MIA

This has been bugging the hell out of me as well. It’s one thing for Kerry to allow Bush to swing in the wind on the pre-9/11 stuff. Let the widows and the whistleblowers take that on. The less partisanship the better. But, Iraq is something else entirely.

Iraq is a crisis and an ongoing problem and it isn’t enough for it to be seen blowing up on television. Kerry has got to convince people that Bush is the problem and that he can fix it. Instead, he’s acting clueless and disengaged.

I sincerely hope that they are not planning to re-run the 2002 midterm campaign because we will lose again. A tie goes to the codpiece. You can’t ignore national security. Not only is it a more glamorous subject for the news media to cover, it is also a clearer demonstration of presidential leadership. With a war going on, a presidential candidate simply has to meet it head on or look like a sissy even if the other guy is self-destructing.

The Salon article linked above says:

A Kerry spokesman told Salon on Thursday that it’s incumbent on Bush — not Kerry — to address the crisis in Iraq. “What has the president said about this?” the Kerry spokesman asked. “He needs to explain what his policy is, what his plan is to address what’s going on right now. But he’s been down on his ranch in Crawford. The spotlight isn’t on John Kerry. The spotlight needs to be on Bush. He’s the president, and he’s the person who has carved out these policies.”

Bullshit. The spotlight may “need” to be on Bush, but Americans want to know what the alternative thinks is the problem and what he thinks needs to be done. This is a total pussy response and it is simply not good enough. And it isn’t just the campaign flack. Check out Kerry himself on Judy Woodruff yesterday, and note how she used his dramatic line from his congressional testimony against him. It was a terrible moment:

WOODRUFF: …Well, as we know, the would-be presumed Democratic nominee for president, Senator John Kerry, has often criticized the Bush administration for what he says is a unilateral approach in Iraq. I spoke with Senator Kerry just a little while ago and I started by asking for his reaction to Bush advisers who say they are already doing much of what Kerry advocates and that his criticism amounts to what they call phony politics.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KERRY: They’re doing it in such a frankly, inept way, Judy, that they’re not really inviting anybody sufficiently to the table. People don’t want to go to work for Paul Bremer and the provisional authority. What you need to do is have a transfer of authority for the reconstruction and for the transformation of the government to a legitimate international entity. Every day that goes by that this administration has refused to do it has complicated the doing of it. They, in fact, have made it much harder to accomplish what could have been accomplished and should have been accomplished a long time ago. I refuse to accept that logic from them, and I laid out this plan months ago. They’re trying to do it through the backdoor, through almost through the keyhole rather than openly coming forward and acknowledging they need help.

WOODRUFF: So Senator…

KERRY: The Arab countries have an interest…

WOODRUFF: What exactly right now would you do differently?

KERRY: Right now, what I would do differently is, I mean, look, I’m not the president, and I didn’t create this mess so I don’t want to acknowledge a mistake that I haven’t made. The president needs to step up and acknowledge that there are difficulties and that the world needs to be involved and they need to reverse their policy that countries that were not involved in supporting us are not going to be part of the reconstruction.

I mean, that’s a terrible message to send to countries. They need to go to the world and say we’re not going to have an American authority that is — creating this new government. We’re going to have an international authority that will help develop the new government and absent a legitimate effort to globalize this presence, they’re going to continue to have the very problems they have today.

This was predictable, and there are many of us who have said that this is exactly the kind of thing that will happen absent a legitimate kind of international presence.

WOODRUFF: Senator, you said it was a mistake, not your mistake, but you called it a mistake and also said you wouldn’t cut and run. You’ve acknowledged there may need to be more troops. If there were a President Kerry, he might have to send in more troops. I want to ask you the question you asked during the Vietnam war. How do you ask a man and today that would be a man or a woman, to be the last to die for a mistake?

KERRY: Well, the mistake that I’m talking about, Judy, is not the effort to fight and have — not the effort to have a stable Iraq. The mistake is in the way that they are going about it. So I would change the way you’re going about it. I mean again and again, I have said, I laid out with great specificity months ago the steps that they should have taken, and I believe that those people who have been in touch with people in the international community know there is a different and better way to put together an effort that could legitimize a government in Iraq. If we insist on doing this through our provisional government authority, if we insist on being totally in control the way we are today, we’re going to having an impossible time legitimately bringing people to the table.

Just shoot me now. This is going to be a long campaign.

Why can’t he say, “I’m not sure what George W. Bush could do to help the situation other than delay the June 30th date until after the election so that another president can be elected to replace him. Because the problem, Judy, is that nobody in the world believes a thing George W. Bush says anymore and that includes the Iraqis.

If I were in office, we wouldn’t be in the mess because I would never make it a policy to unnecessarily alienate the entire world. Nor would I trust those who only feed me optimistic scenarios. I would never allow our military to operate at anything less than the levels that are needed to achieve the mission, and I would listen to the military experts, not unqualified ideologues like Newt Gingrich, when making those decisions.

I’m afraid, Judy, that George W. Bush has gotten himself into a mess that he cannot resolve because of his previous actions. I trust our military to hang on and do the fine work that they always do. They will do what is necessary to ensure that the country is secure in the short term. But this crisis untimately requires a political solution and George W. Bush has run out of political options. A new president and a fresh start is what’s required to fix this problem. Only then can rebuild the trust of our allies and go back to the drawing board with all the parties and set a proper course for a free and democratic Iraq.”

I’m sure he and others can come up with better langauge. But, the message is that the problem is George W. Bush. When he is replaced a whole range of options become available that are now foreclosed because of the world’s mistrust of his intelligence, his motives, his integrity and his ability.

Or he could ignore it and keep talking about the budget deficit while CNN is showing marines getting picked off by the dozens, live and in color. That looks to me like the campaign equivalent of Junior reading that story about the goat to the second graders while the WTC was collapsing. It doesn’t show leadership. And that’s the theme of this election.