Overheard on the Hustings
Sen. John Kerry talks with metal workers union members during a visit to a metals plant in Chicago, March 10, 2004. © Jim Bourg/Reuters/Corbis hide caption
It was mid-morning at a Chicago sheet metal mill, and Sen. John Kerry was on the factory floor giving a speech to be transmitted via satellite to the AFL-CIO convention in Florida. The Massachusetts Democrat plowed through a prepared text that had been handed out beforehand to those of us reporters who travel with him. The candidate seemed tired. He'd been campaigning in Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi for a week and had celebrated his easy victories in those presidential primaries the night before at Chicago's Union Station.
I had been recording the whole event from a line I'd plugged into the sound system -- standard practice for such coverage. When Kerry finished talking to Florida and walked up to some of the factory workers watching him, I left the recorder rolling and my headphones on. That's because some of the most interesting things that come out of candidates' mouths happen when the official event is over but the lavalier microphones clipped to their shirts are still on.
Kerry began chatting with the workers. "Tell it like it is," one of them said, shaking hands with Kerry. "Keep smilin'," said another.
Kerry replied in a vernacular unlikely to burn the ears of union workers used to Chicago politics. "Oh yeah, don't worry, man, we're going to keep poundin'," said the candidate. "Let me tell ya, we're just beginnin' to fight here." And then came the Kerry kicker that would turn a fairly forgettable campaign stop into headlines: "These guys are, these guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen." Just a moment later, Kerry's mike was turned off.
I turned to Jill Zuckman, the Chicago Tribune reporter next to me, to see if she'd heard what I'd just heard. She had not, but she too had left her recorder on. She alerted other reporters, and by the time we'd all trooped out to O'Hare and got back on Kerry's chartered Boeing 727 to fly to Washington, D.C., Kerry's comment (which I transcribed for those who had not heard it) had become the talk of a planeload of laptop-tapping correspondents. I asked Kerry spokesman David Wade on the plane about the comment (he seemed surprised anyone had heard it) and to which collection of souls his boss was referring to as "the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen." Wade's instant reply: "the Republican attack machine."
Was Kerry's comment intended for wider consumption? My sense is that it was not. He in fact lowered his voice, as if not to be overheard, when he delivered his zinger to a couple of guys he hoped would vote for him next fall. Even so, Kerry refused to apologize for what he had said when asked about it the next day (he was too busy choosing a vacation destination on the flight back to D.C., according to Wade, to comment then on his overheard ad lib). What Kerry said was not a surprise -- he makes no secret of how little esteem he has for what his campaign calls "the Republican smear machine." What was a surprise was that he said it with his microphone still on, making it fair game for those of us who happened to be listening.
Perhaps by October, what Kerry said on that Chicago factory floor will seem quaint in relative terms. That's if this campaign's trend continues toward ever-nastier, tit-for-tat TV and radio ads from both camps. Still, it's the unscripted, supposedly private comments from the candidates that give us the unfiltered version of what's going on in their heads. And that's why I'll keep leaving my recorder running and my headphones on. This wasn't the first time Candidate Kerry was caught saying things probably not meant for broadcast -- and it likely won't be the last.