NYT actually has an official correction on their misquoting the $87 billion statement [View all]

It does seem significant that the authors were pushed to correct the story and add an official correction. (I did not see the article before the correction but it sounds from the correction that they did what many on both sides have done which was to make it mean it a completely generic flip flop. ) The ONE response to a heckler will obviously haunt Kerry forever. Here is the NYT link - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/us/politics/after-debate-santorum-finds-himself-on-the-defensive.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

Here is the correction:

Kerry, in the primary debates, actually was able to speak of the Senate in terms that squelched a Dean attack on his Senate accomplishments - a tough thing for anyone to do as today's NYT article itself explains here. In a debate, Dean threw out theargument that Kerry did not have his name on important legislation.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/transcripts/debatetranscript29.html

(This was the debate in SC immediately after the NH win.) Watching it back then, Kerry absolutely won this point when it was seen - he was not defensive at all and he completely won the crowd. That led me to use google to get the transcript.

In retrospect, a failing of his team was that - to my knowledge - they did not use Kerry's excellent response to get out the details on SCHIP and mental health parity. Kennedy had strongly praised his work on both.

As to the current race, the difference between Kerry (and even more so Obama) and Santorum in speaking of what they did in the Senate is that Santorum reeks of faux righteousness which rejects the very idea of compromise or looking for a consensus - the very thing he needs to describe to explain why EVERY Senator votes for things he is not 100% in agreement with. If they didn't, there would be absolutely no legislation passed.

I think it is harder for a Republican to have been a Senator than a Democrat, is that the Republican party is more radicalized than the Democratic party. In 2004 and now, most Democrats and independents can accept that "compromise" is not a great evil, while that most Republicans can not - or think they can not. Santorum could not have done what Kerry did in the quote which was to turn it around to not understanding how Congress works - knowing that he was indirectly citing a flaw Dean would need to correct if President.

Romney has in debate after debate made asinine comments on things he would unilaterally do as President and neither Gingrich or Santorum has successfully turned the comments on Romney - or pointed out that he really did not control the Massachusetts legislature. (In fact, when Romney hit Santorum on losing PA, he did not point out the obvious - Romney knew he would have lost MA in 2006.)

There likely have been many scholarly papers written on the generic Senator vs Governor contests in most open races. The fact is that each credential has some, but not all of what is needed to be a President. In 2004, where the Senators hit on lack of foreign policy expertise, Dean used all the traditional Governor attacks on Senators - distorting Gephardt on Medicaid by singling out specific votes, to arguing no executive experience, to the attack here on Kerry. 2004 is actually unusual in that it was a year where expertise in the issues that were deciding the election were those NO Governor would have had a natural strength in - and they were smack in the middle of the issues Kerry spent a career on.