When he triumphed in the Democrat presidential primaries, John Kerry was everything that President Bush was not. He was a decorated Vietnam War hero. In a 20-year senatorial career he had acquired a statesmanlike gravitas.
Yet as Kerry approaches his official endorsement at the Democrat National Convention in Boston at the end of this month, there are already mutterings among the party’s powerbrokers that their candidate-in-waiting is simply not cutting the mustard. While the Bush administration has been squirming on the political and military hooks of Iraq, Kerry has been unable to put clear blue water between himself and the incumbent. He has not presented alternative policies appealing to middle-ground voters who are now deeply concerned about Bush’s judgment.
Maybe Kerry who voted for the Iraqi invasion cannot in all honesty see how matters could have been handled very differently. Though now most American voters oppose the involvement of Iraq, Kerry has yet to offer them any radically alternative voice. Meanwhile Bush is slowly wrapping himself in the flag, so that the eventual military retreat from Iraq will be seen as a statesman-like and even triumphant “Bringing our brave boys back home.”
The huge cheer that greeted Kerry’s announcement Tuesday that his running mate would be John Edwards may have had a lot to do with Democrat relief that at last they have someone who can put some real fire into the spluttering Kerry campaign. What Edwards lacks in political experience, he seems to make up for in charm, and an open and frank way of setting out his stall. Edwards, who fought Kerry for the nomination, was actually the last challenger to drop out. He made a big impression on the Democrat faithful, not least in the South where this self-made millionaire lawyer was born.
So far the Kerry campaign strategy may have been to hold fire until the official start of the hustings. Certainly the Republicans after firing a few, not very well-aimed, smearing salvoes in Kerry’s direction have since also been largely keeping their powder dry. Full hostilities will open next month. Iraq will be an issue but not the primary issue because US presidential campaigns are decided on domestic rather than foreign politics. Kerry campaign strategists may thus have decided to keep their man out of Iraq, where the Democrats would have nothing to gain by taking any sort of position but where George Bush might yet suffer damaging blows that will sway the electorate back home.
Democrat support for Israel is always more certain than that of the Republicans. Yet there is a fast growing Jews-for-Republicans movement. This support may in itself be trying to head off any Bush change of policy, because every second-term president is a threat to traditional US foreign policy positions. If Bush’s appetite for foreign adventure has not been blunted by Iraq, he could ignore the powerful domestic Zionist lobby and go after the obdurate and aggressive Israel which he may now have finally realized, lies at the heart of the region’s woes.
