BUSH GIVES US THE WRONG REASONS

I won't vote for Bush for the reasons he gave. Bush insists, over and over again, that he's consistent. But Bush has actually zig-zagged considerably. He has changed, and learned. Above all, Bush is a convert to the transformative power of liberty. That's what inspires me about him.

I won't vote against Kerry for the reasons Bush gave. Kerry shook the flip-flop label pretty well last night. He convinced me that he had a consistent position on the war: that Saddam was a threat, he needed to be disarmed, there was a right way and a wrong way to do it, Bush went about it the wrong way. The right way was to use UN channels and go to war only as a last resort, and Bush "rushed to war," and thus deceived the American people. Baloney. Saddam was not much of a threat, but disarming him was a useful pretext for toppling an evil dictator; Bush certainly did exhaust the diplomatic channels and any more delay would have been (like the last sixteen UN resolutions) a mask for inaction; this was certainly Bush's sincere belief and there was no deceit. At the deepest level, Kerry's problem is not flip-flopping here. It's that he refused to compromise. He refused to recognize even the good faith of a man whose differences from him were (at least, if Kerry is sincere, a big if) rather narrow. He got outraged that the administration deviated from Kerry's chosen solution, which was certainly unworkable. Kerry only looks like he's flip-flopping because, in the ever-shifting world of politics, his articulations of a pig-headedly consistent position inevitably get spun in different ways. Kerry hates hates hates to be disobeyed, deviated from, contradicted. He hates being contradicted by President Bush. As president, he will hate being contradicted by reality.