This is a classic line. Bush should use it.
Mr. Kerry and his party have earned a reputation for not believing in America's moral authority.
Toward the Center?
Kerry proposes some tax cuts. It'll be harder for him to play against type on national security.
BY BRENDAN MINITER
Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays.
So John Kerry now wants to get to the right of the Bush administration on taxes. The merits of his plan are debatable, but that the all-but-official Democratic Party's nominee could propose stimulating the economy by cutting corporate taxes (even while raising taxes on individuals and small businesses) is illuminating. "Anybody but Bush" is turning out to be more than just a rallying cry for primary voters, but rather a statement of the party's primary principle.
But can Mr. Kerry rescue his party's reputation on national security? Democrats are already laying the groundwork for such a conversion. They're raising the ghost of former New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to show that some Democrats have been good on defense. And the controversy surrounding the 9/11 commission was designed with one idea in mind: to make President Bush look weak on defense, even while attacking him for being too aggressive.
The problem is that to be appealing Mr. Kerry must outrun his own and his party's weak-kneed reputation on defense--and that makes shedding a reputation for being tax-and-spend liberals look easy. Through opposition to the Vietnam War, to Ronald Reagan's military buildup and even to the war in Iraq today, Mr. Kerry and his party have earned a reputation for not believing in America's moral authority. Bill Clinton's indecisiveness--from pulling out of Somalia to failing to act after al Qaeda's attack on the USS Cole--did little to dispel this belief. There's a persistent belief that Democrats do not see America as occupying the moral high ground in international affairs, that a President Kerry won't be able to stand up for America because he doesn't view it as anything special. In the post-Cold War 1990s, such an attitude might have been tolerable, but not after Sept. 11.
Mr. Kerry could start by taking Howard Dean to the woodshed. The erstwhile presidential candidate is now supporting Mr. Kerry, and in this role was on "Meet the Press" a few weeks ago, arguing that President Bush "forfeited the moral leadership of the free world" by invading Iraq. This is the kind of talk that allows reasonable people to conclude Democrats are feckless in the face of terrorism and tyranny.
Liberating Iraq against the wishes of the French and German governments is hardly a renouncement of moral authority. It is true that not finding weapons of mass destruction is a blemish on the credibility of intelligence agencies, though not only America's. Let's not forget that the Germans gave the Bush administration the intelligence on Saddam Hussein building mobile weapons labs in rail cars and tractor trailers.
Mr. Kerry would have to make clear that he sees it far from immoral to act on imperfect information to protect America by extending her brand of freedom to tens of millions of people. He might even want to acknowledge that while America spends billions rebuilding Iraq, the fundamental belief in sharing liberty throughout the world--not the acquiescence of the French--is what gives America her moral authority.
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