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Post-Debate Question: Why Did Kerry vote for the War?

Debra Saunders concedes Kerry won on style but Bush won on substance (San Francisco Chronicle):

I'LL CONCEDE, style counts. It was fair game for critics to say Democratic candidate Al Gore's demeanor defined his performance in the 2000 presidential debates. In that spirit, my verdict is: On the demeanor question, George W. Bush lost Thursday night. But he won on substance. You can count me in agreement with the 37 percent of Americans who told the CNN/Gallup poll that Bush got the better of John Kerry.

Kerry looked good and talked better. But every argument Kerry hurled against Bush also worked against Kerry.

The editorial continues to point out many obvious discrepancies in Kerry’s public statements about the war with the ongoing question, "So why did the world-savvy Kerry vote for the war resolution?"

But when Kerry attacked Bush on Iraq, he unwittingly crafted a grand argument against himself. Either Kerry voted for a war that, by his own lights, he should have seen as wrong, or if he knew it was wrong, he voted for it anyway.

The more Kerry argues that Bush should have known better than to go to Iraq, the more the latter scenario seems the more likely case.

Kerry's vote in favor of the war resolution and his prior statement that anyone who believes that the world is not safer with Saddam Hussein out of power isn't "qualified" to be president are impossible to reconcile with his current position that the Iraq war was a mistake, the wrong war, in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

Posted by tim at October 3, 2004 12:01 AM

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Comments

Kerry's answer, if you'd like to hear it, goes as follows.

He says that the President needed Congressional authority to take the final steps as a negotiating tool.

For example, if Congress had said "No" to the resolution, would Iraq be very afraid? They were already under very severe sanctions[1]. What more could be done except war? Kerry claims that his vote was not to disarm Bush before further diplomacy.

Imagine this-> Saddam Hussein al-Majid to Bush: "But your own Congress won't let you go to war!"

[1] Remembers, the sanctions were for weapons he didn't have.

Posted by: Josh Narins at October 3, 2004 8:40 PM