Quotes of the Day
When a country goes to war, the public rallies around the leader, in part because it is just too scary not to. You sleep better at night if you trust the guy keeping watch. That helps explain why George W. Bush was called unbeatable last May even after leading America through a war over which the country anguished. As the anniversary of the Iraq invasion nears, a majority of the American people still trust his leadership, and nearly 70% think the country is safer than it was before Sept. 11. And so John Kerry, as he emerges as the Democrats' presumptive nominee, has no greater mission in the next eight months than to convince them they are wrong.
Vast as their differences are over tax policy, the environment and social issues, Bush and Kerry are never more impassioned than when they put the central question on the table: Whom do you trust to keep you safe? Bush lives in a dangerous world, Kerry in a complex one; one exalts strength and certainty, the other subtlety and sophistication. Kerry, the war hero, says military power alone can't win the war on terrorism. Bush, the war President, says Kerry promises bold action but only if no other government disagrees. Kerry, who speaks five languages, sees a world so intertwined that even a superpower can't survive alone. Bush, who speaks in black and white, says a leader must never care more about being liked than about being right.
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America had seldom enjoyed so much international goodwill as after Sept. 11, and so little as we did last spring when we headed into war. But where Kerry cites the high cost of sympathy squandered, Bush sees value in showing resolve in the face of resistance. "We showed the dictator and a watching world that we mean what we say," the President says; he points to countries like Iran and Libya falling in line, and to Iraq as "an example of democracy rising at the heart of the Middle East." He knocks Kerry for voting against the first Gulf War and against funds for Iraqi reconstruction in the second; for wanting the benefits of tough decisions without having to make them. His critics "now agree that the world is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power; they just didn't support removing Saddam from power," Bush says. "Maybe they were hoping he'd lose the next Iraqi election." For his part, the President says that even had he known that no weapons stockpiles would be found, he still would have done the same thing in Iraq.
"I think he's wrong, dead wrong," the challenger replies. What Bush calls "strength and confidence" Kerry calls "hubris and swagger" from the "armchair warriors." Where Bush defends what he did, Kerry attacks how he did it. Bush's rush to war, the Senator argues, never gave diplomacy a chance to accomplish the same goals: far from making us safer, the President's policies have overextended our troops, distracted our attention, diverted resources and damaged the alliances we need to track down terrorists everywhere else. Credit for progress in Libya and Iran belongs to diplomats in Europe, he says, not the saber rattlers in Washington. "How is it possible to do what the Bush Administration has done in Iraq: win a great military victory yet make America weaker?" Kerry asks. And how can the President unveil a commercial that includes a picture of fire fighters amid the wreckage of Sept. 11 while he has cut funding for fire fighters at home?
So now we know not just whom this race will be between but what it will be about. Last week's events in Iraq came as one more reminder of just how high the stakes have become. The completion of an interim constitution offered a swatch of hope, even if the signing ceremony fell apart at the last moment. The horrifying death toll in ever more brutal bombings gave a reminder of all that remains to be done. No matter who wins in November, the challenge of fulfilling America's promise in Iraq will be with us for years to come.
There will be plenty of talk of policy and doctrine, but the music beneath will all be about character and conviction. Whatever people think of Bush's judgment, they have much less question about his nerve. His prosecution of the war sent a message even to those who disagree with him that he will do whatever he thinks it takes to keep the country safe. All his attention on Kerry's shifting votes is less substance than subtext: Where's the guy's spine? When Bush uses "Steady leadership in times of change" as the tag line on his new ads, it suggests that a President who likes to talk about results would now rather focus on reflexes, maybe because when it comes to finding Saddam's weapons and pacifying Iraq, the results so far don't lend themselves to an advertisement.
For all his talk about process, Kerry in his own way is doing the same thing; at some level this choice may come down to a gut check. It was political palm reader Bill Clinton who warned his fellow Democrats that in dangerous times, people may prefer a leader who is strong and wrong to one who is weak and right. That may be one reason that, even this early on, we have heard about Kerry's personal heroism in Vietnam; we may not know where the snipers are today, but we know he had the guts to run toward one 35 years ago. As he makes his own kind of strength a virtue, however, he must somehow try to make Bush's a fault: the President may indeed be a strong leader who knows where he wants to take the country, Kerry can concede, but if he's heading for a cliff, then all that strength only increases the risk.
- Nancy Gibbs