[Mb-civic] Embrace Flip-Flopping, Be the Flip-Flopper LATimes

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-carlson7oct07.story

MARGARET CARLSON

Embrace Flip-Flopping, Be the Flip-Flopper

Kerry can turn this supposed negative into a positive.
 MARGARET CARLSON

 October 7, 2004

 To win the election, John Kerry has to eliminate the main line of attack
against him: that he's an unprincipled flip-flopper. And quickly.

 It was a constant theme in the vice presidential debate, and polls last
week showed the "flip-flopper" label sticking with as many as 61% of voters.

 The label keeps Kerry on the defensive. He can't make a clear argument
about the war in Iraq because he's too scared to appear to be changing his
mind. And he can't fully expose Bush's fatal flaw, which is that he will
never change his mind. The best way for Kerry to counter the
straight-talking Texan is straight on, by redefining himself as a principled
flip-flopper. 

 Flip-flopping has a bad name ‹ undeservedly so, as PBS' Gwen Ifill pointed
out in a question at the vice presidential debate. In a 30-second universe,
it's hard to explain that it takes a big man to admit a mistake and to shift
one's position commensurate with new facts. Making a course correction is
never going to trip off the tongue like staying the course. But if the Bush
people can turn the guy who evaded Vietnam into a more stalwart patriot than
the one who risked his life in the Mekong Delta, surely Kerry can turn this
flip-flopping thing to his advantage (even if it means flip-flopping).

 He botched his best opportunity this summer. At an event at the Grand
Canyon, he was asked if, knowing what he knows now, he would still vote to
give Bush authority to go to war. He should have been clear: Of course not.
But Kerry was so spooked by advisors who saw the "flip-flop" ads working, he
couldn't take a clean swing at that dream pitch.

 The final weeks of a campaign are simple one-act plays that allow for no
nuance. People just need to look at the carnage on the nightly news, their
shrinking paychecks and their escalating doctor bills to know that Bush's
steadfastness is stubbornness. His insistence that he's always right means
he can't get off the wrong track. When there's violence in Iraq, Bush says
that's the price of democracy. When there's even more violence in Iraq, Bush
says that's because democracy is growing ever closer. The more democracy,
the more beheadings ‹ Bush is covered either way.

 It is the same with tax cuts. Bush says they're working and the economy is
recovering, but if you don't think it's recovering fast enough or creating
enough jobs, the answer is more and permanent tax cuts.

 Bush has always insisted he sent the right number of troops to keep Iraq
from slipping into chaos, but now L. Paul Bremer III, Bush's first head of
Iraq's interim government, admitted the troop level was inadequate. Maybe
that's why so many Iraqis turned against us. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld said he couldn't find ties between Saddam Hussein and Al
Qaeda, although he later tried to backtrack.

 A front-page article in Sunday's New York Times removed another pillar of
Bush's rationale for war. Those aluminum-tubes-for-nuclear-bombs that his
administration waved around as "compelling evidence" of Hussein's nuclear
intentions? That was a discredited theory, rescued from the burn basket of a
low-level CIA analyst to bolster a less-than-slam-dunk case. Former CIA
Director George Tenet emerged from seclusion and issued a statement that he
had shared with the White House the fact that there were "alternate views"
of the tubes.



 Kerry doesn't need a plan to end the war. A quagmire doesn't readily yield
one and Bush doesn't have one, unless you count not blinking in the face of
evil. But it's becoming clear what Bush is going to do: Hold elections in
January, even if Fallouja has become Fallujistan and won't participate.

 As Rumsfeld said, no election is perfect. After these imperfect elections,
Bush will declare victory and turn the country over to Iraqi security
forces, no matter how few or badly trained, and to a leader, no matter how
shaky his selection.

 It's simple, stupid. Do we want more of the same? Bush is never going to
change his position. So the voters will have to do that.


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