Former Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry is backing former Vice President Joe Biden for president. WGBH Morning Edition host Joe Mathieu spoke with Kerry at a campaign event in Hampton, New Hampshire just a few weeks ahead of the New Hampshire primary. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Joe Mathieu: I'm struck watching this, thinking of you as the former standard bearer of the party. You won New Hampshire. What's it like for you to go in a room like that and talk to people about what's important right now? It's the essence of retail politics.
John Kerry: Well, it's a privilege. And I love the retail politics. I loved being here in New Hampshire. We famously had more chili served in the course of my campaign than any in history, probably. And the interaction with people is what politics is really all about. I'm not somebody who ever got stuck in the past; I went right back to work in the Senate and I continued on as secretary.
And the country's needs are the needs today. You can't turn your back on — at least I can't. There's no such thing as retirement. You can't retire from Democracy. You have to always be vigilant and fighting for it. And I've never seen a time in our nation's history, that I've been alive in, where I've seen such crisis of governance — such amazing lying and distorting and playing to the lowest common denominator of America and of human beings. We have to fight back. We have to change that.
Mathieu: Can I ask you, as a former secretary, what you would have done to handle, or I guess by extension, what a President Biden would do to handle allegations of targeting a U.S. ambassador that we have heard about in the case of Ambassador Yovanovitch?
Kerry: Well, I can tell you that I had the privilege of being secretary of state for four years, and Marie Yovanovich is one of the people that I relied on, turned to and promoted, I believe, if I recall correctly. It's painful to watch an administration not defend the people who are public servants, who are there to make things better for America and for Americans. I am shocked by it. And I thought Fiona Hill and the others who testified were all great patriots and showed people the quality through their testimony, which was simply extraordinary and emotional and heartfelt. We should all of us be very grateful for people like that. But we should not reward people who literally cast them out, don't defend them [and] prohibit them from fulfilling their constitutional duties. These people have made their own decision to stand up against that. But a lot of people haven't made that decision — John Bolton and others. So I think that this fight is one that's very critical for us to have a baseline of truth in our country. You don't have a baseline of truth, you can't build consensus around issues.
Mathieu: If I heard the message correctly in what you said and what Bill Sheheen said, is that pragmatic is the approach that wins. There are a lot of options for voters right now. You suggested most have not made up their mind.
Kerry: That's a really good question. Let me be very clear about this. I'm not just being pragmatic. I'm being pragmatic with a person who happens to also be a powerful progressive with a long history of standing up and fighting for things: Violence Against Women Act; Joe Biden taking on the NRA and having a reasonable measure of how we manage guns in America with the NRA [and] with the ban on assault weapons; Joe Biden's reforms of our prisons and justice system, making sure that justice delayed is justice denied, [and] he helped make sure we didn't delay it. We had the systems in place — victim witness programs, other kinds of things. I was a prosecutor [and] I remember that. Everybody thinking about this race needs to recognize: the difference between Joe Biden and several people in the race is not whether you're going to have health care or not have health care. It's a difference of how you might have that health care. And I don't think most Americans want to be kicked off a program they currently have. You will not even have a unified Democratic caucus to try to do some of the things that are on the table.
Mathieu: If it's a Warren and or a Sanders?
Kerry: Well, I'm not going to get into names, and people will figure out who's supporting what. That's their job and I don't want to come up here and draw a specific. But issue-wise, the point I'm making [is] you have to be able to advance the ball in a Democracy with some measure of compromise.
Mathieu: They say we live in a 'cancel culture,' Secretary. If I'm reading you right, then, are you saying beware the purity test when it comes to choosing the way forward?
Kerry: Well, look, I'm not telling anybody in New Hampshire how to vote. What I'm doing is trying to tell people why I believe —
Mathieu: But you know how to win New Hampshire. You've done it.
Kerry: Well, I think that's a question of being true to who you are and true to the Democratic Party values, which I think all these candidates are. But then it becomes a question of whose program is actually one that can be passed, or even with changes, can be passed. Nobody's program is going to be entirely untouched.
Here's an example. When we were on the precipice of having the entire financial system of the world collapse in 2008 [and] 2009 as Barack Obama came in. I was in the Senate then [and] I remember how frightened some of the federal officials were who were telling us it could collapse tomorrow or the next day. And they asked us to do a recovery and bail out, [and] fix the system. Joe Biden was assigned by President Obama to carry that order, to make that happen, to be the person who got the Recovery Act through the United States Congress. And we got it done. And I think that kind of experience is just invaluable.
Republicans trust Joe Biden, and people in the middle and independents trust him. And he has no dearth in his record of strong, progressive initiatives on behalf of people that are as strong as any the Democrat party's ever fought for.
