Kerry Pros and Cons

A shocker: The New York Times endorsed John Kerry! True, the Times hasn't endorsed a Republican for President in over 50 years. But. . . well, nothing. Kerry's gotten the nod from most big-city papers, except the Chicago Tribune, which editorialized for Bush today. Trying not to be left out, the U.K. Guardian is encouraging British readers to contact Clark County Ohio voters to persuade them to vote Democrat.

Despite its inevitability, support for the Democrat is striking for what's missing--any deep enthusiasm for Senator Kerry. As noted at Kerry Haters, the Times editorial devotes only four paragraphs to Kerry, but 19 to President Bush. This dovetails with the widely accepted notion that Kerry supporters are more anti-Bush than pro-Kerry:

Something like 42 percent of likely voters believe "Bush=Hitler". They're never going to support the President.

And if not Bush hating, Kerry supporters tend to ignore Kerry's record and rhetoric to speculate about Kerry's potential once freed of the need to placate the pacifist left. That's enough for single-issue Kerry supporter Andrew Sullivan:

One reason to vote for Kerry this time is that, whatever his record, he will, as president, be forced by reality and by public opinion to be tough in this war. He has no other option. You think he wants to be tarred as a wimp every night by Fox News? Moreover, he would remove from the Europeans and others the Bush alibi for their relative absence in the war on terror. More important, his presidency would weaken the Michael Moore wing of the Democrats, by forcing them to take responsibility for a war that is theirs' as much a anyone's.

This is dangerously silly, according to Tom Maguire. Besides, it's not credible that a first-term President Kerry could tack away from the "blame America first" left.

Concerns about Kerry's character and concepts abound. Consider his deliberate mention of Vice President Cheney's gay daughter, an unprecedented expansion of politics to include the children of politicians. Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol asks, "Does John Kerry really think the American people will believe that he singled out Mary Cheney because he 'was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with this issue?'" Kerry's been widely condemned. And there's the flip-flops, expertly conveyed in the new TV ad from the Club for Growth.

Still, Kerry's greatest weakness is simply that he's weak. And that's unacceptable during wartime, says the Chicago Tribune:

A President Kerry certainly would punish those who want us dead. As he pledged, with cautiously calibrated words, in accepting his party's nomination: "Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response." Bush, by contrast, insists on taking the fight to terrorists, depriving them of oxygen by encouraging free and democratic governments in tough neighborhoods. As he stated in his National Security Strategy in 2002: "The United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. ... We cannot let our enemies strike first."

Bush's sense of a president's duty to defend America is wider in scope than Kerry's, more ambitious in its tactics, more prone, frankly, to yield both casualties and lasting results. This is the stark difference on which American voters should choose a president.

Neo-liberal Martin Paretz, editor of The New Republic, calls Kerry "clueless" and dangerous for Israel, fearing

the ramifications of his foreign policy in general, especially his fixation on the United Nations as the arbiter of international legitimacy, proctor of that 'global test.'

Writing in last Monday's Washington Post, Sebastian Mallaby concurs:

[O]n this overarching "what next" question, Bush is right. He is right that the best defense against terrorism is offense: Given the vast variety of targets from which terrorists can choose, the "homeland security" alternative is hopeless. He is right that preemptive war is a necessary option, and that we won't always know all of the facts about the threats we are preempting. . . .

[I]f you are willing to read the tea leaves on how Bush and Kerry would prosecute the next phase in this war, then Bush comes out better. His gut instincts on terrorism are right -- and Kerry, by assailing the president's foreign policy record at every turn, seems to be saying that those instincts are not his own ones.

As usual, Mark Steyn says it best:

[F]or all that Bush is accused of being ''stubborn,'' it's Kerry who refuses to change. He reckons that Americans are worn out by the wild ride of the Bush years and really do long to ''get back to where they were'' -- back to Sept. 10, to the summer of shark attacks and missing congressional interns. All that going back to Sept. 10 means is that you'll have to learn the lessons of the morning after all over again: I do believe that, if clueless, complacent Kerry won, more Americans -- and Britons and Canadians and Australians and Europeans -- will die in terrorist ''nuisances.''

In short, Kerry's global test is a prescription for inaction, and a return to the failed policy of appeasement. Though he insisted (in both the second and third debate) he would govern like President Reagan, Kerry consistently opposed efforts to strengthen America's defense and security. He's no Ronald Reagan; instead, Kerry's channeling Jimmy Carter--and like Carter, would make America, and the world, less safe.

I can understand why terrorists and Europeans support Kerry. Another reason Americans shouldn't.