Still Flopping

Charles Krauthammer examines Kerry's multitude positions on the Iraq war.

If the election were held today, John Kerry would lose by between 88 and 120 electoral votes. The reason is simple: The central vulnerability of this president -- the central issue of this campaign -- is the Iraq war. And Kerry has nothing left to say.

Why? Because, until now, he has said everything conceivable regarding Iraq. Having taken every possible position on the war, there is nothing he can say now that is even remotely credible.

I'm not convinced that Iraq is the central issue in the campaign. To me the central issue is the war on terror, in general, of which Iraq is a small part. The central issue is how each of the candidates views the war on terror, i.e. from a 9/10 perspective or a 9/12 perspective. By Kerry's insistence on waiting to be hit again before the US would respond, and relying more on the law than on the military, Kerry places himself squarely in the 9/10 mindset.

Krauthammer's main point, I think, is that

These dizzying contradictions -- so glaring, so public, so frequent -- have gone beyond undermining anything Kerry can now say on Iraq. They have been transmuted into a character issue. When Kerry went off windsurfing during the Republican convention, Jay Leno noted that even Kerry's hobbies depend on wind direction. Kerry on the war has become an object not only of derision but of irreconcilable suspicion. What kind of man, aspiring to the presidency, does not know his own mind about the most serious issue of our time?

This lack of ability to take a position and follow through on it is an indication not just of what he would do in Iraq, but against terrorism in general.