The other day, I was on a jog and, for some reason, began thinking about Kerry. Mainly, I was thinking about flip-flopping, and how disastrous Bush's pigheadedness has finally proven to be. Back in 2004, on Pandagon, I used to argue for Kerry to embrace flip-flopping as a virtue, recast a willingness to face complexity into a form of political courage. "Every politician is afraid of being wrong, the difference between me and Mr. Bush is that, given the stakes, I'm even more afraid not being right." So I was fascinated to see Kerry write that op-ed, albeit two years too late:
There's something much worse than being accused of "flip-flopping": refusing to flip when it's obvious that your course of action is a flop.
I say this to President Bush as someone who learned the hard way how embracing the world's complexity can be twisted into a crude political shorthand. Barbed words can make for great politics. But with U.S. troops in Iraq in the middle of an escalating civil war, this is no time for politics. Refusing to change course for fear of the political fallout is not only dangerous -- it is immoral.
I'd rather explain a change of position any day than look a parent in the eye and tell them that their son or daughter had to die so that a broken policy could live.[..]
President Bush and all of us who grew up in the shadows of World War II remember Winston Churchill -- his grit, his daring, his resolve. I remember listening to his speeches on a vinyl album in the pre-iPod era. Two years ago I spoke about Iraq at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where Churchill had drawn a line between freedom and fear in his "iron curtain" speech. In preparation, I reread some of the many words from various addresses that made him famous. Something in one passage caught my eye. When Churchill urged, "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in," he added: "except to convictions of honour and good sense."
This is a time for such convictions.
Maybe such an approach, during the election, would've been suicide. But maybe it wouldn't have been. Kerry's op-ed is a heartbreaking reminder of what could have been. Not only a better president, but a more honorable, more courageous, campaign.
