Backing Kerry

How do you make Kerry look solid on foreign policy? That must be the question Kerry campaigners are asking as they seek to exploit the quagmire hype about Iraq that is damaging GWB.

The BBC of course has been leading the pack as far as 'quagmire' hype goes: they tenaciously hung onto that word through the dark days following Saddam's arrest. The BBC then should know how to make Kerry look solid, just as they have shown themselves expert in making Bush look insecure.

How to do it then? Well, when the Democrats pitch for the middle ground you might take them at face value and produce an analysis saying there's little to choose between Kerry and Bush on security and the WoT (or 'so-called WoT'). That's what wavering Bushies and 'Bush Democrats' have been saying they are looking for, so why not play along, like this:

'Senator Kerry said that his number one priority would be to prevent terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

Hard to see George W Bush having much problem with that.

The senator also said the US should remain the paramount military power in the world.

We've definitely heard that before from the White House.'

But wait a minute, wasn't this supposed to be an analysis? Ahh, yes, it is an analysis of how 'most US voters would be hard pressed to find much difference between the challenger and the incumbent George W Bush' -in other words, tell them what they're going to think and then rehearse the argument for them. Silly me thinking the BBC's remit was to educate and inform.

According to the BBC's Rob Watson, the differences are 'a matter of emphasis'. Yet we learn that 'On Iraq Senator Kerry said not a lot'. That sounds like a pretty big difference of 'emphasis' to me, since GWB gave a whole speech over to discussing Iraq, relating it to the WoT, the other evening.

This difference is the key one Watson ignores, preferring to discuss how not mentioning Iraq fits into the Democrat strategy. The way he reads this is instructive. Kerry, he says, wants GWB to 'stew in his own juices'. There is another way of looking at it though. It could be that Kerry doesn't have any positive ideas and the ideas he does have he's frightened to present to the people of America until he's set fair on his way into the Whitehouse.

Watson mentions that Kerry (somewhat ambiguously) was an 'early supporter' of the Iraq war, but doesn't get to the crux and ask if Kerry would have initiated it, which is, in the light of Kerry's on the record positions on Iraq, very dubious to say the least.

He doesn't ask if Kerry would act pre-emptively to defend US security, using the military option, or if instead he would rely on the multilateral agreements which were in fact 'repeatedly' the emphasis of the speech.

Those, I am sure, are the kind of emphases that the American people would regard as substantive, and on which they will make their choice later in the year.