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KERRY BLOWING ELECTION
By Martin Schram
Privately, but no longer quietly, Democrats are beginning to despair.
They cannot fathom why their man, John Kerry, cannot seem to fathom how easy it should be to put President Bush away, seize the high ground and take command of the issues of the war on Iraq and the war on terror.
They see polls showing that Americans disapprove of the president's handling of Iraq and the war on terror. They see that three years after 9-11, and two years after Bush turned away from al-Qaida and focused on Iraq, al-Qaida has been allowed to get stronger again. So strong that Bush's Department of Homeland Security had to declare that the United States is again under a high state of alert -- because al-Qaida is determined and able to strike us again.
Democrats despair because, given all of that, a majority of America's voters still tell pollsters they believe that Bush, not Kerry, can better command the war on terror. And mainly, the Democrats privately despair because they know why the people feel that way. They know it is because Kerry has been pathetically unable to answer, clearly and forthrightly, the simplest questions about the war in Iraq and the war on terror. Kerry cannot explain just what he would have done and what he will do now to better command and win the unwon war on terror.
Democrats say privately they don't know what is wrong with Kerry. Here is what's wrong: The Democratic presidential nominee has no clearly defined conceptual framework that is the basis of what he thinks about the war on terror and the war in Iraq.
Here's the conceptual framework that Kerry should internalize until it becomes the bedrock and basis for all of his responses on these issues: America has become less safe due to President Bush's egregious mistakes, misjudgments and mismanagement of the war on terror. Bush made the classic blunder of diverting U.S. military forces, economic resources and diplomatic goodwill away from the war to crush al Qaeda before that war was won -- diverted them into a new war to topple Iraq's evil dictator before we had accomplished our mission to vanquish the evildoer who attacked the United States mainland.
Without that conceptual framework as a foundation, Kerry has been despairingly unable to clearly and forthrightly answer even the simple question a reporter put to him during a photo op moment at the rim of the Grand Canyon.
Here's what Kerry was asked: If you knew at the time the Senate voted on the resolution authorizing the president to go to war in Iraq all that you now know, would you still have voted for the resolution?
Here's what Kerry should have answered: "If we had all known back then what we now know, there is absolutely no way that the Senate would have passed that resolution. I wouldn't have voted for it. Most of my fellow senators wouldn't have voted for it. If we had known that we were being selectively fed portions of cooked intelligence, that we wouldn't find that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that made him an imminent threat to us, that we'd rush to war without a plan to win the peace -- plunge Iraq into a civil war that could create a potential new haven for Islamic terrorists -- that resolution would never have been brought up for a vote!"
But here is what Kerry actually did answer. Kerry answered that, yes, he would have voted for the resolution anyway. "I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," Kerry added. Which was not just a lame and lousy answer, it was untruthful. But at least it was better than what he once said when a similar question prompted him to forthrightly declare: "You bet I might have."
"It's frustrating as hell," said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., as quoted in the New York Times. He said Kerry is being "asked to explain Bush's failure through his own vote. I saw a headline that said 'Kerry Would Have Gone to War.' That's bull. He wouldn't have. Not the way Bush did."
Kerry's problem is that he has been spooked by Bush's political basher-in-chief, Karl Rove, who so successfully painted Kerry into the political landscape as a flip-flopper that every time Kerry is asked that perfectly fair question, all he thinks is: Oh-oh! Gotta be sure I don't look like I'm flip-flopping!
So Kerry gives another knee-jerk nuanced response. But all that the people want to hear is straight talk. From someone. Just once.
Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service. |
