Why Kerry Will Win
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by James Carroll
Published on Friday, July 30, 2004 by the Boston Globe
IN THE CARD game of bridge, the word "convention" refers to a "coded bid." A partner names a suit of cards and cites a number, which the other partner understands, because of a prearrangement, to mean a different suit and a different number. A convention, in bridge, is a sly way of winning.
This week the Democrats have made a coded bid. Seeming to address each other, the nominees and their supporters have actually been sending a signal to another group entirely -- the crucial minority of Americans who have yet to choose between George W. Bush and John Kerry.
Faulted for a lack of clarity on major issues, whether the war in Iraq or the nature of tax cuts, John Kerry has been dead clear on the most important issue of all -- his determination to win the confidence of the so-called "undecided" voters, that 10 to 15 percent of the population who will elect the next president. Nothing demonstrates Kerry's seriousness as a candidate better than his decision to give primacy to those who straddle the American political divide.
This approach can seem to play to Kerry's disadvantage -- visible in the growing chorus of editorial complaints about his fuzziness -- because he has often been seen to straddle a divide of his own. The trap in this strategy, of course, is the foolish thought that undecided voters will vote in the end for an undecided candidate. That is the worry of many who still eye Kerry with skepticism. I believe they are wrong.
Kerry's capacity for nuance and the elasticity of his commitments over time are being held against him, but such characteristics in a democracy can define political genius. In addition to being firm and clearheaded, a leader in a nation like ours must be able to be influenced both by shifting events and by the elusive phenomenon of popular mood. A leader listens. Just as there is a difference between indecision and flexibility, there is a difference between rigidity and commitment. True leadership consists, first, in responsiveness to the unarticulated longings of the people, and second, in the articulation of those longings in the real-world structures of politics.
In the late 20th century, the world made an unpredicted leap toward a new culture of nonviolence. In the West, that took the form of a mass movement away from the nuclear terror of the arms race, with millions of ordinary Europeans and Americans imposing a new demand on governments, a demand that eventually was heard.
In the East, the rejection of violence was at the heart of the democratic revolution that swept away the structures of the Soviet Union, and because the people embraced nonviolence, the dictators did. Against all predictions, the initiative on both sides of the East-West divide belonged to the people, and authentic leadership on both sides consisted in responding to pressures from below.
That the Cold War ended in a nonviolent way is a triumph of popular longing that forced changes in government, not the other way around. The same can be said for simultaneous events in South Africa, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, and Central America. Primacy was with the people. Peace became the process. However incomplete, that is the most important political fact of our time.
The revolution of nonviolence has only just begun, but it will continue to require a dynamic partnership between the people and leaders who know how to listen to the people's longings, articulate those longings, and shape politics accordingly. This is the new century's agenda, the context within which the American presidential campaign is unfolding.
Even the immediate complexities of the war in Iraq -- What now? -- have their urgency within the larger purpose of a global move away from war as an acceptable means of resolving conflict. Iraq, Afghanistan, "preventive war," the "war" on terrorism itself -- all of these are mere detours on the road to a different future, or else there is no future.
The question that John Kerry now puts to the nation, referring to President Bush and himself, is a simple one: Which of us is attuned to your deepest longings? Which of us can shape politics, at home and abroad, to fulfill them? In transcending the rigidities that characterize the president and his party, rigidities that undergird unfolding disasters at home and abroad, John Kerry is demonstrating a capacity for attention to the popular will -- as it actually exists.
No one has ever lived in this era before. The future is radically uncertain. In America, the only absolute is our bond with one another. In the world, the urgent task is for peace. Sound-bite certitudes are useless. Old solutions are dangerous. Easy answers kill. In John Kerry, we have a leader who dares to face us with these difficult facts of our condition. We can trust him because in this way he shows us that he has first trusted us.
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James Carroll's columns against the Iraq war have just been published in the book, "Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War."
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company
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