JOKING ABOUT THE NOMINEE'S PTSD?:

Teresa Heinz: Why John Kerry needs some of his wife's sauce. (Julia Turner, Dec. 11, 2003, Slate)

From the outset, Kerry's advisers kept a wary eye on Teresa Heinz. As the widow of Pennsylvania senator and ketchup heir John Heinz, who died in 1991 when his plane collided with a helicopter, she inherited around $500 million and responsibility for the billion-dollar Heinz family endowment. As she waded into state politics, she demonstrated a knack for the salty comments that make for riveting copy: She denounced Rick Santorum as "Forrest Gump with an attitude" when the conservative Republican ran for her more moderate first husband's seat. When she married Kerry in 1995, her association with the two ambitious senators—and speculation that the fortune of the first might bankroll the presidential ambitions of the second—made her even more intriguing than your average workaday heiress.

Journalists began sizing up Heinz when Kerry was still just "considering" a presidential run. In June 2002, the Washington Post's Mark Leibovich interviewed Heinz and Kerry and delivered a dishy take on their relationship, insinuating that Heinz was still very much in love with her first husband and prone to walking all over the second. Leibovich noted that Heinz still referred to John Heinz as "my husband" and that his photo hung alongside Kerry's in the hall. In conversation with Kerry, though, Heinz "snaps," "raises her voice," works up "a full head of rage," and "mimics Kerry having a Vietnam nightmare," just moments after he denies having any.

If Garry Trudeau were still doing Doonesbury he could revive that whole "manhood in trust" jibe that he never got to stick to George Bush Sr. and easily pin it on Cabana Boy.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 28, 2004 7:35 PM