senator and governor of Nebraska, is considering a proposal to start  read more »

In recent days, the conventional wisdom has hardened on theBob Kerrey story: Who are we to

judge?  read more »

During a press conference the other day, one of the twerpsin attendance asked Bob Kerrey if he thoug  read more »

Bob Kerrey's moment in the confessional box included thepenitential ritual that we have come to expe  read more »

For all its blowhards, highbrows and mega tuition bills, New York City academia doesn't necessarily  read more »

The contempt heaped upon Bill Bradley in recent weeks is a sure sign that he is a decent human being  read more »

(1) In Which Your Correspondent Makes an Unseemly Approach to Supreme Impeachment Manager Henry Hyde  read more »