Zev Chavets:
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For months, peacenik Democrats have been longing for Young John Kerry, anti-warrior. At NYU, they got him. Kerry sounded like a man for whom Iraq is a Vietnam flashback and to whom Islamic fascism poses no greater threat to America than Southeast Asian communism. Fighting in Iraq (and, by extension, elsewhere in the Middle East) is, he made clear, a futile mistake. As he famously put it more than 30 years ago, how can you ask someone to die for a mistake?
Such defeatist sentiments were sweet music to the Bush camp. For one thing, they have Kerry on videotape back in December contradicting himself on virtually everything he said at NYU. Better yet, the Bushies had been hoping for months that the pessimistic side of Kerry's split personality would assert itself. On Monday, it did.
With Bush a day away from center stage, Kerry's timing could not have been worse. The President was merciless. "The proper response to difficulty is not to retreat," he told the General Assembly. "It is to prevail."
The UN audience greeted this stirring sentiment with total silence. Most of the diplomats in the house represent governments that are rooting for a U.S. defeat in Iraq. But Bush couldn't have cared less. He was talking to America, where most voters are on the American side.
"We will stand with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq until their hopes are fulfilled," he declared. As for Kerry, he can stand with France.
In politics, where you stand (and whom you stand with) determines how you run. For reasons known only to himself, Kerry has chosen to stake out a position as the new George McGovern, a can't-do standard-bearer of American defeat and retreat. That leaves Bush just where he wants to be - the candidate of national resolve and optimism.
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