Comeback Kid?

John Kerry for President - Speech at New York University

Yesterday, at a family dinner, I called John Kerry "without a doubt the least effective major-party candidate during my lifetime." He must not have liked that, because today he delivered a scathing assessment of Bush's Iraq policy and combined it with what he really needed to provide: an explanation of what he would have done differently and, more importantly, what he'd do as president to make the situation better.

If people are paying attention, this could be a real turning point. While the speech suffers from the typical Kerry problem--it goes on too long--it also makes sense, flows fairly logically, contains good sound bites, and makes sense of all his seemingly over-nuanced positions in a solid framework of realistic appraisal of the past and present and forward-looking planning for the future.

We all know which of those matters most, right? Kerry needs some defining phrases of his own, something to replace "flip-flopper" as the first words voters think of when they think of John Kerry. Now they can know that John Kerry believes not in weakness but in "the totality of America’s strength." They can understand his position regarding the war on terror that, "Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight." They can hear this position, both sensible and expressive of a common American sentiment: "Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell. But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: we have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure." And they can ruminate on this thought:

Can anyone seriously say this President has handled Iraq in a way that makes us stronger in the war on terrorism?

By any measure, the answer is no. Nuclear dangers have mounted across the globe. The international terrorist club has expanded. Radicalism in the Middle East is on the rise. We have divided our friends and united our enemies. And our standing in the world is at an all time low.

Think about it for a minute. Consider where we were… and where we are. After the events of September 11, we had an opportunity to bring our country and the world together in the struggle against the terrorists. On September 12th, headlines in newspapers abroad declared “we are all Americans now.” But through his policy in Iraq, the President squandered that moment and rather than isolating the terrorists, left America isolated from the world.

I encourage you to read the entire speech, linked above, and to share it with friends. In the second half of the speech, Kerry offers specific recommendations for Iraq--things that should be done now, and things he will do in office. With six critical weeks left before the election, and with people able to start voting this week in many states, people need to know that John Kerry has a plan for Iraq. If you and I, and he, can communicate that plan effectively, he'll probably get the opportunity to implement it.