In December Mr. Kerry's Iraq policy differed with that of President Bush not in its goals but in its tactics. Mr. Kerry rightly insisted, and still does, that the United States cannot succeed without greater international collaboration and reliance on the United Nations. Now he differs with Mr. Bush on the crucial issue of what the United States must achieve in Iraq before it can safely end its mission. "Iraq," Mr. Bush said at his news conference last week, "will either be a peaceful democratic country or it will again be a source of violence, a haven for terrorists, and a threat to America and to the world."
Mr. Kerry now argues that there is a third option. But what would that be? "I can't tell you what it's going to be," he said to reporters covering his campaign. "That stability can take several forms." True; in the Middle East, there is the stability of Islamic dictatorship, the stability of military dictatorship and the stability of monarchical dictatorship. In Lebanon, there is the stability of permanent foreign occupation and de facto ethnic partition. None is in the interest of the United States; all have helped create the extremism and terrorism against which this nation is now at war.
Politics is the essence selling people to your ideas or keeping yourself viable by climbing on popular proposals. Kerry’s campaign has always had the problem of being simply anti-Bush. His ideas are the ideas of opposition. If Bush is for it, it must be bad. The very posture only highlights that Bush is the focus. It didn’t work when Republicans tried to make Clinton the focus. It just made Clinton look important. Even after Watergate the Republicans nearly pulled out a victory in the 1976 election against this same strategy. There isn’t a Watergate around Bush.
If Kerry wants to win he’s not going to inspire the public that the United Nations involvement in the war on terror is the missing ingredient. Kerry needs to know who he is and what he stands for. That’s something that Bush doesn’t lack.
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