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Shakka
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Registered: Feb 2003
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Floppity Floop

A real zinger by Safire today. At some point, Kerry will have to take a more defined stance on controversial positions. I look forward to the debates--they're gonna get ugly!

Kerry, playing all sides

quote:
The Great Straddler
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Published: July 28, 2004

Boston — Too-careful politicians think the best defense is giving no offense. To avoid offending any voters, John Kerry has come down foursquare on both sides of three social issues.

1. He says he opposes the death penalty - except for terrorists.

To a principled minority that believes government must never take a human life, this Kerry straddle is untenable. It makes no sense to hold that society has no right to execute a rapist-murderer whose DNA proves guilt, nor a confessed serial killer or genocidal dictator - but if the killer's motive is to terrify, then execution is in order.

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You can take an honest stand against the death penalty, as Mario Cuomo did despite the political cost, but as soon as you begin to equivocate - making exceptions based on the degree of heinousness or public fear - you erode your moral position.

2. Kerry has long identified himself with a woman's right to choose abortion, but recently revealed to a supporter that he believed "life begins at conception."

People who are resolutely pro-choice believe that life begins at birth, and that a woman has a right to abort what is taking place in her own body any time during a pregnancy. People who are resolutely pro-life believe that life begins at conception and that aborting that embryo or fetus is akin to murder.

Though the two sides disagree about when life begins, they agree on what they are arguing about. You can be pro-choice with no restrictions on abortion, or pro-life with absolute restrictions, or - like most Americans - comfortable enough with current law discouraging late-term abortion. But most find it difficult in logic to be for both extremes at the same time.

That has relevance to today's debate about federal funding for stem cell research. If you hold that life begins at conception, you have a rational basis for arguing that taxpayer dollars should not be used to augment private support for medical research that extracts stem cells from even a tiny blastocyst already destined for destruction.

Kerry is making a campaign issue out of his desire to add federal funds to this lawful research at this convention. That's the vote-getting view (and my own as well), but he will not risk disavowing his contradictory belief that "life begins at conception" lest he seem indecisive or mistaken or anti-pro-life. And so his straddle goes on.

3. He says he is against same-sex marriage, on one hand, and against a constitutional amendment to ban it, on the other. His position: leave it to the states to battle out.

Pollsters show this neat dodge to be popular. But the Supreme Court may well declare the federal Defense of Marriage Act, signed by Clinton, unconstitutional. If not, the Supremes are likely to decide that marriages legal in one state cannot be illegal in any other. To overturn that decision would require amending the Constitution, and the necessary huge majority for that is not there.

This Kerry straddle works; he can say he opposes same-sex marriage (appealing to the majority) while opposing doing what it would take to stop it (which also polls well). Bush, contrariwise, seriously opposes it and is willing to put his opposition to a test that Congress and the state legislatures would decide.

What pattern emerges from these three issues? What difference does it show in the leadership quality of the two candidates?

On the death penalty, Bush is for and Kerry straddles. On abortion, Bush is against and Kerry straddles. On same-sex marriage, Bush is demonstrably against, while Kerry is rhetorically against but cleverly finds a policy resting place that allows him to straddle.

It happens that I agree with Bush on the death penalty, prefer the Supreme Court compromises on abortion and disagree with him on a same-sex amendment. But in all cases, this president takes a stand and makes clear what it is. Bush is not trying to be, in the biblical phrase, all things to all men.

Contrariwise, these Kerry straddles are troubling in one who aspires to trustworthy leadership. I won't be watching his acceptance speech tomorrow for war stories, Clintonian crowd appeal or sudden, soaring eloquence. An end to the straddling would help.

Jul-28-2004 14:48 United States

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Renegade
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Registered: May 2001
Location: Prague, Czech Republic

To be perfectly honest, I'd have to agree with you (or in this case, I suppose, Safire). This piece is hardly a revelation though: one of Kerry's greatest flaws, throughout the Democratic and now presidential campaigns, has been his inability to ennunciate his stances on certain key issues clearly and with conviction. This was what got him the nomination in the first place though, remember - the Democrats wanted a centrist who wouldn't tread on the toes of the swing voters - but it's something that Bush and his $250 million of campaign money are going to continue to exploit.

Look at the wedge issues like Iraq, gay marriage and abortion. In all these issues Bush has been able to strongly define his stance, stick to it and - in the case of the latter two - introduce legislation against them. It's clever politics of course, designed quite consciously to split the voters and the US public more generally. It also forces Kerry into ennunciating his stance which, for various reasons, he is unable to do. So long as this continues, Kerry is going to come across as weak and indecisive (if he hasn't already) and in the process lose the swing voters he was hired to try and attract (what has he done that's inspired them to vote for him? Why would they vote for someone who comes across as meek when they could vote for someone who comes across as strong and decisive?) and the liberal voters (why would they vote for someone unwilling to definitively throw his support behind womens rights and gay rights, when they are more under threat now - due to George Bush's far-rightist idiocy - then they've been for decades?).

