Sen. Bob Kerrey Defends Prisoners' Rights, and His Pal John McCain

Much to Imus’s relief, former Sen. Bob Kerry was in his New York City apartment this morning, and not wandering around the West Village in his bathrobe in search of a job.
 
In fact, Kerrey, who was most recently the President of the New School University, has recently begun tackling some issues that are of great importance to him. First, he highlighted the need for congressional oversight of secret governmental operations, like the prison at Guantanamo, where many alleged terrorists have been idling for years awaiting a trial that may never come.
 
“There are some really dangerous people down at Guantanamo,” Kerrey acknowledged. “But on the other hand…there are times when somebody needs to go to bat for somebody who’s doing hard time, and is no longer a danger to the country.”
 
Along those lines, Kerrey is also working to exonerate incarcerated people whose sentences might have been appropriate at the time, but who, because of a changed law or the passage of time, should no longer be considered a threat to society. For example, he went to bat for a woman in Kansas who got life in prison for selling an ounce of marijuana 20 years ago under the state’s now-defunct “three strikes and you’re out” law.
 
“The Kansas legislature changed the law, but didn’t change the penalty retroactively,” he said. “I told the Governor, ‘We think clemency is justified…but if you make a decision to grant clemency and something bad happens’—because you never know—‘we’ll provide the political cover you’re going to need.’”
 
Imus lamented that Kerrey, also a former Governor of Nebraska, is no longer in public service, and swore he’d vote for the Democrat even though he does not agree with some of his “namby pamby” ideas. Prodded to be more specific on which ideas, exactly, were of the “namby pamby” nature, Imus said, “I can’t think of any,” and changed the subject to Senator John McCain’s hawkish views on U.S. involvement in Libya.  
 
“John has had a set of experiences over the last 40 or 50 years that caused him to have very strong feelings” about uprisings against despots, Kerrey said. Though he conceded, “Two wars right now is enough,” Kerrey said he admires McCain’s position, and his honesty. “It’s right for the United States of America to put itself on the side of people who are trying to overthrow a dictatorship.”
 
To Imus’s point that we have no idea who these so-called “rebels” are, Kerrey admitted, “That’s a huge problem.”
 
So is figuring out who will represent the Republican Party in the 2012 presidential election. Kerrey has been fascinated by the ascent of Donald Trump, and imagined a scenario where New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s chief-of-staff delivers some news to his boss.
 
“The good news is that 41 percent of Americans want a New Yorker to be president,” Kerrey said. “The bad news is, it’s Donald Trump.”
 
It’s too bad, in Kerrey’s opinion, that some other “strong” candidates, like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, won’t have the chance to run. As he ticked off Bush’s formidable traits—he’d easily win Florida’s 29 electoral votes; he speaks Spanish; his name is strong—Imus interjected, “His brother is a moron.”
 
Without missing a beat, Kerrey shot back, “Even there, people would say, ‘This is the smart one.’”
 
Which is something that has never been said about either Imus brother.
 
-Julie Kanfer