Facts vs. 'Nuance'
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BY JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, March 9, 2004 2:12 p.m. EST
It's now been a week since President Bush acknowledged John Kerry as his opponent, and the contrast between the two men is starting to become clear. Bush's criticisms of Kerry are based on hard facts. From a speech yesterday in Dallas:
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My opponent spent two decades in Congress. He spent a long time in Washington and he's built up quite a record. Senator Kerry has been in Washington so long that he's taken both sides on just about every issue. Senator Kerry voted for the Patriot Act, for Nafta, for the No Child Left Behind Act, and for the use of force in Iraq. Now he opposes the Patriot Act, Nafta, the No Child Left Behind Act, and the liberation of Iraq. My opponent clearly has strong beliefs--they just don't last very long. . . .
Some are skeptical that the war on terror is really a war at all. Just days ago my opponent indicated he's not comfortable using the word, "war," to describe the struggle we're in. He said, "I don't want to use that terminology." He also said the war on terror is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering, law enforcement operation. I disagree. Our nation followed that approach after the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993. The matter was handled in the courts, and thought by some to be settled. But the terrorists were still training in Afghanistan, plotting in other nations and drawing up more ambitious plans. And after the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States of America, and war is what they got.
One very important part of this war is intelligence-gathering, as Senator Kerry noted. Yet, in 1995, two years after the attack on the World Trade Center, my opponent introduced a bill to cut the overall intelligence budget by one-and-a-half billion dollars. His bill was so deeply irresponsible that he didn't have a single co-sponsor in the United States Senate. Once again, Senator Kerry is trying to have it both ways. He's for good intelligence, yet he was willing to gut the intelligence services. And that is no way to lead a nation in a time of war.
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Kerry's attacks on Bush, on the other hand, have been pure ad hominem invective.<font size=3> That made sense when the Democratic nomination was still being contested and Kerry was trying to nail down the Angry Left vote. But what President Bush rightly calls "old bitterness and partisan anger" will be insufficient to win over the broader electorate. If Kerry hopes to win, he will have to show voters why he thinks the president is wrong and just what it is that Kerry is for.
But Kerry refuses to be pinned down. He's indecisive, noncommittal, nuanced. See if you can make head or tail of his explanation, in a Time magazine interview, of his Iraq position:<font color=blue>
Time: What would you have done about Iraq had you been the President?
Kerry: If I had been the President, I might have gone to war but not the way the President did. It might have been only because we had exhausted the remedies of inspections, only because we had to--because it was the only way to enforce the disarmament. . . .
Time: Would you say your position on Iraq is a) it was a mistaken war; b) it was a necessary war fought in a bad way; or c) fill in the blank?
Kerry: I think George Bush rushed to war without exhausting the remedies available to him, without exhausting the diplomacy necessary to put the U.S. in the strongest position possible, without pulling together the logistics and the plan to shore up Iraq immediately and effectively.
Time: And you as Commander in Chief would not have made these mistakes but would have gone to war?
Kerry: I didn't say that.
Time: I'm asking.
Kerry: I can't tell you. . . .
Time: Obviously it's good that Saddam is out of power. Was bringing him down worth the cost?
Kerry: If there are no weapons of mass destruction--and we may yet find some--then this is a war that was fought on false pretenses, because that was the justification to the American people, to the Congress, to the world, and that was clearly the frame of my vote of consent. I said it as clearly as you can in my speech. I suggested that all the evils of Saddam Hussein alone were not a cause to go to war.
Time: So, if we don't find WMD, the war wasn't worth the costs? That's a yes?
Kerry: No, I think you can still--wait, no. You can't--that's not a fair question, and I'll tell you why. You can wind up successful in transforming Iraq and changing the dynamics, and that may make it worth it, but that doesn't mean was the cause [that provided the] legitimacy to go. You have to have that distinction.
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Newsweek has a hilarious piece on Kerry's relationship with his senior colleague:<font color=blue>
Asked how it feels to have Ted Kennedy stumping for him now, Kerry says, "It's neat--pinch me; is this really happening?'' Yet when invited to dispute the idea that "Kennedy" is a dirty word, he answers by saying that any attempt to link him to Kennedy's record "is not going to work, it's so silly and infantile. I've been a deficit hawk since the day I arrived, so let them try.''
Kerry describes himself as "much more of a devolution Democrat'' than his primary-season protector. "My health-care plan is based on market incentives, very different from Ted's. They'll have trouble labeling me.'' Given the 93-point rating the liberal Americans for Democratic Action gave Kerry--compared with Kennedy's mere 88 points--this seems unlikely. So, I ask, wouldn't this be as good a time as any to say, "Yeah, I'm a liberal just like my buddy Ted and here's why . . .''?
Expressionless, Kerry responds this way: "They just want you to be authentic and clear.'' So that's a no? "I'm not stuck on the idea I have the only solution,'' he says, back on the subject of health care. "I just want to get it done.''<font color=black>
A Kerry fan might object that these are "gotcha" questions. An effective politician, however, deals with such questions by subtly evading them and staying relentlessly "on message." Kerry's evasions, by contrast, are so clumsy, one begins to suspect he has no message other than I want to be president.
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