POLITICS: The French Connection
Fund, John H.
POLITICS JOHN H. FUND The French Connection EMOCRATS ARE CERTAINLY TOUCHY about their presidential candidate's foreign connections. Not so long ago, John Kerry reveled in the continental...
...John and his wife are very committed in this way, and they are sincere...
...He transferred to a boarding school in Massachusetts at the age of 14...
...At the age of 11, young John was shipped off to a Swiss boarding school where he learned fluent French...
...and use its seat on the U.N...
...My phone is ringing from morning to night because everybody wants to know about Kerry...
...He views the United Nations as a positive force for good, once in 1971 telling the Harvard Crimson that he wanted U.S...
...Kerry "doesn't look like a Texan...
...But it is impossible to ignore the fact that France and much of the rest of Europe has gone gaga over the prospect of Kerry becoming president...
...troops to be "dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations...
...But Lalonde refuses to provide much detail about Kerry's time in Saint-Briac or his affinity for France...
...MAY 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 41...
...That's OK, either way I'm not too worried because I'm going to keep my campaign right here in America...
...If that's what M. Lalonde is willing to tell reporters without getting the "green light" from his cousin, one can only imagine what the rest of their conversations are like...
...He speaks fluent nuance when it comes to diplomacy...
...He won't tell us the name of the foreign admirers," Mr...
...He does say that Kerry and he share a common view on the environment...
...But not the south of France," he quickly corrected...
...I do not wish to harm him....I will show these cliches only if the family gives the green light," he told Le Figaro...
...I don't believe Kerry is a sinister Parisian Candidate, nor someone who has any connection with foreign governments other than hearing the voices of their leaders urging him to defeat President Bush...
...When asked how Kerry would be different, Mr...
...After Kerry loses, he and his wife can always start up that conversation again about moving to that castle in the south of France...
...He became paranoid about his French relatives, and skipped a giant reunion of 200 relatives in France last year...
...Parmentier said that the Democrat was "the closest thing that you will have to a French politician, with a certain diplomacy, a certain elegance...
...Kerry nonetheless quickly warmed to the thought, saying "Let's go...
...But sometimes she can't restrain herself...
...I could be in the south of France and buy a castle, but that doesn't interest me," she told Newsweek...
...As a senator, he spoke fluent French with his hairdresser at the trendy salon of Christophe in Washington, D.C...
...ERRY'S FRENCH ROOTS can be traced to his maternal grandarents...
...I'm even getting calls from French people asking if they can contribute to the campaign...
...People are going crazy," Constance Borde, the chairwoman of Democrats Abroad in Paris, tells the New York Sun...
...Suddenly, all things Europe vanished from the Kerry agenda...
...I know my cousin, and I know he has a clear view of the rest of the world," Lalonde told UPI...
...James Grant Forbes was an international businessman who lived in France and in 1908 built a great house in the resort town of Saint-Briac-sur-Mer along the northern coast of Brittany...
...I'm just a normal person, though people may not think so...
...I happen to be well-off, but I cook, I care about making the world a better place, like a lot of people...
...She met her husband, Richard, when he visited Saint-Briac in 1937 on a break from his Foreign Service duties...
...He transferred to a boarding school in Massachusetts at the age of 14...
...In the American tradition of rapport with nature, one should not waste, destroy or damage the world given to us...
...Liberals are equally anxious to avoid any suggestion that Kerry, in the words of a White House adviser, "looks French...
...Throughout his youth, John Kerry and his parents would spend summer holidays in Saint-Briac...
...Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball practically leapt down my throat in March when I suggested the Bush campaign would be teasing Kerry about his affinity for all things Gallic...
...His mother, Rosemary, was born in Paris and grew up mostly in France...
...Kerry is still fondly remembered in Saint-Briac...
...She has stopped telling reporters that her husband broke the ice with her by speaking French at their first dinner...
...He summered at the Italian villa he shared with his wife Teresa in the Como district of northern Italy...
...Bush told a rally in Orlando in March...
...His wife, Teresa, was told not to repeat her sneering aside that Bush administration officials "probably don't speak French...
...It's a scurrilous campaign...
...He is perceived as being non-presidential...
...At the age of 11, young John was shipped off to a Swiss boarding school where he learned fluent French...
...Perhaps most importantly, Mr...
...Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States, told the Sun that "Bush himself is deeply unpopular...
...Not so long ago, John Kerry reveled in the continental sophistication that he began burnishing early on as the son of a State Department diplomat...
...He opposed the death penalty until 2002, when he was gearing up for his presidential campaign...
...I'm stopping running...
...With that record, there is a target-rich opportunity for Republicans to poke fun at Kerry, starting with his boast that foreign leaders are rooting for him to win this fall...
...John Kerry is clearly American, but just as clearly he has fallen for the more "sophisticated" view of the world that Europeans hold...
...At the risk of drawing more liberal fire that I am somehow stoking xenophobia, let me note JOHN H. FUND that I have ancestors who hailed from near the French city of Strasbourg...
...It is a quasi-panthiest and religious vision, one of the sources of modern ecology...
...All that has changed in the wake of France's deci40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2004sion last year to stiff the U.S...
...They would certainly be surrounded by plenty of admirers.: John H. Fund is a columnist for OpinionJournal.com, the website of theWall Street Journal editorial page...
...You can't call a person a foreigner who was raised and born in this country," Matthews roared...
...Then his political instincts clicked in and he realized his French connection was showing...
...even his demeanor makes Europeans uneasy...
...Security Council to oppose U.S...
...Howard Fineman of Newsweek went so far as to claim "the family isn't from France...
...He sold his Italian villa to actor George Clooney the month before he decided to run for president...
...Last June, a Newsweek writer visiting the Kerrys at home found her defending her lifestyle and bantering with her husband about moving to France...
...intervention in Iraq...
...Its mayor Brice Lalonde is a Kerry cousin and was once France's minister of the environment when Socialist Francois Mitterrand was president...
Vol. 37 • May 2004 • No. 4
