Joel Mowbray:
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Iraq is easily this election’s dominant issue—although the jury’s out on how many votes it will sway—yet Kerry’s polling has barely budged. After all, not being the unpopular guy often counts for a lot in elections.
But this is Kerry’s quandary: he’s not exactly a supporter of the war, though he voted for it, yet he’s not quite antiwar, either.
Fudging positions on intractable issues where clarity can only earn enemies makes sense. But wartime ambiguity for a would-be commander-in-chief does not inspire the necessary confidence among the electorate.
To understand why Kerry cannot—and likely will not—capitalize on Bush’s Iraq troubles, look at the Democrat’s recent comments to the NAACP.
In a friendly forum where little was needed to elicit a standing ovation, the Massachusetts senator made a startling accusation—or at least it seems he did.
“We’ve got a plan to invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and protect our environment, so that no young American in uniform is ever held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East,” he said near the end of his prepared remarks.
Standing alone, it seems entirely possible he was alluding to the Gulf War or to some hypothetical situation in the future where a Saddam-like tyrant attempts similar hijinks.
The very next words Kerry uttered, however, made clear the intended meaning: “Values mean building a strong military and leading strong alliances, so no young American is ever put in harm’s way because we needlessly insisted on going it alone.”
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Leveling incredibly serious charges by implication is fast becoming a Kerry trademark. He did so after the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report—which actually exonerated Bush from charges that his administration had cooked up evidence—and kicked off the Kerry-Edwards campaign that way.
Here is what Kerry told the assembled crowd when he announced John Edwards as his veep pick: “And I can pledge you this: John Edwards and I would never think about sending young America’s sons and daughters into harm’s way anywhere in the world without telling the American people the truth.”
But what did Bush lie about? Al-Qaeda? WMDs? Kerry doesn’t bother explaining. Kerry, in fact, doesn’t even have the guts to say that Bush “lied,” but the implication couldn’t be clearer.
If Kerry’s recent remarks are any indication, a primary Democratic theme this fall will be that Bush has blood on his hands—for waging a war Kerry supported. Immediately after the release of the Senate panel’s report, Kerry told the New York Times, “They were wrong and soldiers lost their lives because they were wrong.”
Who are “they?” Factually, it would have to be the CIA, yet contextually, it appears Kerry was referring to Bush and Cheney. The article seems to back up the latter interpretation.
Four separate calls to the Kerry campaign last week seeking clarification were not returned. A pattern, perhaps?
To be fair, almost every candidate for every office throughout time has muddied the political waters. Try as he might, though, Kerry can’t be both pro- and anti-war.
But boy, has he tried.
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The same can’t be said for Kerry. Voters suffer migraines attempting to reconcile his criticisms that Bush should have submitted to the whims of France and Russia with Kerry’s supposed support for unilateral action. Ditto for endorsing preemptive action in between speeches where one of the biggest applause lines is, “In our Administration, we’ll never go to war because we want to; we’ll only go to war because we have to.”
Maybe Kerry won’t deviate much on the War on Terror. Who knows? But that’s the point.
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