Kerry: Iraq joke won't affect into 2008 elections

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry insisted on Sunday his "botched joke" about President George W. Bush's Iraq policy would not undermine a possible White House campaign in 2008. "Not in the least," Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, said when asked if the furor over his comment had caused him to reconsider a 2008 race. "The parlor game of who's up, who's down, today or tomorrow, if I listened to that stuff, I would never have won the nomination." One of the Republican politicians mentioned in a crowded field for the White House, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said he would not make a decision until September - a relatively late date in the campaign cycle - to focus in the private sector on trade policies. "We have lots of time for personal ambition," the Georgia Republican said. "And I think an awful lot of this early energy is wasted, and we ought to be focusing on, you know, how are you going to compete with China and India, how are you going to solve the problem in Iraq?"