So long as George Bush wants to play wedge politics, aimed at fracturing the nation, then Kerry has a choice: he can play along and try to beat Bush at his own game (by offering defintive stances on wedge issues) or he can try to arrest the agenda and prevent these wedge issues from becoming major election issues. At the moment, he's not successfully doing either and as a result he's getting sucked into some sort of centrist chasm - created as the US's left and right begin to pull further and further away from each other - as issues like these continue to ignite passions across the country.

Don't get me wrong. I haven't been sucked into the simple, inaccurate charicature of John Kerry painted by the Bush administration. I think that Kerry does have fairly enlightened, well-considered views on these issues. What some mistake for "indecisiveness" is actually just a willingness to contemplate said issues and view them from differing perspectives, without just rushing capriciously to a stubborn conclusion. Normally I would say that this would be a good quality for politicians (and - more generally - everyday people) to have, but in this presidential campaign I see it only as a vice. So long as Kerry continues to be contemplative and verbose in discussing key election issues, quite apart from risking losing the swing and far-left voters, he's just not going to inspire people to come out and vote (and how can you win without people coming out to vote for you?). Hiring Edwards was the right move, because he has the ability to inspire and motivate poeple in action, but he doesn't cover for the fact that this is something that Kerry seriously lacks. Even though the selection of the president should never be reduced to the ideals of a popularity contest, after hearing Clinton speak at the Dem Con, you realise just how important charisma is to a successful politician. Kerry, needless to say, lacks this.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong about all this. I hope the public see through Bush's smear campaign and recognise that Kerry, if elected, will make a very good president. Similarly, I have no doubts that Kerry would make a very good president, I'm just concerned that he's not going to get elected to begin with. Ultimately there's a time to be idealistic - advocating the notion that politicians, like Kerry, should be receptive to differing view-points and be non-dogmatic about policy definition - and there's a time for lowest-common denominator politics, where we step down from the ivory tower and try to suck every Joe Layman we possibly can. And where George Bush is involved, we're talking a very low common denominator indeed.

Ideally, I don't believe that politics should be dumbed down or that the stupid people should dictate the course of election campaigns, but here it's going to be unavoidable. George Bush has an absolute monopoly on the "stupid vote" at the moment (predominantly people who lack the ability to make complex moral evaluations - i.e. "Saddam is bad, ergo, let's get him!") and so long as Mr Kerry continues to use big words to express his "nuanced" stances, he's going to lose a fair chunk of the population. Remember, probably 90% of people (not just in the US, but in any democracy) are either voting, by habit, along party lines (in which case nothing you do will win them over) or on perceptions of the candidates pieced together by media quotes and soundbites. Most people are not especially politically aware, and as such they're not going research the candidates or the issues in any great depth. Therefore, you're going to need to define yourself and your stances pretty bluntly when you get the chance, becuase any nuances are going to go flying over their heads.

If George Bush is decisive and able to express his stances clearly, then he will pick up these LCD votes so long as Kerry appears indecisive and unnecessarily verbose. And, as mentioned before, Bush's jock-like "averageness" and personability are also likely to be a winner with these LCD votes ahead of Kerry's patrician-like sophistication and seeming inability to connect with the common man. Kerry needs to start playing the game and begin to bludgeon the average man over the head with clear policy stances, until everyone knows who John Kerry is and what he stands for. If he doesn't do this, then the yahoo votes go to Bush by default.

I'll again say it: I don't agree with lowest-common denominator politics. In this case though - if it means ousting Bush - then I believe it to be a necessary evil. So long as we're at the whim of stupid people in our respective political climates (oh democracy, how I loathe thee! ) we might as well get them to work for us right?

Hopefully I'm wrong about all this. Kerry is right up there in the polls at the moment, so I might be, but I feel that this is as much about people voting against Bush than for Kerry. I think that Kerry would make a good president and - even though I'm still bitter about Howard Dean losing the nomination - I'm happy to throw my support behind the his candidacy (which I'm sure it means a lot to him ). I think that this will be a close election campaign regardless, but just a few changes in Kerry's approach and demeanor (which wouldn't even require any policy shifts) might be all he needs to send George out on his behind.

In any case, we shall see.

(Edited to fix-up spelling errors, run-on sentences and poor paragraphing caused by a general state of hungoverness.)