For liberals who so desperately want to see George W. Bush lose
the White House it’s easy to gloss over John Kerry’s faults. Starving men don’t critique the menu. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has closed ranks around Kerry, defending him against every attack and refusing to admit the candidate may have a few chinks in his armor. This leaves voters few places to get
an honest assessment of Kerry — it certainly won’t come from the Republican Party.
Almost no one backed Kerry from the beginning of the Democratic nomination process. Howard Dean had many young liberals wrapped around his finger, and organized labor threw its weight behind longtime union champion Dick Gephardt. After Gephardt and Dean destroyed each other in the Iowa caucus with a nasty ad war, Kerry snuck to the top and stayed. This left Democratic activists with a candidate they could tolerate, but not love.
The Bush campaign has relentlessly hammered Kerry as a flip-flopper, a charge that has considerably damaged the senator’s campaign. Here’s the rub: It’s true. Kerry has never met a politically advantageous position he didn’t like. As Bush has repeated ad nauseam, Kerry did indeed vote for the $87 billion package for Iraq before he voted against it. He voted for the USA Patriot Act, then criticized it repeatedly. The same goes for the No Child Left Behind Act, Bush’s clever attempt to subvert public trust in the whole concept of public education.
Kerry was once a principled opponent of the death penalty, even for terrorists. Now he says he supports executing terrorists. Democrats have always had a difficult dance with the death penalty, a policy many of them oppose but can’t fight too hard against because most Americans support it. But instead of providing leadership on the issue, Kerry has taken a politically palatable but morally nonsensical position. Why does Osama bin Laden deserve the death penalty but not a serial killer?
Kerry also undermined his claim that he’s “fighting for us” when he promised during last week’s debate to lower corporate tax rates. Corporations already pay a ludicrously small portion of the national tax burden; the last thing America needs is lower corporate taxes, especially with a projected deficit in the trillions of dollars and Kerry’s expansive new spending proposals. This is one issue on which Ralph Nader has a point: Corporate America has far too much power, and neither party wants to address it.
Kerry has also been less than forthright with the American people about the future of Iraq. He asserts that he can persuade foreign nations to contribute more troops and money to Iraq, but nations such as France and Germany have been burned so badly that they aren’t eager to do America any favors, regardless of who wins the White House. Kerry also says he will accelerate the training of Iraqis to police their own country, but American soldiers in Iraq have already tried that tactic with mixed results. Whoever becomes president will find it difficult to turn the situation in Iraq around. I fear the war in Iraq will be an issue in the 2012 election.
The Kerry campaign has also done a poor job of highlighting Kerry’s accomplishments in the Senate. From listening to his campaign, you wouldn’t know Kerry led the Senate investigation into Ronald Reagan’s Iran-Contra machinations. Kerry has also been a longtime defender of the environment, but the Kerry campaign has only briefly touched on his record or that of George W. Bush, who has in some cases allowed polluting industries to actually write environmental regulations.
In last week’s debate, Kerry threw a few bones to the left, promising a gradual increase in the federal minimum wage to $7 an hour and universal health care. But liberals who think Kerry is the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt will be in for a rude awakening should he win the White House. Kerry would almost certainly have to tangle with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives, a chamber that repeatedly frustrated Bill Clinton’s best efforts.
Furthermore, despite his pledge to the contrary, Kerry would eventually have to raise taxes across the board. Bush has run up the deficit so high that the next president will have no choice but to increase taxes. Just as Reagan’s historic tax cut in his first term was followed by a historic tax hike in his second term, so will Bush’s unaffordable tax cuts see a significant reversal.
A Kerry presidency would represent the best chance for liberals to influence the White House since Lyndon Johnson’s term in office. Should he win, let’s hope he doesn’t waste it.