That hot day in the summer of 1988 is seared, seared in John Kerry’s memory:
Climate change is an issue that is personal to me, and it has been since the 1980s, when we were organizing the very first climate hearings in the Senate…. Al Gore, Tim Wirth, and a group of us organized the first hearings in the Senate on this, 1988. We heard Jim Hansen sit in front of us and tell us it’s happening now, 1988.
Kerry has told this story before, repeatedly in fact. For example, in 2009 he “recalled”:
On a sweltering June day, some Senate staff opened up the windows and drove home the point for everyone sweating in their seats during Dr. James Hansen’s historic and tragically prescient testimony.
A climate change hearing did occur in late June of 1988; James Hansen did testify; and, in a foreshadowing of future gimmickry and efforts to mislead, Tim Werth did open the window for effect. However, as Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler shows, Kerry wasn’t present, nor did he organize the hearing. (Al Gore wasn’t involved either, though he organized a hearing for Hansen in 1982 in the House).
Kessler describes Kerry as “going all Brian Williams” with this fib. But before Williams was falsely placing himself at the center of military action he wasn’t quite present for, Kerry was doing the same thing.
Kerry’s fictitious “Christmas in Cambodia” — an account of fictitious mission that Kerry insisted was “seared, seared” in his memory — is the best example, but not the only one. During the 2004 campaign The Swiftvets showed several respects in which Kerry was dishonest about his service in Vietnam.
Kessler awards Kerry four pinocccios (the maximum number) for his latest fib. Kerry deserves this award on a lifetime basis.
There are many reason for alarm about the Obama administration’s nuclear negotiations with Iran. Though it’s not the biggest concern, the fact our lead negotiator is a serial fabulist makes the list.
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