Early in December Eric Alterman and William Rivers Pitt wrote Kerry-friendly pieces after they, along with a bunch of other journalists and assorted sorts, met with him at Al Franken's house. However, Kerry soon prompted Eric to recall the warning "never trust a politician" after he did an opportunistic sleight of hand over Iraq. It seems his olive branch morphed into a switch ... in order to beat up Dean. How's that? WE GOT HIM, that's how! (
Pssst! The guy in the spider hole.)
Here's the case Kerry made at Franken's gathering to explain and justify his Iraq vote, after it had lost him lots of support:
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"This was the hardest vote I have ever had to cast in my entire career," Kerry said. "I voted for the resolution to get the inspectors in there, period. Remember, for seven and a half years we were destroying weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In fact, we found more stuff there than we thought we would. After that came those four years when there was no intelligence available about what was happening over there. I believed we needed to get the weapons inspectors back in. I believed Bush needed this resolution in order to get the U.N. to put the inspectors back in there. The only way to get the inspectors back in was to present Bush with the ability to threaten force legitimately. That's what I voted for."
"The way Powell, Eagleberger, Scowcroft, and the others were talking at the time," continued Kerry, "I felt confident that Bush would work with the international community. I took the President at his word. We were told that any course would lead through the United Nations, and that war would be an absolute last resort. Many people I am close with, both Democrats and Republicans, who are also close to Bush told me unequivocally that no decisions had been made about the course of action. Bush hadn't yet been hijacked by Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney and that whole crew. Did I think Bush was going to charge unilaterally into war? No. Did I think he would make such an incredible mess of the situation? No. Am I angry about it? You're God damned right I am. I chose to believe the President of the United States. That was a terrible mistake."
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Yeah right!, says I. And I had been Kerry's to lose because he's intelligent and sophisticated and gosh darn it, he really does have a sweet side. (I watch Cspan.) But still, he lost me. Here's how:
Many months ago Kerry was my first choice out of all the candidates in the top tier, due to that nice record Alterman and Pitt mentioned. However, my support soon faded as I watched the man step out from his files and into the spotlight of his candidacy. First and foremost, I was deeply disappointed by his vote for the Iraq war resolution, not only because he did it, but because I felt he didn't believe in it.There were other things, as well, which gave me the impression that he was way too dominated by political ambition and calculation. And then there was the growing sense that he had grown too detached from the people (like me) who he would need later on (like now).
Before stepping into the limelight of his campaign, I see John Kerry opening up his costume trunk to rustle up one of his former selves from the Vietnam War era, Bush's war drums beating ever louder in the background. Would it be the soldier or the protester? The `peacenik' never stood a chance. Kerry chose the warrior because the rightward-listing CENTER, forever in the DLCed's sights, seemed to have its WAR ON. (Thanks to the Bush adminstration's/media's machinations as well as some people's odd lust for bloodshed --from the sidelines.) In fact, it now seemed that the soldier, medals shined and reattached, found the protestor who threw them down a bit awkward ... and even embarrassing.
Too bad. Not so much for Kerry, but for our country: He was MIA when we needed a strong voice of skepticism and reason from THIS particular veteran who had once publicly expressed outrage because our nation had been duped into an unnecessary WAR. What that guy could have contributed to the `national debate' over Iraq would have been far more instructive than a soldier's lockstep compliance with the commander in chief. But march in step -- or tepidly tag along -- he did, despite the fact that Bush's push to war was alarming and worthy of DEEP scrutiny and skepticism by Congress. Not over a tax cut, not over an environmental regulation, but over a `preventive' WAR and OCCUPATION.
Was Kerry's YES vote motivated by a deep belief that we would cautiously and cooperatively get to the bottom of the WMD question via BushCo and that we must do it A.S.A.P, as he claimed at Franken's place? Or was it that he wanted to win over the polled majority? What's the alternative to the cynical assessment of him and the other candidates who voted YES on the resolution? That they were (dim) true believers in Bush's war? (This is how Gephardt strikes me. Edwards seems like he cant be bothered to understand and Lieberman is just ... well, creepily PROactive. Way too enthused.) Clark didnt have to vote for it, but he did advise a congressional candidate to do so, and gave wavery signals right up until the start of his campaign.
