My favorite band of all time is Chicago. I remember being a kid and getting a bunch of hand-me-down 45rpm records from my older siblings. The one I played all the time was "Saturday in the Park." I played that thing so often that Robert Lamm started to sound like he was singing in slow motion. As I grew older and started listening to their music, I fell in love with a song on Chicago XI called "Vote For Me."
The song is a somewhat satirical look at the campaign process and what these guys will say or do to get elected. The "candidate" basically promises to legislate "new cars that run on beer or anything except gasoline" within one year.
It occurred to me this week that this is pretty much what John Kerry is doing: he's promising new cars that run on beer.
Well, OK...perhaps not in a literal sense. However, since Carville and Begala became "unpaid advisers" to the Kerry campaign, it seems like he's left Vietnam behind and is attempting to go toe-to-toe with George Bush on Iraq and the War on Terror. The problem is, John Kerry doesn't have the record or the credentials to wage this fight.
I can hear the Libs now and, frankly, I'm tired of their Bush-hating rhetoric that regurgitates everything they saw in Fahren-hype 9/11 or on the CBS Evening News. They can disagree with George W. Bush's policies all they want---that's America. However, their guy can't take a single stand on anything. This goes beyond the "flip-flopping" you've heard chronicled for the past year.
Kerry started to show this particular hand during the DNC in Boston, but he's only recently made it the singular focus of his campaign: insisting that George W. Bush misled us into war in Iraq. The problem is, that's categorically untrue.
Kerry can run from his record on Iraq all he wants, but it's haunting him like Marley's ghost. (Jacob, not Bob.) He's given so many interviews that he can't escape them.
Kerry said for years that he thought we should go after Saddam Hussein and even criticized the Clinton Administration for going soft on weapons inspections.
In 1997, Kerry was on CNN's Crossfire and said the following: "I think that's our great concern... where's the backbone of Russia, where's the backbone of France, where are they in expressing their condemnation of such clearly illegal activity... but in a sense, they're now climbing into a box and they will have enormous difficulty not following up on this if there is not compliance by Iraq... There's absolutely no statement that they have made or that they will make that will prevent the United States of America and this president or any president from acting in what they believe are the best interests of our country.""
1997. Four full years before George W. Bush took office as President of the United States. The president he spoke of was William Jefferson Clinton.
Kerry says now that he would involve our allies and appeal to the United Nations, yet he commended Colin Powell on February 5, 2002 for doing that very thing.
On July 29, 2002, he even went as far to say, "I completely agree with this Administration's goal of a regime change in Iraq," as he spoke before the DLC National Conversation in New York.
On September 15, 2002, Kerry even disagreed with John McCain that the issue was whether Saddam would use WMD against the US, while appearing on Face the Nation. He stated that the threat was what he may do in another invasion of Kuwait, Iran, or Israel. He even made the bold statement that Saddam might even sell the WMD to terrorist organizations to "be a surrogate to use them against the United States."
Then, on October 11, 2002, he voted YEA on the resolution to use force against Iraq.
Howard Dean said during the primary season that John Kerry was trying to have it both ways on Iraq, and he was 100% right. The problem is, he's still doing it.
Kerry is trying to pass himself off as the anti-war candidate and say he's got a better Iraq strategy, when he agreed with President George W. Bush the whole way. He only disagrees with him now because it's a political convenience to do so.
Take his appearance on Imus in the Morning, September 15, 2004:
IMUS: "Well he's urging you to admit the war was a mistake and then start attacking these people."
KERRY: "Well I think the war ..."
IMUS: "Why can't you do that?"
KERRY: "But I do. It's exactly what I am doing. I think the war ... I said it a hundred times, I think it was a huge mistake for the President to go to war the way he did. I've said that a dozen times. I mean, the fact is that I ..."
IMUS: "Do you think there are any circumstances we should have gone to war in Iraq, any?"
KERRY: "Not under the current circumstances, no. There are none that I see. I voted based on weapons of mass destruction. The President distorted that, and I've said that. I mean, look, I can't be clearer. But I think it was the right vote based on what Saddam Hussein had done, and I think it was the right thing to do to hold him accountable. I've said a hundred times, there was a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. The President chose the wrong way. Can't be more direct than that."
After the interview, Imus couldn't explain Kerry's position and it left him more confused than he was before he talked to the Senator. The truth is that Kerry was all over the map. If you read the whole thing, you'll see for yourself. Imus didn't shy away from questions, and Kerry couldn't hit the hardball.
John Kerry says that he only voted to threaten the use of force and that he was misled--as were we all. Misled? John Kerry, member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee whose been privy to all kinds of intelligence on Iraq, says that we were misled.
Kerry's problem is that he doesn't believe anything that isn't politically expedient for him. He has little if no conviction whatsoever. He knows the polling and that the best chance to go after Bush is to use Iraq, so that's what he's going to do. He's going to make fantastic claims that are directly contradictory to everything he's said about Iraq over the past ten years, just to try to become President of the United States. It's not working all that well, either.
In the meantime, with 39 short days left in this campaign, he's going to continue to campaign on issues he has no belief in. If this is what he's done as a United States Senator, what on Earth will he do should he be elected president?
John Kerry cannot be believed. John Kerry cannot be trusted. John Kerry cannot be elected.
If he actually campaigned on cars fueled by beer, though, he'd win in a landslide. Maybe that's something Carville and Begala ought to think about?
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com
