Jewish World Review Nov. 22, 2002 / 17 Kislev, 5763

Jeff Jacoby

Jeff Jacoby
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports

The slippery senator

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Al Gore took another step to the left last week, telling an audience in New York that he now favors a national single-payer health insurance system. He offered no details, but a spokesman says a speech on the subject is in the works.

A Canada-style single-payer scheme would mean a major decline in US health care -- just ask a Canadian who has had to wait weeks for the results of an AIDS test, or months for cancer radiation therapy, or more than a year for a hip replacement -- and I doubt that Americans are any keener on the idea now than they were when Hillary Clinton was peddling it eight years ago. A single-payer plan was on the ballot in Oregon this month; voters crushed it in a landslide. The fact that Gore thinks it would be a good idea is one more reason to steer clear of Gore in '04.

But give the former vice president credit for taking a concrete stand -- for openly embracing a policy that he knows many voters reject, for not hiding behind a cloud of cliches and being careful to say nothing unpopular. For not being, that is, more like Senator John Kerry.

The current issue of The Boston Phoenix features a 1,300-word essay by Kerry headlined "A clarion call for Democrats." Now, most politicians are given to bloviating from time to time, but this "clarion call" is a masterpiece of meretriciousness -- one gaudy bromide after another, paragraph upon paragraph promising everything while saying virtually nothing.

For example: "We Democrats must have the courage of our convictions. We must be ready to refuse the course of least resistance, to confront the seemingly popular, and to offer a vision that looks beyond the next poll to the next decade and the next generation. Instead of just quoting the words of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, we need to match their leadership with our own, with daring and commitment, with new thinking equal to a new and different time." It's all foam, no beer.

Kerry is against making last year's drawn-out income tax cut permanent ("We must say it plainly: Stop the new Bush tax cut for those at the top"). Other than that, you search this manifesto in vain for anything resembling a hard position. "We can build housing and renew community," he declares. "We can have smaller class sizes and after-school safety for children. We can keep our promise to veterans and break the gridlock on our highways. We can clean up our lakes and rivers and escape the stranglehold of foreign oil."

Yes, and we can fly to the moon on gossamer wings, but we'd better not wait for Kerry to tell us how, or what price we'll have to pay to get there, or which Democratic constituency he is prepared to take on to make it happen.

"To do any of these things in the world," Kerry writes, "Democrats must be willing to stand for something." That's just the problem: What does John Kerry stand for?

Well, he stands forthrightly against going to war to liberate Iraq. Or does he? Today he says he will "forcefully and vociferously" oppose any attempt by President Bush to launch such a war absent proof of "an imminent threat." Yet last month he voted for a congressional resolution granting Bush the authority to do just that. His vote, in turn, came after weeks of denouncing not only the administration's Iraq policy ("very amateurish and almost irresponsible"), but the administration's Iraq policymakers ("these guys are fakers"). Where in all this twisting and turning is the real Kerry? Is there a real Kerry?

I think the real Kerry cares considerably more about his own political standing and White House ambitions than he does about Iraq or its dictator. Blasting Bush's foreign policy earns points with liberal Democrats -- the kind who turn out for presidential primaries -- so he blasts away. But voting against the Iraq resolution would have cost points with moderate and conservative Americans -- the majority that decides presidential elections -- so he voted for it.

In 1991, when presidential politics weren't a concern, Kerry cast what he doubtless thought was a safe vote against the Gulf War resolution. "Is the liberation of Kuwait," he demanded, "so imperative that all those risks are worthwhile at this moment?" Back then, at least, he wasn't trying to be all things to all people.

Or maybe he was. When a constituent wrote in support of using force against Iraq, the response from Kerry expressed firm opposition to the war resolution and said that economic sanctions should have been given "more time to work." Nine days later, there came a second letter, this one saying Kerry "strongly and unequivocally supported President [George H. W.] Bush's response." When The Boston Globe published the letters side by side, Kerry blamed the glaring contradiction on a computer glitch, and said the constituent should have received yet a third letter, one opposing the war but supporting the troops.

Funny, no one ever has to ask where Ted Kennedy stands. Why is it always so hard to pin Kerry down? And if he's this slippery and artful even when it comes to issues of war and peace, how can we trust him to play it straight on any other issue?

Like this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.

