The coming days will certainly bring us an abundance of analysis of last night's insipid presidential debate. My own offering should be prefaced with the observation that the single greatest piece of knowledge I came away with was of the existence of the word "transshipment." President George W. Bush drew some chuckles with this should-be SAT word, assumed by almost everyone in Salomon 101, including myself, to be another of his hilarious malapropisms. We must, however, bear in mind that Bush went to Yale, while we are mere Brown students; Oxford English Dictionary sides with the President, confirming that "transshipment" is indeed a word.
Despite my general cynicism on this heavily orchestrated form of press conferencing, it was pleasantly obvious that the candidates had more to disagree on than did Bush and Gore four years ago. Still, despite the seeming urgency for any serious political candidate to stake out a position on terrorism and the war in Iraq, John Kerry refuses to do so, preferring to reflexively disagree with the President as a sort of futile gesture to the far left.
Kerry changed his "positions" multiple times in a mere 90-minute span, the only independent variable apparently being the manner in which questions were phrased. He revealed himself to be not so much a flip-flopper as a nihilist, a cautious career politician who never intends to take a stand he could not conceivably back away from.
This repugnant quality was on display last night in all its glory. Kerry's assorted statements on Iraq amount to nothing more than a vapid stream of logical non-sequiturs. Kerry faults Bush for the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were discovered, but the senator thought there were before the war. He doesn't believe that Bush lied, just that he's not telling the truth. Kerry believes the war was wrong, but that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He believes that the war was right but was gone about in the wrong way. He will never place our national security decisions in the hands of foreign bodies, but says that the war was wrong because it didn't pass the "global test." He'd like more allies but derides those who have signed on. He believes that 30 to 40 countries had greater capacity to manufacture weapons of mass destruction that Iraq, but offered no clue as to what he would do about this. He's in favor of multilateralism, but prefers bilateral talks in the case of North Korea, perhaps the most disreputable negotiating partner since the days of the Third Reich. This could go on for pages.
Basically, George Bush won the debate because Kerry can't stop screwing around. While college students may view his cowardly opportunism as "nuance," the majority of Americans will not. For as big a disaster as Kerry believes the Iraq war to be, he offers nothing in the way of alternative, beyond courageously stating that he would hold an international summit, at which he would presumably ask for help a little nicer than did George Bush. That's it. That's the plan.
Thankfully, the majority of Americans realize that this is not a joke, nor a matter of a wild Texas cowboy trying to take over the world. Rather, this is a time for crucial decisions which will bear on the preservation of our republic. There are different possible positions one could take toward that end, but, for God's sake, shouldn't a candidate for President at least have one? Once again, John Kerry has not only failed to offer any substantive alternative to voters, but has largely failed to even try.
Christopher McAuliffe '05 doesn't screw around.
