John Kerry's shifting stands
by Jeff Jacoby
In the 2004 presidential field, there is a candidate
for nearly every point of view.
His name is John Kerry.
Equivocating politicians are sometimes accused of
trying to be "all things to all people," but few have
taken the practice of expedience and shifty opportunism
to Kerry's level. Massachusetts residents have known
this about their junior senator for a long time. Now
the rest of the country is going to find out.
Here's how it works: Say you're in favor of capital
punishment for terrorists. Well, so is Kerry. "I am for
the death penalty for terrorists because terrorists
have declared war on your country," he said in December
2002. "I support killing people who declare war on our country."
But if you're opposed to capital punishment even for
terrorists, that's OK — Kerry is too! Between 1989 and
1993, he voted at least three times to exempt
terrorists from the death penalty. In a debate with
former Governor William Weld, his opponent in the 1996
Senate race, Kerry scorned the idea of executing
terrorists. Anti-death penalty nations would refuse to
extradite them to the United States, he said. "Your
policy," he told Weld, "would amount to a terrorist
protection policy. Mine would put them in jail."
What does Kerry really think? Who knows? He seems to
have conveniently switched his stance after Sept. 11,
2001, but he insists that politics had nothing to do
with his reversal. Either way, one thing is clear: His
willingness to swing both ways fits a longstanding
pattern of coming down firmly on both sides of
controversial issues.
Take the Patriot Act. Kerry condemns it fiercely as the
stuff of a "knock-in-the-night" police state. He vows
"to end the era of John Ashcroft" by "replacing the
Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and
our liberties at the same time."
So does that mean he voted against it in 2001? Au
contraire! Kerry voted for the law — parts of which he
originally wrote. On the Senate floor before the vote,
he singled out its money-laundering and
financial-transfer sections for particular praise, but
declared that he was "pleased at the compromise we have
reached on the anti-terrorism legislation as a whole."
Bottom line, then: Is Kerry for or against the Patriot
Act? Absolutely.
The hottest issue in Kerry's home state at the moment
is same-sex marriage. Most Massachusetts citizens only
take one position on this scorchingly controversial
topic, but Kerry doesn't like to limit himself that
way.
So on the one hand, he voted against the federal
Defense of Marriage Act, calling the law — which
Congress passed and President Clinton signed —
"fundamentally ugly" and "legislative gay-bashing." On
the other hand, he says he's against same-sex marriage
and refused to condemn a DOMA-like amendment to the
Massachusetts constitution. (At one point last week, in
fact, he left open the possibility of endorsing it.) On
the other other hand, he supports civil unions —
same-sex marriage in all but name. And on yet another
other hand, he claims to "have the same position Vice
President ***** Cheney has." (Cheney's view is that
"different states are likely to come to different
conclusions, and that's appropriate.")
Where Kerry will ultimately come down on this issue is
anybody's guess. But it's safe to say that wherever you
come down, he'll be able to claim he was there all along.
Then there's the war. Many observers have remarked on
Kerry's dual stand on the military campaign that
liberated Iraq — he voted for it, but vehemently
condemns it. In 1991, by contrast, he did the opposite:
he voted against using force to roll back Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait, yet he claims it was an operation
he firmly supported. "I believed we should kick Saddam
Hussein out of Kuwait," Kerry told the Washington Post
last month. So why did he vote no? Because "we had a
very divided nation" and he wanted the first President
Bush "to take a couple more months to build the support
of the nation."
Or so he says says now. What Kerry actually said in
1991 was that there was a "rush to war" that might lead
to "another generation of amputees, paraplegics, burn
victims." He blasted the elder Bush for being too
"unilateral" — hmm, that sounds familiar — and
demanded: "Is the liberation of Kuwait so imperative
that all those risks are worthwhile at this moment?"
Eleven days later he wrote to a constituent that he
opposed the war and had wanted to give economic
sanctions "more time to work." Nine days after that he
wrote to the same constituent and said that he
"strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's
response to the crisis."
So let's review the bidding: Kerry's position is that
he voted against a war he was really for and voted for
a war he was really against. But the war he was really
for he never said he was for at the time. Except when
he was writing to voters to say that he was. And that
he wasn't.
Confused? Don't feel bad. Trying to keep up with
Kerry's shifting stands can be baffling even to those
of us who have followed his career for decades. You'll
be hearing a lot more about them before this campaign
is over.
Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist.
© 2002, Boston Globe
Posted by Permission
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LP
In politics, moderation is the best policy.
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