[politics] Kerry's gambit.
The Kerry campaign unveiled a gambit these past few days:
GRAND CANYON, Arizona (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has said he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorising force against Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be found.
(from Reuters, of course.)
and from the Washington Post (subscription required):
Knowing then what he knows today about the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Kerry still would have voted to authorize the war and "in all probability" would have launched a military attack to oust Hussein by now if he were president, Kerry national security adviser Jamie Rubin said in an interview Saturday.
predictably, the "Bush Lied and People Died" crowd is outraged by this, and admitting that war was necessary is a pretty big concession. But the admission doesn't cost Kerry votes--the anti-war crowd will still vote for him--and may peel off some undecideds and weak Bush supporters.
More importantly, Kerry shifts the argument from the Iraq war's legitimacy to Bush's (allleged) mismangement of the affair: I would have gone to war, Kerry can say, but I would have done so rationally. I served in Vietnam, so I know what war is like, and never would have made the mistakes George Bush made, tortured Iraqis, etc. You get the idea.
I'm not sure if the argument will have traction among voters*, but it definitely gives Kerry better field position for capturing undecideds, and forces Bush to defend not just the war, but his present plans for Iraq. Already the various campaigns are sniping about which "peace plan"/"exit strategy" is better--and that's a welcome change from rehashing how much Saddam and Osama collaborated 4-10 years ago.
*ps. the huge hole in Kerry's "better management" argument is his vote against funding for for Iraq reconstruction and troop support. Hard to explain that away...
GRAND CANYON, Arizona (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has said he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorising force against Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be found.
(from Reuters, of course.)
and from the Washington Post (subscription required):
Knowing then what he knows today about the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Kerry still would have voted to authorize the war and "in all probability" would have launched a military attack to oust Hussein by now if he were president, Kerry national security adviser Jamie Rubin said in an interview Saturday.
predictably, the "Bush Lied and People Died" crowd is outraged by this, and admitting that war was necessary is a pretty big concession. But the admission doesn't cost Kerry votes--the anti-war crowd will still vote for him--and may peel off some undecideds and weak Bush supporters.
More importantly, Kerry shifts the argument from the Iraq war's legitimacy to Bush's (allleged) mismangement of the affair: I would have gone to war, Kerry can say, but I would have done so rationally. I served in Vietnam, so I know what war is like, and never would have made the mistakes George Bush made, tortured Iraqis, etc. You get the idea.
I'm not sure if the argument will have traction among voters*, but it definitely gives Kerry better field position for capturing undecideds, and forces Bush to defend not just the war, but his present plans for Iraq. Already the various campaigns are sniping about which "peace plan"/"exit strategy" is better--and that's a welcome change from rehashing how much Saddam and Osama collaborated 4-10 years ago.
*ps. the huge hole in Kerry's "better management" argument is his vote against funding for for Iraq reconstruction and troop support. Hard to explain that away...