Kerry Tales, Part XXXVII

On February 26th, the New York Times endorsed Kerry (surprise!) based on his complexity (see tpfp post 3/1 8:49pm):

What his critics see as an inability to take strong, clear positions seems to us to reflect his appreciation that life is not simple. He understands the nuances.

A week earlier, WaPo columnist Richard Cohen faulted Bush as insufficiently nuanced.

But Kerry denounced nuance in a March 7th Time magazine interview:

Some of these issues [foreign policy] are very complicated and deserve more than a simplistic this or that. . . I don't think war is nuanced at all. I think how you take a nation to war is the most fundamental decision a President makes, . . .and there's nothing nuanced at all about keeping your promises. There is nothing nuanced about exhausting remedies that give you legitimacy and consent to go to war. And I refuse ever to accept the notion that anything I've suggested with respect to Iraq was nuanced.

Days later, the junior Senator from Massachusetts summarized his complex position about aiding post-war Iraq (see tpfp post 3/17 1:37pm): "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." This was either nuance or nonsense.

So the Haughty Hairdo clarified his nuance policy in today's WaPo:

Foreign policy is not simplistic. . .They [Republicans] want it to be simplistic; it isn't. I can give you lots of non-nuanced positions. There is nothing nuanced about anything I've done.

I guess Kerry sides with "nonsense." As does blogger Steven Den Beste.

Candidate Kerry's numerous flip-flops are well chronicled. Now he's flip flopping on the need for flip-flopping. Mark Steyn complained Kerry's "all tied up in nuances." Reader Doug J. says the Senator's "straddl[ing] his attitude toward nuance."

Fence sitting isn't complex--it's vague, tentative and uncertain.

"Nuance" may be popular among elites, but it doesn't make for good U.S. policy. It makes for the kind of policy Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero likes. It makes for the kind of policy Kim Jong Il likes. And it makes for the kind of policy Al Qaeda likes.

A President Kerry would be as decisive as President Carter. Given current U.N. incompetence, nuclear proliferation and global terrorism, America needs a leader, not Jimmy's second term.