British Expatriate Network

Road-kill time. Newsweek has already printed the first article on how bad Kerry's staffers thought he was to work with. It's gonna get ugly. This is brutal reading.

http//www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6414892/site/newsweek/

Sample -

"Kerry could be cranky. He was not a petty tyrant, like some bosses. He could be generous to his staff, who stayed loyal to him. But "he will whine constantly," said one top aide, quoting Kerry's bouts of petulance " 'I'm not getting enough exercise, I'm overscheduled, I didn't get the speech on time'—on and on, ad nauseam." Kerry's campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, didn't put up with much. "She cuts it off," said this aide. "She'll say, 'It wasn't anybody's fault,' or 'Whose fault was that?' " Kerry's personal aide, Marvin Nicholson, had to grin and bear it. Kerry had met Nicholson, 33, at a windsurfing shop in Cambridge, Mass., where Nicholson was working; he later caddied for Kerry at the Nantucket Golf Club. Now the 6-foot-8 University of Western Ontario grad was, in effect, his valet, serving his personal needs. The two men were close friends, but Nicholson was still the servant.

The morning after the Feb. 3 primaries, which vaulted Kerry into a virtual-ly insurmountable lead, the candidate was fuming over his missing hairbrush. He and his aides were riding in a van on the way to a Time magazine cover-photo shoot. Nicholson had left the hairbrush behind. "Sir, I don't have it," he said, after rummaging in the bags. "Marvin, f---!" Kerry said. The press secretary, David Wade, offered his brush. "I'm not using Wade's brush," the long-faced senator pouted. "Marvin, f---, it's my Time photo shoot."

Nicholson was having a bad day. Breakfast had been late and rushed and not quite right for the senator. In the van, Kerry was working his cell phone and heard the beep signaling that the phone was running out of juice. "Marvin, charger," he said without turning around. "Sorry, I don't have it," said Nicholson, who was sitting in the rear of the van. Now Kerry turned around. "I'm running this campaign myself," he said, looking at Nicholson and the other aides. "I get myself breakfast. I get myself hairbrushes. I get myself my cell-phone charger. It's pretty amazing." In silent frustration, Nicholson helplessly punched the car seat."


It gets worse.

If you think about it though, anyone would be cranky with the kind of schedule he had, working 7 days a week for a number of months and constantly flying from state to state.

I agree - if I had that kind of schedule and that kind of pressure to perform, and I was paying other people to remember those things for me and they didn't - I'd be irritable too.

Maybe Bush's handlers get it easier? Just leave George in the back with some cowboy movies or a bananna?

Well he was working hard campaigning & running for prez it must have been taking it out of him, all that touring about, age 63 and so on. So I think yeah you have to give him credit and if he wants his cellphone to work you get it working, he's the boss.

I think it goes with the job - you have to be an giant irritated ego at all times. David Frum talks about Bush in similar terms - not the hairbursh kind of thing but definitely the me me me tantrums. George Stephanopoulus spend much of his book writing about how Bill Clinton would have huge baby-like tantrums and constantly whine. Evidently every 4th word was the F word. So it wasn't just Nixon. I'm gonna love it when Bush leaves just to read similar stuff - he's a fratboy at heart so it' be interesting to read about the keg parties he had with Condi.


And Evan Thomas, one of his staffers, went on the Today Show to explain that John Kerry was so paralyzed with indecision that his campaign staffers took his cell phone away so he would stop calling people for advice

"Mr. THOMAS The Kerry campaign was even worse run than you think. Kerry was a bad manager. He could never make up his mind. He would dither and he'd second-guess every decision. They had to take away his cell phone twice, because every time they made a decision he'd get on his cell phone and start calling a hundred of his closest friends."