Kerryism of the DayThe senator's caveats and curlicues.

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Kerry: ^{1 2 3} I think you ought to have a certain amount of time to collect your own recollections, write your own history⁴, but I think it's basically the property of the American people, and it ought to fast be put available in a library⁵.

Question: By the way, it makes me want to ask, I read—

Kerry: [interjects] ^{6 7 8 9}.

—C-SPAN interview, June 3, 2004, on public access to presidential records

[1] Within a certain number of years

[2] or pretty quickly after you leave the presidency

[3] almost

[4] and so forth

[5] or in some fashion

[6] With the exception, obviously, of national security pieces

[7] or something that's critical to, you know, protect some source

[8] or method

[9] or something

Kerry version:

Kerry: I think that within a certain number of years, or almost pretty quickly after you leave the presidency, I think you ought to have a certain amount of time to collect your own recollections, write your own history and so forth, but I think it's basically the property of the American people, and it ought to fast be put available in a library or in some fashion.

Question: By the way, it makes me want to ask, I read—

Kerry: With the exception, obviously, of national security pieces, or something that's critical to, you know, protect some source or method or something.

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William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War. Follow him on Twitter here.

Photograph of John Kerry by Marc Serota/Reuters.

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  The senator's caveats and curlicues.
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