I know I'm the one person in the world who thinks this but...I don't think Kerry's position is muddled at all, just that his way of explaining it is. I'm not saying Kerry was right to vote for authorization, but I'm saying it's a defensable position IF he can explain it in common sense language. Enough with the "exuasting the remedies of the U.N." No one knows what that means! So here's what he should do:
Kerry basically thinks that Saddam should have been held accountable and that the President should have had the THREAT of force available in order to hold him accountable. That's what he voted for. He didn't vote for Bush to run in and actually invade the country like a chicken with his head cut off.
Now, we all know that Kerry was wrong to trust Bush with his authority, but at least Kerry's position makes sense to me and is consistent. However, what IS muddled is his explanation of his vote. I heard one of his advisors go on a talk show (forget which, sorry) and say, "Doing the right thing and doing the thing right are two different things." What a concise way of approaching this debate, it's that sort of simplicity Kerry needs to go after.
If he says, "I was wrong" now, the Bush team will go wild on his ass as a flip-flopper.
So what he should say is, "The vote was right, but it wasn't a vote for war. It was a vote for the president to have the threat of military action in order to flood the country with inspectors, find out whether Saddam really had WMDs, and hold him accountable to the U.N. resolutions. The last resort was to hold him accountable with an immediate and virtually unilateral invasion. There was a long way to go until that last resort and if I were president we would never have gotten there."
In other words - Kerry can get out of the flip-flopper thing by offering an alternative of how he would have used the authority by doing the things listed above. And doing so using regular, non-Senate speak language.
We can all attack him for his vote, but let's be real about the hard place he's in on the campaign trail and figure a way out of it.