11/18/02: The campus 'diversity' fraud
11/14/02: MURDER AT A KIBBUTZ
11/01/02: Saddam's shop of horrors
10/24/02: Musings, random and otherwise
10/17/02: Jimma's ignoble prize
10/14/02: New Jersey's bigot laureate
10/11/02: Today it is libs who are most likely to demand the silencing of speech they disapprove of
10/04/02: Learning English from Day 1
09/30/02: The world will follow us to war
09/27/02: The face of antisemitism
09/20/02: Starving time in Zimbabwe
09/14/02: Against moral confusion / 9-12-2002
09/03/02: With 'eternal friends' like these
08/30/02: Enriching survivors was a costly mistake
08/26/02: John Kerry's absent passion
08/23/02: Bonnie, get your gun
08/19/02: A screenwriter's remorse
07/29/02: The real abortion extremists
07/26/02: Another round of Kemp-Roth
07/19/02: Jews among Arabs, Arabs among Jews
07/15/02: Musings, random and otherwise
07/12/02: The new civil rights champions
07/03/02: Riding the rails
07/01/02: The prerequisite to peace
06/24/02: Frisking AlGore
06/17/02: Offense, not defense, is the key to homeland security
06/14/02: Looking at the horror
06/07/02: The cost of a death-penalty moratorium
06/03/02: Executing 'children,' and other death-penalty myths
05/29/02: A real threat?
05/24/02: The message in Arafat's headdress
05/20/02: (Mis)playing the popularity card
05/10/02: Outspoken, Muslim -- and moderate
05/10/02: The heroes in Castro's jails
05/06/02: The disappearing history term paper
05/03/02: Musings, random and otherwise
04/29/02: The canary in Europe's mine
04/15/02: Powell's crazy mission
04/12/02: The slavery reparations hustle
04/08/02: Peace at any price = war
03/26/02: Decency matters most, Caleb
03/22/02: The U.S. embargo and Cuba's future
03/19/02: The keepers of Cuba's conscience
03/15/02: A walk in Havana
02/26/02: Buchanan's lament
02/12/02: What 'peace' means to Arafat
02/08/02: STEVEN EMERSON AND THE NPR BLACKLIST
02/05/02: Antismoking: Who pays?
02/01/02: Turn the Saudis
01/25/02: Making MLK cry
01/21/02: Ted to tax cut: Drop dead
01/18/02: Musings random and otherwise
01/14/02: An ultimatum to Saudi Arabia
01/11/02: Friendship, Saudi-style
01/07/02: Shakedown at Harvard
01/04/02: More guns, more safety
01/02/02: Smears and slanders from the Left
12/28/01: Congress gives to others -- and itself
12/24/01: The littlest peacemakers
12/20/01: How to condemn terror
12/18/01: Greenland once was
12/14/01: Parents who never said ''no''
12/11/01: Wit and (economic) wisdom
12/07/01: THE PALESTINIANS' MYTH
12/04/01: The war against Israel goes on
11/30/01: Tribunals, motorcycles -- and freedom
11/19/01: Friendship and the House of Saud
11/12/01: The Justice Department's unjust monopoly
11/09/01: Muslim, but not extremist
11/02/01: Too good for Oprah
10/29/01: Journalism and the 'neutrality fetish'
10/26/01: Derail these subsidies
10/22/01: Good and evil in the New York Times
10/15/01: Rush Limbaugh's ear
10/08/01: With allies like these
10/01/01: An unpardonable act
09/28/01: THE CENSORS ARE COMING! THE CENSORS ARE COMING!
09/25/01: Speaking out against terror
09/21/01: What the terrorists saw
09/17/01: Calling evil by its name
09/13/01: Our enemies mean what they say
09/04/01: The real bigots
08/31/01: Shrugging at genocide
08/28/01: Big Brother's privacy -- or ours?
08/24/01: The mufti's message of hate
08/21/01: Remembering the 'Wall of Shame'
08/16/01: If I were the editor ...
08/14/01: If I were the Transportation Czar ...
08/10/01: Import quotas 'steel' from us all
08/07/01: Is gay "marriage" a threat?
08/03/01: A colorblind nominee
07/27/01: Eminent-domain tortures
07/24/01: On protecting the flag ... and drivers ... and immigrants
07/20/01: Dying for better mileage
07/17/01: Why Americans would rather drive
07/13/01: Do these cabbies look like bigots?
07/10/01: 'Defeated in the bedroom'
07/06/01: Who's white? Who's Hispanic? Who cares?
07/02/01: Big(oted) man on campus
06/29/01: Still appeasing China's dictators
06/21/01: Cuban liberty: A test for Bush
06/19/01: The feeble 'arguments' against capital punishment
06/12/01: What energy crisis?
06/08/01: A jewel in the crown of self-government
05/31/01: The settlement myth
05/25/01: An award JFK would have liked
05/22/01: No Internet taxes? No problem
05/18/01: Heather has five mommies (and a daddy)
05/15/01: An execution, not a lynching
05/11/01: Losing the common tongue
05/08/01: Olympics 2008: Say no to Beijing
05/04/01: Do welfare mothers a kindness: Make them work
05/01/01: Another man's child
04/24/01: Sharon should have said no
04/02/01: The Inhumane Society
03/30/01: To have a friend, Caleb, be a friend
03/27/01: Is Chief Wahoo racist?
03/22/01: Ending the Clinton appeasement
03/20/01: They're coming for you
03/16/01: Kennedy v. Kennedy
03/13/01: We should see McVeigh die
03/09/01: The Taliban's wrecking job
03/07/01: The No. 1 reason to cut taxes
03/02/01: A Harvard candidate's silence on free speech
02/27/01: A lesson from Birmingham jail
02/20/01: How Jimmy Carter got his good name back
02/15/01: Cashing in on the presidency
02/09/01: The debt for slavery -- and for freedom
02/06/01: The reparations calculation
02/01/01: The freedom not to say 'amen'
01/29/01: Chavez's 'hypocrisy': Take a closer look
01/26/01: Good-bye, good riddance
01/23/01: When everything changed (mostly for the better)
01/19/01: The real zealots
01/16/01: Pardon Clinton?
01/11/01: The fanaticism of Linda Chavez
01/09/01: When Jerusalem was divided
01/05/01 THEY NEVER FORGOT THEE, O JERUSALEM
12/29/00 Liberal hate speech, 2000
12/15/00Does the Constitution expect poor children be condemned to lousy government schools?
12/08/00 Powell is wrong man to run State Department
12/05/00 The 'MCAS' teens give each other
12/01/00 Turning his back on the Vietnamese -- again
11/23/00 Why were the Pilgrims thankful?
11/21/00 The fruit of this 'peace process' is war
11/13/00 Unleashing the lawyers
11/17/00 Gore's mark on history
40 reasons to say NO to Gore

© 2002, Boston Globe