However, Howard Dean saw the exact same polls and exercised far better judgment and greater consistency in voicing his opposition than Kerry or the rest of the top tier candidates. Not only did he do that, but also, he gave a large portion of the base -- increasingly ignored and disrespected by establishment Democrats -- a platform through which to voice their opposition. By contrast, Kerry, even as the fallacies of Bush's case for war were exposed, shied away in obvious discomfort from voicing outrage, or just the outrageous facts. When he wasn't performing an evasive shuffle, he just wasn't there at all.
When Kerry says that the Iraq war resolution was the most difficult vote of his career, perhaps. But I think the blunt translation is that it was so difficult because his political ambitions were wrestling big time with his better judgment. His decision-making process was probably made more difficult by a pesky, acting out base. How rebellious it would become, he seems not to have imagined.
So Kerry's `explanations' for his vote ring more than a little hollow. If, as he insisted, he was so keen on Bush doing the opposite of what he did, and felt so greatly betrayed, why the hell didn't he get out there and express it, loud and clear, AFTER his vote and BEFORE Dean got too scary?
It also didn't help that he distanced himself from the base by saying things like "Stop crying in your teacups! Get over it!" regarding Election 2000 (just as the DLC was disdainfully swatting activists, in op-eds and memos, for being too `active'). With receipt-less voting machines advancing across our nation, Kerry, of all people, should not have been scolding us to mind our manners and scrub the catastrophe of Election 2000 from our collective memory. Someone ought to have clued him in that the problem for the party isn't that progressive Democrats are constantly crying in their teacups, it's that establishment Democrats are too often serving up such a weak cuppa, brand name, DLC.
It was bad timing, I guess, that around the time of this scolding he chose a photo, for a Time or Newsweek spread on the candidates, which portrayed him with a sort of `lord of the manor' aloofness; sitting regally in an elegant armchair with his wife perched, likewise, by his side. He probably intended to project worldly experience and sophistication (something I had once welcomed from him), although, by that time, all it evoked was that troubling remoteness I'd been perceiving; a sort of `let them eat cake' attitude. It reinforced the sense that he was out of reach and out of touch with our concerns -- something that was becoming a troubling pattern with our representatives. Was that how he would be as president?
Then there was Kerry displaying those superior foreign policy chops he keeps telling us he possesses, when he appeared on Charlie Rose last fall. Rose tried to get him to say something critical about Israel, nudging him with a column by Jim Hoagland, where he took Sharon to task about the wall. Again, as with his war vote, Kerry couldn't have looked less comfortable as he squirmed away from voicing even Hoagland's mild level of criticism. All he could offer was the well-worn mantra we hear from Bush and his good buddy, Sharon: the attacks on Israel must stop. FIRST. Finally, when pressed on the illegal settlements, he managed to eek out that they should not be EXPANDED. He could not bring himself to utter removed. (Utterly disappointing.)
Contrast this with Howard Dean, who dared to say the Israelis should remove "enormous settlements" and was willing to use the dread word, "evenhanded" in describing how he would mediate. The usual suspects -- AIPAC-trapped members of Congress -- have since pressured him into disavowing that word. Dean didn't stand a chance against their slavish devotion to PRO-Israeli lobbies; never mind that they weren't endorsing him. They saw fit to publicly denounce his use of that perfectly sensible word with some of the lamest reasoning this side of the parallel universe. Lieberman started that brouhaha and Kerry cheered it on. This did not bode well for us, regarding a Kerry presidency, if the best he could do on this most serious issue was to attack Dean for daring to say something meaningful. Meanwhile, he and his cohorts played it meaningless (or detrimental) on the issue, but safe politically.
Although Dean has since shelved "evenhanded", saying that it is too sensitive a "code word" for some, I was happy to note that, in a recent interview, he said he still believes in this approach. And Jimmy Carter said he found no fault with Dean's use of the term. But what does Carter know? He is only one of those rarest of Americans who are respected by people on both sides in the region; a respect he earned by adroitly and sensitively brokering a difficult and lasting peace between Israel and Egypt. So Kerry went with Lieberman (who seems to like Bush's `Bomb Baghdad to get to Palestine' plan) while Dean is in the Carter camp. "Birds of a feather" comes to mind and Dean's flock inspires far more confidence.
