The War Of The Flip Flops

Consistency is one of those qualities that act like a virtue without necessarily being one. While we would like our Presidents to be consistently wise, it is the wisdom we are really after. But consistency and its cousin certainty still hold a sacred place in our politics. The charge that a candidate has flip-flopped on some position is not a political attack so much as a personal one. It is less about the issues being debated than about the instincts being revealed, about honor and honesty and nerve under fire. How tight the label sticks depends a lot on the impression voters have already formed, which means that a less well-known candidate can be vulnerable in ways a familiar one may not be.

No mission has been more urgent for the Bush-Cheney operation than to seize this moment, in the springtime of the campaign, when all impressions about the challenger are new, to convince voters that John Kerry is an opportunist tethered to no core beliefs, a serial side switcher on everything from the war to gas taxes to gay marriage. "Indecision kills," says Vice President Dick Cheney in his stump speech, with characteristic subtlety. "These are not times for leaders who shift with the political winds, saying one thing one day and another thing the next." The President himself has leveled the charge, though more lightly than Cheney does, more mocking than warning. "My opponent clearly has strong beliefs," George Bush says of Kerry. "They just don't last very long."

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In fact, the very week that President Bush executed a spectacular backflip with a twist, agreeing after weeks of refusal to let National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice testify publicly and under oath before the 9/11 commission, the polls suggested that his strategy of painting Kerry as a waffler was working, especially in battleground states, where Kerry's 28% advantage over Bush coming out of the primaries has all but disappeared. While the race remains very tight in most polls, some showed Kerry's unfavorable ratings climbing 10 points in the weeks since he secured the nomination. In a Los Angeles Times poll that asked who was the stronger leader, 46% picked Bush; 38% chose Kerry.

How can a line of fire that is bruising Kerry seem to bounce off Bush? As Kerry's defenders are quick to note, the President had a fairly acrobatic record even before the Condi flip, doubling back on everything from his "humble" foreign policy to steel tariffs, opposing the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance bill and then signing it, calling gay marriage a state issue and then backing a federal ban on it. In fact, the Times poll found, roughly equal numbers of voters see Bush and Kerry as flip-floppers (35% and 38%, respectively). But what matters is not the perception so much as the damage it does. Asked by a recent Gallup poll who is more likely to change his positions on issues for political reasons, 49% said Kerry, and 37% said Bush.

Now, after two quiet weeks of vacation followed by shoulder surgery, Kerry returns full force to the campaign trail with his own urgent mission: to define himself in some positive way and at the same time turn Bush's attacks against him. And so begin the Waffle Wars. "The President's decision to finally allow Condoleezza Rice to testify in public and under oath is the mother of all flip-flops," says Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter. "What's worse, for each important decision regarding the security of the American people at home over the past three years, the President has taken two positions one based on stubborn ideology and one based on political expedience."

If Bush has managed to drive up Kerry's negative ratings, it is in part a measure of his firepower. Camp Kerry is celebrating its record-breaking first-quarter haul of more than $50 million half of it raised, Howard Dean style, from small donors online. Kerry will need every penny when facing an opponent who in March alone spent more than $40 million on advertising, much of it attacking Kerry at just the moment when he was largely out of sight, out of action, ripe for defining. Bush's first attack ad, run on the Web, was titled "Unprincipled." The Republican National Committee website claims to have had more than 1 million hits as of last week on its online Kerry-vs.-Kerry cartoon, which features the voice of boxing impresario Don King narrating a match between two John Kerrys fighting over sanctions on Cuba, the marriage penalty, the war in Iraq and 32 other topics.

If voters seem more inclined to hold Kerry's somersaults against him, it may be because they don't know enough about the Massachusetts Senator to put the charges in context. Any Senator with a 19-year record has cast thousands of votes that can be mined for contradiction. But presidential candidates live on a different planet than lawmakers, who can revise and amend their remarks at will. Thus candidate Kerry denounces greedy companies caught in financial scandals, though Senator Kerry voted to protect them from liability. Candidate Kerry slams Bush for the way he has carried out the No Child Left Behind Act, which Senator Kerry voted for. You have to know how the Senate works to begin to fathom Kerry's now notorious statement defending his stance on appropriations for reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan: "I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it." That is shorthand for saying he voted in favor of a bill that would have rolled back some of Bush's tax cuts to help cover the rebuilding costs; when that version failed, he voted against the bill that excluded the tax provision.