QandO

September 17, 2004

Kerry's Quagmire
Posted by McQ

Per the experts, and the polls, each candidate has issues which are strengths and weaknesses. On the Kerry side, its health care, the economy, and social issues. On Bush's side its defense and national security. The issue that could make Bush the most vulnerable, an issue which can swing both ways, is Iraq. If Kerry could frame the debate about how wrong Iraq is, how badly it is going and how poor a decision Bush made to go in there, he'd have a shot.

But as Charles Krauthammer points out, Kerry's record of votes and statements really leave him nothing with which to do that:

If the election were held today, John Kerry would lose by between 88 and 120 electoral votes. The reason is simple: The central vulnerability of this president -- the central issue of this campaign -- is the Iraq war. And Kerry has nothing left to say.

Why? Because, until now, he has said everything conceivable regarding Iraq. Having taken every possible position on the war, there is nothing he can say now that is even remotely credible.

Krauthammer takes us down memory lane with Kerry concerning Iraq. Suffice it to say that whatever Kerry tries there's a statement he's made or a position he's taken on Iraq which refutes it:

He now calls Iraq "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." But, of course, he voted to authorize the war. And shortly after the fall of Baghdad he emphatically repeated his approval of the war: "It was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him."

Right decision? Wrong war? Which is it?

When Don Imus asked him this week, "Do you think there are any circumstances we should have gone to war in Iraq, any?" Kerry responded: "Not under the current circumstances, no. There are none that I see. I voted based on weapons of mass destruction. The president distorted that." But just last month he said that even if he had known then what he knows now, he would have voted for the war resolution.

Absolutely no circumstances we should have gone to war as opposed to saying he'd have voted for it again even knowing what we know now. Two completely contradictory statements.

Is Iraq a part of the war on terror? Well, yes and no. Then and now.

Is Iraq part of the war on terrorism or a cynical distraction from it? "And everything [Bush] did in Iraq, he's going to try to persuade people it has to do with terror, even though everybody here knows that it has nothing whatsoever to do with al Qaeda and everything to do with an agenda that they had preset, determined."

That was April 2004. Of course, shortly after Sept. 11, Kerry was saying the opposite. "I think we clearly have to keep the pressure on terrorism globally," he said in December 2001. "This doesn't end with Afghanistan by any imagination. . . . Terrorism is a global menace. It's a scourge. And it is absolutely vital that we continue [with], for instance, Saddam Hussein."

The only consistent position Kerry has taken on Iraq is an inconsistent one which features the candidate adopting whatever stance is popular (or politically necessary) at the time. As one person mentioned, its a "weather-vane" approach to national security.

Interestingly, last week Kerry was back to considering Iraq a part of the war on terror:

Kerry temporarily returned to that position last week when he marked the 1,000th American death in Iraq by saying the troops have "given their lives on behalf of their country, on behalf of freedom, in the war on terror."

With these conflicting statements, stances and positions, is it any wonder why people are in the dark as to where Kerry stands on Iraq?

Couple his constant changes there with a record he's running away from (how often have you heard the man mention what he's done in the Senate) and you have a candidate who can't seem to get any traction because he doesn't stay with one position long enough to be identified with it.

Krauthammer explains his "Kerry theory of political expediency and multiple positions" this way:

How did Kerry get to this point of total meltdown? He started out his political career voting his conscience on national security issues. During the 1980s he was a consistent, dovish liberal Democrat: pro-nuclear freeze, anti-Star Wars, against the Reagan defense buildup, against the war in Nicaragua. And then he joined the overwhelming majority of his party in voting against the Persian Gulf War.

That turned out to be a mistake. And Kerry suffered for it. The very next year he had to watch as Al Gore, who got the Gulf War right, was chosen for the 1992 Democratic ticket, a spot for which Kerry had been on the short list.

Kerry learned his political lesson. Or thought he did. So when the Iraq war came around, he did not want to be caught on the wrong side of another success. He voted yes.

But then things went wrong both for the war and for him. What did he do? With Howard Dean rocketing toward the Democratic nomination, Kerry played to his deeply antiwar party by voting against the $87 billion to fund the occupation.

Two months later, with Saddam Hussein caught and the war looking better, Kerry maneuvered again, slamming Dean with: "Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe today that we are not safer with his capture, don't have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president."

Kerry is now back to the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," a line lifted from Dean himself. So we are not better off with Hussein deposed after all.

With factions in his campaign staff fighting among themselves for dominance, the lack of a strategy and a message are becoming obvious and critical. A recent NDN Poll (a Democrat poll) points out that among swing voters, 48% feel Bush has a clear agenda for the future while only 38% believe the same to be true for Kerry.

These dizzying contradictions -- so glaring, so public, so frequent -- have gone beyond undermining anything Kerry can now say on Iraq. They have been transmuted into a character issue. When Kerry went off windsurfing during the Republican convention, Jay Leno noted that even Kerry's hobbies depend on wind direction. Kerry on the war has become an object not only of derision but of irreconcilable suspicion. What kind of man, aspiring to the presidency, does not know his own mind about the most serious issue of our time?

Its a good question, and its an unanswered question. Its also the question which is most likely to sink any Kerry presidential hopes if left unanswered. The other unanswered question is can Kerry change the perception of his constant vaccilation and apparent inability to take a consistant stand within the next 6 weeks enough to neutralize the negative characterization he labors under, that of a "flip-flopper?"

We'll see. But in my opinion, it is that which his campaign must accomplish if he's to have any chance at all of winning.

UPDATE: If you haven't seen the RNC video on Kerry's multiple positions on Iraq, its interesting and illustrates Krauthammer's points quite well. Keep in mind though that it is an RNC video.

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