If you only paid attention to the Bush campaign, you would start to believe that President Bush is unwavering on every issue while John Kerry can’t even decide what brand of cola he likes best, much less what to do about any issue facing America. This is a false presentation of both Bush’s and Kerry’s records.
What is the best way to deflect discussion about your own candidate’s two-facedness and flip-flopping? You claim that the other side is even worse. This is exactly the strategy of the Bush campaign.
The Bush campaign often cries foul when Democrats ever try to use 9/11 in their campaign, yet the Bush campaign feels fine using it to their advantage. Many featured speakers at the Republican Convention were pro-choice, pro-gay rights, and/or pro-gun control, yet the official party platform is undeniably anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and anti-gun control.
Republicans criticize Kerry for voting against at least 13 different weapon systems, based on votes against three defense appropriation bills. The fact is, according to his campaign web site, John Kerry has voted for at least $171.5 billion in support of these same weapon systems in the last 20 years, while Cheney supported cuts in the F-16 and F/A-18 fighter programs and the B-2 bomber program. Kerry has also supported the construction of all five proposed aircraft carriers since he was elected to the Senate. Kerry has voted in favor of every single defense appropriation bill, other than the three Republicans are focusing on, during his 20 year Senate career.
The Bush campaign loves calling Kerry a flip-flopper, yet they showcase Democratic Sen. Zell Miller, someone who is known as a flip-flopper, as their keynote speaker.
Bush, however, has flip-flopped on several issues like whether the government will spend money in the Social Security trust fund. Bush has flip-flopped on his support for creating an independent 9/11 commission, as well as whether to give an extension to the 9/11 commission. Bush has flip-flopped on his support for an independent commission to investigate the intelligence that lead to the Iraq War and whether to make the Department of Homeland Security a cabinet level position – an idea originally proposed by Congressional Democrats.
Bush has flip-flopped on his position dealing with putting mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions. Bush has flip-flopped on his support for the McCain-Feingold campaign reform bill. These are just a few of the issues that Bush not only made a “clarification” but completely turned around his position 180 degrees.
One egregious example deals with Bush’s explanation of his actions in regard to the War in Iraq. For nearly a year, President Bush told the nation that the reason we needed to attack Iraq was that they had weapons of mass destruction. He even suggested that if Iraq turned over and destroyed such weapons that they could prevent being invaded.
Now, Bush is claiming that the weapons of mass destruction issue is basically irrelevant, and that Saddam needed to be taken out anyway. This makes us conclude one of two things, neither of which looks good for Bush. Either, in an attempt to get out of saying he made a mistake, Bush is now trying to push alternate reasons for the war or the issue of weapons of mass destruction wasn’t the real reason we went to war and that Bush just used the weapons issue to gain popular support for the war. Both one of these cases present a serious challenge to Bush’s trustworthiness.
On top of this, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, as late as May and July of 2001, doubted the danger that Iraq posed to both his neighbors and the rest of the world, in complete contrast to the claims made by Bush leading up to the war.
Ultimately, re-election campaigns should be more about the incumbent, not the challenger. One very clear sign that an incumbent has very little to run on is how much he attacks the challenger. A successful incumbent should be able to spend a minimum amount of time running against the challenger while spending most of his time running on his own record.
This is clearly not the case in this election.
While Kerry’s record is important and should be considered, we will ultimately be judging Bush’s record in November.

Author