Kerrey Suggests Focus Should Be Solely on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

Former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey didn’t know Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head and gravely wounded at a public event in Tucson, Arizona on Saturday, but like countless other Americans, is struck by the remarkable nature of her life.
 
“The more I read about her, the more I learn about her, the more I like her and the more I hope she can somehow, miraculously recover,” he told Imus.
 
Giffords, a Democrat who had just started her third term last week and is married to an astronaut, had received death threats in the past, as many public figures do. “I don’t know how much of it’s connected to the sort of caustic rhetoric in politics today,” Kerrey said. “It’s always been a bit dangerous to express your opinion on any subject the public cares deeply about.”
 
Kerrey emphasized focusing on Giffords as a person throughout this ordeal, rather than getting caught up in the media hoopla over every other vaguely connected issue. “If we can just stay with Gabby Giffords for a while, and care about her, maybe the rhetoric will change,” Kerrey said. “Maybe this will be good for politics.”
 
A Second Amendment-supporting, so-called “Blue Dog” Democrat, Giffords, who voted in favor of the health care bill last spring, represents Arizona’s 8^th Congressional District, which borders Mexico and has more than seen its share of immigration problems.
 
“It is Ground Zero for the immigration debate,” Kerrey noted. “There’s tremendous pressure on ranchers and businesspeople down there, and the community’s been torn apart by the debate, and it’s contentious. And by contentious, I mean it can get violent.”
 
Without sounding insensitive, Kerrey proposed this could be an opportunity, once things calm down, for Congress to “suck it up” and do something comprehensive about immigration policy, so that it’s no longer left to the states.
 
As he watched the events unfold on Saturday, Imus, much to his own surprise, had asked his wife and son to quiet down so that he could hear President Obama’s comments on the matter. “That may have been the first time,” he joked.
 
Kerrey had been equally interested in what elected officials had to say, and praised House Speak John Boehner’s remarks on the incident, where six people, including Federal Judge John Roll, were killed, and 14 more were injured.
 
“I’m not a guy who sits around and listens to Boehner very much either, but I thought what he said was quite good, and quite constructive,” Kerrey said, and cautioned Congress from postponing business in the House, as they have done this week, for too long.
 
Imus thanked Kerrey for providing a reasonable perspective on the heartbreaking events of this past weekend, but was less thrilled to learn that Kerrey’s tenure as president of The New School University had recently ended, and that the esteemed former lawmaker was pretty much just hanging around his apartment in his pajamas all day.
 
Which, for the record, Kerrey agreed “is an unpleasant picture.”
 
-Julie Kanfer