Within the last seven months, my beloved mother suffered a stroke and a followup event which left her with some trouble in finding words.  Her vocabulary is still enormous and her cognition is near perfect, but sometimes she can’t find the exact words she wants exactly when she wants them and the results of her intense effort to communicate are often unintentionally poetic and wonderful.  Although her phrases are not always conventional, I find that they strike nearer the heart of truth than most ”normal” speech.

The other day, I was remarking to her that my father, who is also recently home from a short stay in a nursing home, was being accompanied on his first grocery shopping expedition the same day she was.  She struggled for a diplomatic response to this earth-shattering news and came up with: “I guess it’s the old-fashioned get busy.”  Even though I can’t know exactly what she meant to convey with this expression, it immediately became part of my permanent lexicon.

 And, musing on it, I realized that it can be applied to no one more appropriately than John Kerry. I remember how worried I was about him after Election Day 2004 and how amazed and impressed I was when, following his brave but weary December video message to his supporters, he came up swinging, fighting with steady determination on all fronts, from his Kids First healthcare initiative to saving the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to fighting President Bush’s unwise appointments of unqualified cronies to working for real aid to families and small businesses devastated by Hurricane Katrina and the Bush Administration’s shameful negligence before, during and after that tragic disaster.  He spoke out to ensure voting rights and fair elections, to save Social Security, to call attention to global climate change and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, to further the health care proposals from his 2004 platform, and to call for government accountability in cases of corruption and abuse of power.

Senator Kerry did more than any other politician to ensure the November, 2006 restoration of Congressional power to the Democrats, campaigning all over the country for Democratic candidates as tirelessly and passionately as he had for his own presidential bid and contributing millions from his war chest to ensure that the best candidates, many of them Iraq War vets, had a chance. 

The evidence of his energetic and indomitable service as a senator and citizen is a matter of public record, though the media prefer to repeat right-wing talking points about skiing in Davos rather than recognize a senator concerned enough about  a balanced Supreme Court to call fellow senators from a summit of global importance to try to organize a filibuster to preserve that balance, the media prefer to obsess on a rare verbal gaffe and accept the White House’s twisting of it to make it look like an insult to the troops rather than acknowledge more than thirty years of unwavering and dedicated support and respect for our fighting men and women.

Since early 2005, the Senator has visited Iraq and the Middle East many, many times.  As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has talked with Iraqi leaders and leaders of all the major countries in the region, bringing his skills as a statesman and natural diplomat to bear on the immense complexities of the conflict and paying heed to the historical context which forbids a simple or isolated solution.  Most importantly, he has visited and talked with our troops and it is his deep concern for their safety and the well-being of their families that led him to propose a practical plan for bringing them home, out of harm’s way, for ensuring peace in Iraq and the region.  In the years since he first proposed it, we have seen the Congress and even the President coming around to it with agonizing slowness, though they have other names for it once they are for it, and others take credit for ideas already expressed.  But John Kerry does not do what he does for credit, he does it because it is the right thing to do, the right thing for people, for our country, for the planet.  Let the Beltway pros fight over who said what first, Senator Kerry would rather get to the goal.

In many of his speeches, John Kerry is fond of wrapping up his remarks with this phrase: “let’s go out there and get it done!”  He takes that Old-Fashioned Get Busy and runs with it, managing to do be six places at once and speak out in the Senate and elsewhere on every important issue while still finding time to be there for his constituents and participate in bike rides for charity and write with his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry a book full of hope.

Whether you’re watching or not, John Kerry will keep fighting.  That Old-Fashioned Get Busy is who he is.  You don’t want to miss what comes next!