Now pity for Mr. Kerry is immediately evoked by the circumstances of the mortgage. It is not as if he was taking $6 million to buy himself a G-V jet. No, he was using $6 million to pay the staff of his campaign and take out ads, all of this in anticipation of the returns in Iowa and New Hampshire. It added up to this, that returns from his campaign weren't large enough to satisfy his inclination to advance the cause of the campaign by additional advertising.
Now if he had lost out in Iowa, he'd have needed to reduce spending, which would have given his most resolute backers a challenge, namely to continue to support John Kerry at least to the point of giving him back his home on Beacon Hill. But if he did well in Iowa, as indeed he did, everybody could assume that the flow of money would not only continue, but increase. The publicity attached to the mortgage can only have served the cause of alerting his donors to the need to save not only the nation, but the house.
This is because current law denies to a candidate the right to repay past loans from money that comes in after the operative political date (in this case, the national convention in late July). After that, you can use only $250,000 of campaign contributions to repay old debts, and $250,000 comes to only a little over one year's interest on the Beacon Hill loan.
So it has to be cleared up before then, Kerry supporters are being told.
Campaigning for president in l956, Governor Adlai Stevenson crossed his legs while sitting on a chair on the dais, waiting to give his speech and a photographer shot a picture of his shoe. Lo! -- there was a hole in his shoe.
That shoe with the hole became a talisman of Stevenson for President. Tiny gold and copper replicas were made to pin on to your handbag or lapel. What it said was: Vote for this man who, though so straitened as not to be able to afford to repair his shoes, walks on day after day, wearing out life's shoe leather, in the cause of America.
Get it?
John Kerry for President devoutly hopes you do.