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| SEN. BOB KERREY RETIRES | |
 January 24, 2000 
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Last week Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey announced his retirement after two terms. After this background report, Jim Lehrer talks with Kerrey about his future and the role of politics in society.
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JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, a conversation with Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska. Last week, he said no more, that he would leave the Senate next year after two terms. I've interviewed Kerrey at several key points during his career. The first time was in 1973, when he returned from Vietnam. He had been a Navy Seal, had won the Congressional Medal of Honor, lost his right leg below the knee.
BOB KERREY: No. No. JIM LEHRER: Do you have any personal bitterness about the price you paid? BOB KERREY: Right now, I don't. There are times when I do. Whenever you are unable to -- whenever you're frustrated, you blame something and so the logical thing for me to do is to come back to Vietnam, because it is the source of many of my current problems. It's certainly the source of my disability. And it's certainly the source of the bad memories that I have.
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| Things don't always get better | |||||||||||
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JIM LEHRER: I talked with Kerrey again in 1982. At age 39, in his first run for public office, he had just been elected governor of Nebraska. I asked him how his Vietnam experience influenced him.
JIM LEHRER: Do you think that -- I don't know how to put this, other than just straight -- do you think that you're a different Bob Kerrey sitting here now, than you would have been had you not had that awful experience in Vietnam?
JIM LEHRER: In what way? BOB KERREY: Oh, a middle class suburban white boy who had never hurt, who had never suffered, who had never felt any pain, who had never realized that there was suffering and pain outside of my life. And I saw it, felt it, tasted it firsthand. And I know it exists right now, as we sit. JIM LEHRER: In 1991, when Senator Kerrey announced he wanted to be president, I asked him why. BOB KERREY: I'm very worried about four more years of simply saying,
"Let's figure out what the polls are, let's figure out what the
polling data tell us to do," instead of taking the opportunity
we've got right now, post- |
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JIM
LEHRER: Do you think this war was worth it, worth the cost? 
And
at the same time, I feel there are some good things that it did for
me. But, you know, it's not -- the good things aren't worth it. I'm
not really sure whether I've adjusted well or not. I feel that I have.
I'm happy, and I can -- I feel comfortable around people. I feel comfortable
with nature, you know? I can still react sensitively to a sunrise, and
you know, so I'm not dulled anymore, and I'm not overwhelmed with guilt,
and I'm not overwhelmed with shame or bitterness. There may be a little
of each of those things in me, but I think I've dealt with those things
fairly well.
BOB
KERREY: It influences me in a number of ways. One, I know, as I've said,
it doesn't happen on its own. I mean, things don't always get better.
We had a secretary of agriculture in Nebraska last spring, and he said,
"Well, things will get better. They always have." Well, that's
not true. Sometimes they get worse. And when they get better, it's because
people make it better -- not government, but people, as a part of that
government, make it better. They just have the confidence, and they
roll up their sleeves, and they get to work, and they make it better.
Now, that lesson I learned in Vietnam, that you just can't expect things
to work out on their own. 
BOB
KERREY: Yes. 
containment,
now that we're beyond this cloud of fear that we're going to blow ourselves
up with nuclear weapons, and make fundamental change in America, particularly
with our structures of government, so as to be able to give us a sense
in the year 2000 that our children are getting healthy, and we're making
progress on poverty, that our economy is growing stronger, that we're
trying to do something about homelessness and despair in this country,
give us a sense, indeed, that we are moving in the right direction.