AS JOHN KERRY stepped down from his campaign plane at Youngstown airport in Ohio en route to a rally Sunday, an enterprising reporter shouted out an excellent question.
“What’s a “global test,” Senator?” he called. The response, delivered with a winning smile, was the trademark Kerry thumbs up; the big digit protruding ever so slightly above the clenched fist. But, for what it said about his willingness to answer the question, it might just as well have been a raised middle finger. With a breezy wave, the newly pumped-up senator was on his way.
Well before the first presidential debate last Thursday, the Kerry campaign had decided to shift its focus this week to domestic politics. The decision reflected a view inside the campaign that, with domestic issues likely to dominate the second and third debates, now would be a good time to shift the conversation onto the economy, healthcare, and education, to rehearse some of the themes Kerry will sound in St Louis and Tempe.
But, as it turned out, pivoting from the foreign policy agenda which dominated the first debate to the home front presented a convenient opportunity for the senator to avoid talking about some of the more questionable aspects of his worldview on display last week.
He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. Because Kerry said things in that debate that perhaps come closer to revealing the true candidate than anything we have heard to date. That Kerry had a successful first debate and Bush a bad one is not seriously in dispute. But the real problem with President Bush’s performance at the showdown in Miami was neither the scowl (though that clearly didn’t help), nor the hunch (though that didn’t help either), nor even the rote repetition of his pre-debate talking points about Kerry’s mixed messages.
The real problem was that his determination to dwell on Kerry’s flip-flopping past diverted the public’s attention from much of what Kerry actually said in the debate–and what he actually believes.
Kerry has arrived at a position that is certainly at variance with his many previous arguments on U.S. foreign policy. But that is not the main reason for opposing him. The main reason is that what he now proposes would be ruinous for U.S. leadership in a perilous world.
Take the “global test.” Democrats were predictably outraged this weekend when the Bush campaign attacked the revealing statement by Kerry in the debate that any pre-emptive action the United States might consider under his presidency would be subject to the approval of world public opinion.
Richard Holbrooke, the former U.N. ambassador who is one of Kerry’s foreign policy advisers, said the global test didn’t really mean “global test.” It simply meant the United States would consult widely with allies before taking action. This, by the way, is the same Holbrooke who told Der Spiegel a couple of weeks ago that John Kerry would, as a sign of his priorities as president, sit down straight away with Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder to figure out the new direction of U.S. foreign policy.
The questions Kerry and his chief European allies should be asked are: Would a U.S. decision that disarming Iran was necessary pass a global test of public opinion? Would action to defend Taiwan against possible Chinese aggression meet that test?
It was striking that, in rebutting the allegation, the Kerry campaign tried to avoid actually repeating the candidate’s words. But his words stand and should be considered the cornerstone of Kerry’s multilateralism.
Or take Kerry’s assertion during the debate that going to war against Saddam Hussein represented the wrong way of disarming him, and that diplomacy and sanctions would have done the job just fine
President Bush tried to rebut this during the debate, but should do so more effectively now. The truth is that not only was the continuation of sanctions not a plausible way of getting Saddam Hussein to do what he was required to do in 2002, but that some of the very countries Kerry is now courting were aggressively trying to dismantle the sanctions regime and the fragile security arrangements (such as no fly zones) which were needed to enforce it.
Then there is the now familiar assertion that Kerry will persuade U.S. allies to alleviate America’s burden in Iraq. From his performance in the debate, and subsequent remarks on the campaign trail, it is clear now that Kerry’s principal goal in Iraq is getting the United States out as quickly as possible. If this means making some empty promises about what other countries might be persuaded to do, then so be it.
What all this adds up to is not the “mixed messages” Bush warned about in the debate. It is a signal of unusual clarity: deeply dovish, deeply skeptical about the exercise of U.S. power, deeply trusting of the French and German approach to the proper running of world affairs, deeply damaging to U.S. global leadership.
Gerard Baker is U.S. editor of The Times of London and a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.
