Naturalized-Texan
11-14-2004, 09:32 AM
On the trail of Kerry's failed dream (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11/14/on_the_trail_of_kerrys_failed_dream?mode=PF)
On the afternoon of Aug. 9, John F. Kerry stood on the lip of the Grand Canyon, about to make one of the biggest mistakes of his three-year quest for the presidency. A stiff wind was blowing across the canyon, and Kerry, whose hearing was damaged by gun blasts in Vietnam, had trouble understanding some of the questions being thrown his way. But he pressed on, coughing from the pollen blowing on the breeze.
Would Kerry have voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, one reporter asked, even if he knew then that Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction? "Yes, I would have voted for the authority; I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," Kerry replied, as aides stood by, dumbfounded.
Kerry's answer ricocheted around the political world. Faced with the revelation that almost all the prewar arguments for invading Iraq were wrong -- the existence of weapons of mass destruction, close links to Al Qaeda -- President Bush had nonetheless insisted that he would do nothing differently. And he had been challenging Kerry to do the same, hoping to catch the Democrat changing his position on the unpopular war.
The senator explained to aides that part of the question had been lost in the wind; he thought he was answering a variation on the same basic query he'd been asked countless times: Was it right to give Bush the authority to go to war against Iraq? Kerry had simply given his standard "yes," with the proviso that he would have "done this very differently from the way President Bush has" -- yet the misunderstanding now muddied Kerry's message.
Worried advisers briefly considered issuing a clarification, but feared it might further feed Republican efforts to portray Kerry as a "flip-flopper."
Meanwhile, back in Washington, the Bush campaign pounced: Kerry now agrees with the president! Bush media strategist Mark McKinnon crowed about Kerry's "forced error," while the president repeated Kerry's answer over and over on the campaign trail and the GOP later advertised the Democrat's varied Iraq statements. "How can John Kerry protect us," the narrator in those ads intoned, "when he doesn't even know where he stands?"
Now, as Kerry campaign strategists try to fathom his Nov. 2 loss, one word emerges out of the rubble: war. History suggested the difficulties of beating a wartime president, even one with a job approval rating under 50 percent. But Kerry's own tortured relationship to war, dating to his youth, enabled the GOP to portray him as weak and inconsistent.
On Vietnam, Kerry had been both war hero and antiwar protester: Angry veterans were able to turn those contrasting roles into an attack on the candidate's character with a $25 million dollar ad campaign in swing states.
On Iraq, Kerry broke from a Senate record of opposing controversial military interventions -- in the 1980s, he fought President Reagan's involvement in Central America; in 1991 he voted against the Persian Gulf War -- to support a 2002 resolution authorizing Bush to use force against Saddam Hussein. But afterward he criticized the invasion and voted against a bill funding troops there.
Kerry was his own handler on Iraq, aides said, and he seemed to draw on his Vietnam experience. "He had a deep, personal aversion to saying plainly that Iraq was a mistake and [that] he would not have gone to war," said one adviser, explaining that Kerry was concerned about the impact on troops in the field. "Coming to grips with that truth, I think that was probably his biggest problem."
The senator firmly believed he was being consistent -- voting yes on the resolution to give the president the clout to resume inspections, but warning Bush not to move hastily. At one point, when aides tried to coax him into a simpler message, he spread papers on the floor to show how the fine points of his arguments fit.
{Much more at the link above.}
On the afternoon of Aug. 9, John F. Kerry stood on the lip of the Grand Canyon, about to make one of the biggest mistakes of his three-year quest for the presidency. A stiff wind was blowing across the canyon, and Kerry, whose hearing was damaged by gun blasts in Vietnam, had trouble understanding some of the questions being thrown his way. But he pressed on, coughing from the pollen blowing on the breeze.
Would Kerry have voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, one reporter asked, even if he knew then that Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction? "Yes, I would have voted for the authority; I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," Kerry replied, as aides stood by, dumbfounded.
Kerry's answer ricocheted around the political world. Faced with the revelation that almost all the prewar arguments for invading Iraq were wrong -- the existence of weapons of mass destruction, close links to Al Qaeda -- President Bush had nonetheless insisted that he would do nothing differently. And he had been challenging Kerry to do the same, hoping to catch the Democrat changing his position on the unpopular war.
The senator explained to aides that part of the question had been lost in the wind; he thought he was answering a variation on the same basic query he'd been asked countless times: Was it right to give Bush the authority to go to war against Iraq? Kerry had simply given his standard "yes," with the proviso that he would have "done this very differently from the way President Bush has" -- yet the misunderstanding now muddied Kerry's message.
Worried advisers briefly considered issuing a clarification, but feared it might further feed Republican efforts to portray Kerry as a "flip-flopper."
Meanwhile, back in Washington, the Bush campaign pounced: Kerry now agrees with the president! Bush media strategist Mark McKinnon crowed about Kerry's "forced error," while the president repeated Kerry's answer over and over on the campaign trail and the GOP later advertised the Democrat's varied Iraq statements. "How can John Kerry protect us," the narrator in those ads intoned, "when he doesn't even know where he stands?"
Now, as Kerry campaign strategists try to fathom his Nov. 2 loss, one word emerges out of the rubble: war. History suggested the difficulties of beating a wartime president, even one with a job approval rating under 50 percent. But Kerry's own tortured relationship to war, dating to his youth, enabled the GOP to portray him as weak and inconsistent.
On Vietnam, Kerry had been both war hero and antiwar protester: Angry veterans were able to turn those contrasting roles into an attack on the candidate's character with a $25 million dollar ad campaign in swing states.
On Iraq, Kerry broke from a Senate record of opposing controversial military interventions -- in the 1980s, he fought President Reagan's involvement in Central America; in 1991 he voted against the Persian Gulf War -- to support a 2002 resolution authorizing Bush to use force against Saddam Hussein. But afterward he criticized the invasion and voted against a bill funding troops there.
Kerry was his own handler on Iraq, aides said, and he seemed to draw on his Vietnam experience. "He had a deep, personal aversion to saying plainly that Iraq was a mistake and [that] he would not have gone to war," said one adviser, explaining that Kerry was concerned about the impact on troops in the field. "Coming to grips with that truth, I think that was probably his biggest problem."
The senator firmly believed he was being consistent -- voting yes on the resolution to give the president the clout to resume inspections, but warning Bush not to move hastily. At one point, when aides tried to coax him into a simpler message, he spread papers on the floor to show how the fine points of his arguments fit.
{Much more at the link above.}