I don't share the tepid support so many grudgingly give John Kerry, I reject the mighty disgust and sighs of resignation the media cool kids have caps-locked into their endorsement essays. Kerry elicits my wholehearted backing and total enthusiasm, and he does so for the exact reasons that they hate him. So here, in a sentence, is my position: You should vote for John Kerry because he's been running for President since he was 20 and his stances on tough issues flip back and forth, often egregiously so.
Counterintuitive enough for you? I knew it would be. But it's also true. Now let me explain, and allow me the conceit of doing so in reverse order, first promoting the "flip-flopper" and then the ambition.
John Kerry has taken more stances than most of us have showers. He rose to prominence in opposition to the Vietnam War, he'll rise to the presidency because of his heroism in it. He voted for the War in Iraq and against the $87 billion dollars to further fund it. He voted for The PATRIOT Act but has shredded it in effigy throughout the campaign. He voted for No Child Left Behind but has recast it as central in his critique of George Bush.
That's a lot of positions, but more than that, they're not nuanced. They're diametrically opposed to each other. Righteousness, as a habit, rejects certainty; in fact, the angels have a troubling predisposition to wander around issues, which makes sticking in their camp a matter of ideological flexibility as much as judgment. There's no chasm greater than the one Kerry bridged to go from Vietnam war hero to the war's most prominent opponent, but he was right to serve his country and right to fight for an end to the misguided slaughter. It's a lesson he's refused to unlearn, and one he's spent a lifetime applying. And we need it.
There are times when principle matters more than results, when the admirable aspects of certainty outweigh the practical aspects of flexibility. Certainty can inspire, it can direct, it can empower. But it can't always be right. Terrorism isn't an issue on which we can afford to be wrong. Kerry's willingness to adopt new strategies and positions in response to new evidence is his most crucial trait. The terrorists, Cheney says, will not be impressed by our softer side, though, according to the precanned narratives emitted by his voicebox, it seems George Bush's resolve impresses them greatly. But the objective is not to impress those who wish to kill us, it's to destroy them and their networks. Kerry is willing to adapt his approach to that imperative, Bush is unwilling to do anything that may compromise his puffed-out chest and firmly set jaw.
As a practical matter, that is the primary difference between George W. Bush and John Kerry. It's a choice between extreme certainty and an almost excessive flexibility. These are personality traits and I blame neither man for them, I simply judge which I prefer in my president, and that places me in Kerry's camp. But you know what? I forgive Bush his failings, I forgive him his mistakes, I forgive him his transgressions and his lies and his misjudgments and miscalculations and messes. What I don't forgive -- what I will never forgive -- is that he ran for president in the first place. And the reason, dear reader, that I can never forgive him for that, is because he fought to ascend to an office he didn't understand.
The President of the United States of America is one of the few men in the world temporally unmoored. He can reach beyond the present, his actions shape the future and, for the future, come to define the past. Some presidents become figures of myth, like Lincoln and Kennedy and Washington, while others become legends, like FDR and Reagan. Some fade into the background, either unable to match their station or placed in a period calm enough to repel history. But Bush, a man who didn't grow up desiring the presidency and whose motivations were familial and manipulated, entered an office expecting to simply do a job, maybe even bring a radical viewpoint to it. But no more than that. And so, faced with a transformative moment that immediately created unprecedented unity and resolve, he resolved to send us shopping and make congressional gains. He failed history, he failed a spectacular moment, and he did so because he was never prepared to be the President of the United States of America, all George wanted to be was CEO.
Kerry, conversely, seems to have pursued the presidency since he could roll over. He grew up in awe of the office and has spent a lifetime attempting to transcend his often impersonal and ill-fitting nature in order to reach it. This guy wants it. And that's crucial. I only trust those obsessed with the presidency and its capabilities to hold the office, they're the only ones who understand its historic potential. They're the guys who, when the planes hit the buildings, will snap to attention, fling the children's book across the room, and rise to the moment. And they force us to do the same.
For awhile, the Kerry campaign revived an old Langston Hughes poem, "Let America be America Again". Hughes happens to be both my favorite author and poet, and it was amusing to watch the oh-so-clever conservatives laser in on the poem's cynical portrayal of the country. What they didn't understand, and what Kerry does, is that Hughes separated "America" from the country in which he lived. "America" is myth, "America" is legend, "America" is transcendent. But most of the time, it's trapped, as we all are, in the mundane problems and persecutions of the present. Seldom are we given the opportunity to live up to our myth, to merge our present with the lore of our past. World War II was such an opportunity. 9/11 was another. Bush failed, and we lost a rare chance to be "America" again. Under President Kerry, we won't. And, for that reason, I will proudly, optimistically, excitedly vote for him on Tuesday. And so, I hope, will you.
