It was a useless war, an atrocious war, a needlessly expensive war. And now American troops were dying daily in Iraq, prey to guerrilla raids, unable to tame a Middle East country that hated its guts. Besides, no weapons of mass destruction were ever found, biological or chemical or nuclear. Okay, Dean declared, America finally got Saddam Hussein, the mad dictator and killer. But America, the world was not any safer, Dean said. He played to America’s post-war apprehensions, and its leadership blunders.
And so Howard Dean enjoyed an immense popularity. It would lead certainly to the White House November this year.
His huge following rent the air with "Hip, hip, hooray!" and settled down for the critical homestretch – the primaries. Howard Dean had done his homework well. Iowa and New Hampshire would be pushovers as his advance teams stretched into every nook and cranny with a building war chest that spoke volumes. Handsome, voluble, aggressive, flamboyant, there was no stopping Howard Dean.
But Iowa and New Hampshire fell to the quiet one, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, a feat unequaled in the colorful history of the primaries. Kerry came in completely from the cold, struggling with the others behind Dean. He hadn’t blasted a single homerun the way the ex-Vermont governor was doing. And you needed homers to impress the extremely volatile votes of Iowa and New Hampshire, particularly New Hampshire.
What happened that the American voting landscape got transformed overnight?
There are many answers. The first one is that the war and America’s troubles in Iraq were no longer hugging the headlines. Domestic issues surged to the fore like the economy, education, health care, the problem of minorities, a wobbly financial picture, America’s soaring national deficit. In the end, these become the gut issues. The war could only be milked so much. The second one is that mainstream America was looking for a leader, a solid, stable father figure maybe who could calm down postwar nerves, a leader who was electable who could carry the nation with dignity and composure this early in the 21st century.
Another reason was that America wanted somebody who had already proven himself, not just in the temples of peace but in the battlefields of war.
Somehow John Kerry seemed to fill the bill handsomely. He didn’t have the bluster of Howard Dean and that was just fine. His liberal record was just dandy, fighting special interests, fighting Big Money, Big Oil, Big Government. Tall, hair graying, physically compelling, Kerry today does look like a president, his sure, flowing gait drawn from Vietnam where he was a lieutenant who had nerve and courage and intelligence. And most of all, Lt. John Kerry heroically manned a boat that rescued American lives. As Time magazine wrote on its Feb. 2 issue, Kerry had the qualities that matter, "a candidate’s faith, fortitude, judgment and courage".
Yes, he was electable, a word that means so much and yet eludes a full definition. Here in the Philippines, pardon me, no presidential candidate looks electable – not Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, not Fernando Poe Jr., not Panfilo Lacson, not Bro. Eddie Villanueva. Maybe Raul Roco looks electable, but he is hemmed in by the so-called vulgo mobili which has a corner on electing presidents.
Sen. John Kerry appears electable to mainstream America.
And now that he has the primary leadership in hand, his voice is beginning to boom, his gestures get to be lightning, flashes atop a mountain, his strut a purposeful walk through the Arc de Triomphe.
And then again, maybe, George W. Bush overdid himself. A hero after September 11, 2001 when he held America together after the terrorist attack on Twin Towers and the Pentagon, he so loved the language of war, every presidential sentence became a cannon burst. "If you are not for us, you must be against us." He started using fearsome metaphors like "The Axis of Evil" and rattled the sword of war against terror just a little bit too much. America this time sought the sanctuary of peace, normal times. Isolationist? Not yet. But America was veering there. The Bush rhetoric started becoming irrelevant.
And as Bush dwindled in stature, Kerry grew.
Time magazine put it rather well: "Kerry has written poetry and windsurfed and ridden a Harley. He has played both hockey and his guitar. It was meant to make him seem more human, change the scale, since he looms over the field like a tall dark cloud. For months, nothing seemed to work. He still came across as a classic Massachusetts Yankee, easy to admire but hard to like. The consolation out of Iowa was that maybe it didn’t matter if he wasn’t all that likable if he’s what the voters think they need."
Filipinos may not know it, but Sen. John Kerry was here February 1986. He was a member of Sen. Richard Lugar’s team observing the snap presidential elections. Our media hardly spotted or recognized him. That was the old Kerry, quiet to a fault, almost shy you would even say, reticent. He was just a shadow.
Now, he could be the next president of America.
Hubert was convicted at a time virtually the entire nation was a lynch mob and everybody wanted to believe Jessica Alfaro, the lone and so-called eyewitness. I too in the beginning was convinced the Webb youth was guilty. Hubert looked the part, son of a powerful senator, a member of a brat pack of so-called spoiled scions who reportedly bullied the neighborhood where the Vizcondes lived.
Until I betook myself as a journalist to study and analyze the case with a professional passion that eventually consumed me. And then I realized with a shock that the whole thing was choreographed or orchestrated. Jessica Alfaro was a confirmed and self-confessed drug addict, a congenital liar who was under the spell of a group of NBI investigators.
I had said so many times. I was surprised despite the vigor of my charges against the NBI, they never charged me with libel. But I had all the proof to support my charges. Despite an earlier commitment, the NBI never sent an investigation group to the US West Coast to find out whether indeed Hubert Webb spent some time there, inclusive of the time he was supposed to have killed the Vizcondes.
The whole case against Hubert Webb collapsed when no less than the US State Department, on the official request of our Department of Foreign Affairs, opened up a full-dressed inquiry on his stay in America. The probe was not only authenticated, but contained the seal and signatures of two Secretaries of State, Warren Christopher and Madelein Albright. Indeed Hubert was there during the period enunciated.
Did I say collapse?
Not in the court of Judge Amelita Tolentino. It did not. She simply ignored and discarded all the evidence gathered by the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Services (NIS), the Department of Justice. Even the testimony of the highly respected entertainer Gary Valenciano, a born-again Christian, to the effect that he met and conversed with Hubert in the West Coast, was given short shrift by Tolentino.
I saw all the US evidence and documentation, duly attested to as authentic. I saw a sack of photos about Hubert’s presence in the US, talked to his company boss Alex del Toro, others. I reviewed the evidence again and again. This is my passion as a journalist. I have to be right about my facts.
No, I will not appeal to the Supreme Court for understanding, for compassion, for leniency. I simply seek justice for Hubert. Is that too much to give an innocent boy who has suffered eight years in jail?