Again, after his foreign policy speech, Dean took a forward stance on this crucial issue after being chided by a rabbi, during Q&A, who had perceived his words as too weighted in Israel's favor (This guy obviously doesn't hang around Congress much.) The rabbi wanted Dean to demonstrate his willingness to hold Israel responsible for its share in resolving the conflict, too (Whoa! Evenhanded?), and Dean didn't miss a beat. He spoke of the dire situation on both sides and then said he would negotiate whether or not there were attacks against Israel. Here, he wisely took a leaf out of Rabin's book instead of Sharon's. Given Rabin's legacy of taking bold and positive steps toward peace, contrasted with Sharon who is despised for his failed intransigence and aggression, I'd say Dean's foreign policy judgment was on the money once again.
But Lieberman and Kerry were onto something else.
Good old Joe again led the charge in trying to paint Dean as a foreign policy know-nothing because in his speech Dean had said Saddam's capture had not made us safer. And where was Kerry? He was, once again, right behind Joe, kicking Dean around and patting himself on the back for his superior judgment in matters of war and peace ... and apple pie. You see, Kerry was speaking for all real Americans (except Dean, of course), because ALL REAL AMERICANS felt immensely relieved, grateful and celebratory over the nabbing of that brutal made man who had long since fallen from 'grace'. (The good graces of his makers, or, in the spirit of this piece, should I say enablers?)
In the weeks prior to this, Kerry had been attempting to ingratiate himself to the Iraq antiwar crowd, because he had been paying a heavy price for his vote. But now he was attempting to revalue his flawed decision with dictator booty. This was a great moment for Kerry to hope for short memories, but not for these: Remember the bloody trail over tens of thousands killed, wounded and maimed to get to that victorious footage of Saddam getting lice-checked. Remember the phony evidence we were given by our highest officials to get us on that bloody trail. Remember how the world shuddered and turned away from our aggressive bullying, and now mistrusts and disfavors us at an all-time low. Remember the billions of dollars sucked from our treasury to pay for this war. Remember that none of the above is over. Now go celebrate.
What Kerry wants us to focus on is the wholly disingenuous Orange Alert he's been flashing at what he claims is Dean's 'inability' to lead in foreign affairs, using the Saddam/safety comment to juice it. This is because it's Dean who truly threatens him and capturing the White House is what he would truly celebrate. (Since Dean's comment, we were put on actual Orange Alert, planes have been grounded and escorted, and Americans keep on dying and losing body parts in Iraq.) Yes, I am sure John Kerry had his first good night's sleep, now that Saddam has been bagged and brigged ... and the collective exhalation of the nation produced gale force winds.
Is Kerry really that susceptible to those sugar-high poll surges, or is he just that desperate that he can no longer put a leash on his flipping? This also disgusted my boyfriend, who has been enthusiastic about Dean too, but easier on Kerry for his digressions. Wesley Clark, I heard, was inspired to send him buckets of chicken wings, emphasis on `chicken'. I had to laugh.
Look, we know what the Democratic candidates are up against given this country. Dean, if he wins the White House, will disappoint us at times (infrequently, I hope) and he has done a few shuffles of his own. But as governor of Vermont, reelected five times, he has earned bragging rights to his record, too. And on balance, his foreign policy analysis and judgment seems superior to Kerry's. He has displayed far greater passion and guts on the road to the White House. And, instead of telling grassroots activists to shut up and stop making sense, he plugged in and gave voice to our (sensible) concerns despite the prevailing winds of folly. These are times that call for our presidential candidate to possess a large measure of these qualities ... not just in the files but also in the FLESH.
So, given that nice record of John Kerry's, its too bad the man who wants to win the presidency failed to win me (and a lot of other Democrats who chose Howard Dean over him). But whose fault is that? He needs us now, but where was he when we needed him? Or, perhaps, more to the point, where IS he and where WOULD he BE?