In the summer of 2002 I became convinced that Al Gore would not be the Democrats' strongest candidate for 2004. Even though I had wanted him to run for 're-election', I decided we'd be on firmer ground for beating Bush by not simply trying to repeat 2000. So I began looking around for another candidate.
Hillary Clinton wouldn't do, I felt, because she would be just too divisive in the general election. John Kerry was uppermost in my mind; I remember being wowed by his 1991 speech opposing the Persian Gulf War Resolution, and thinking at the time: 'this guy is gonna make a great Presidential candidate, someday.'
My admiration for Kerry grew over the years as he proved himself one of the brightest and most hard-working Democratic Senators on Capitol Hill as well as one of our more-gifted speakers. He was strong on domestic and foreign policy issues.
But there was one question in my mind about Kerry, and that was the 'transparent political ambition' he got tagged with. That was the only negative about Kerry in my mind. Was it an unfair characterization from the punditry? Or was there some truth to it? Was Kerry willing to take principled, but unpopular stands on issues of great national importance? His vote on the Persian Gulf War seemed to say he could. But that was a long time ago. The late summer and fall of 2002 provided an excellent opportunity to answer those questions once and for all.
During that run-up to the war, I was impressed by Kerry's resolve. When other Democrats were weak in the knees, hoping to "get the war authorization behind us" in order to move the focus to domestic affairs for the fall 2002 elections, Kerry was loudly and openly questioning the rush to war.
In Kerry's September 6, 2002 New York Times Op-Ed, Kerry hewed to a nuanced argument, yet made a case for opposing the war authorization:
For the sake of our country, the legitimacy of our cause and our ultimate success in Iraq, the administration must seek advice and approval from Congress, laying out the evidence and making the case.
Between September 6th and October 9th, though, something changed. Kerry kept mouthing the same argument, but lost his resolve when it came to opposing the resolution. He ended his speech on October 9th with the standard parliamentary words, "I yield the floor." But at that moment, Kerry gave away a lot more than just the floor.
Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, wrote a column yesterday that perfectly captures Kerry's problem. "Perhaps nothing was more pathetic in the last Democratic debate (and much about it was pathetic) than the diminished status of John Kerry," she begins. In her key graphs further on she continues:
During the debate, Kerry answered questions thoughtfully enough, but he didn't distinguish himself from his colleagues. He is the candidate who has most befuddled the odds-makers. Pegged the front-runner a year ago by pundits and political consultants, he instead finds himself pushed aside by Dean in New Hampshire and Richard Gephardt in Iowa, both states with crucial early Democratic primaries.
Kerry's malaise can be traced to one act, one decision, one vote: his support of the resolution giving President Bush the authority to invade Iraq. Had Kerry voted "no," he'd be the Democratic front-runner right now, bringing credibility on foreign policy because of his military service while also easily upstaging Wesley Clark on domestic policy.
Even now, a year later, Kerry has trouble giving a cogent rationale for his vote to go to war. You'd think a man like Kerry -- a decorated Vietnam veteran who later became an outspoken critic of that war -- would have a succinct, indeed passionate, explanation for his vote. But Kerry stammers, sputters, doubles back, never able to give a short and simple response. Perhaps that's because Kerry's vote was based on politics, not principle.
As Congress debated Iraq last year, Kerry became one of the Senate's most articulate critics of President Bush's rush to war. In commentary published in The New York Times in September 2002, he wrote: "Until we have properly laid the groundwork and proved to our fellow citizens and our allies that we really have no other choice, we are not yet at the moment of unilateral decision-making in going to war against Iraq."
But just a month later -- with nothing in the president's approach to Iraq having changed -- he gave Bush that unilateral authority.
Over the course of the last year, Kerry has occasionally claimed that Bush misled him and his fellow senators, but that answer makes Kerry sound gullible -- not the sort of man you'd trust to protect the country against the likes of Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong-il. (The president did engage in dissembling and distortion to win support for his war, but Kerry was in a position to know that.)
The truth is more likely this: Kerry caved in to what he believed to be his political interests. Last year, many Democratic strategists were advising their congressional candidates to vote for the war. Kerry, whose most transparent flaw has always been calculated ambition, probably believed that his presidential aspirations would be better served by a "yes" vote on the resolution.
The irony, of course, is that the opposite turned out to be true: With young Americans dying daily in Iraq, the public has a more jaundiced view of the invasion than it did several months ago. Kerry lost the bet.
And that may be just what he deserves. There are some issues that are simply too important to be put through the calculus of political odds-making, and a vote to send the nation to war is certainly one of them. As distasteful as it is to watch Republicans bash gay marriage to placate fundamentalist Christians, or to watch Democrats demagogue on Medicare to win over seniors, neither of those issues has the significance of a vote to go to war.
The consideration of invading a sovereign nation -- and putting young Americans in harm's way to do it -- ought to be the sort of issue in which a man or woman votes his or her conscience, regardless of the political ramifications. If John Kerry failed to do that, he doesn't deserve the presidency.
No matter how Kerry tries to explain his vote on the authorization, I find it hard to really believe him. And considering the constant lying from the guy we're trying to send packing, being able to believe what your candidate says is pretty important.
It saddens me to see Kerry on the campaign trail these days, so transparently angry and bitter, so unable to hide his feeling that Howard Dean has unfairly stolen the position of anointed frontrunner that was rightfully his. But no candidate could have taken that position from Kerry if Kerry hadn't chosen to toss it away.