Sometimes "Stay the Course" means "Keep Thinking, Don't Shut Off Your Brain Yet"
Why a Conflicted Kerry Voted Yes -- and Later No -- on Iraq
By Janet Hook, Mary Curtius and Greg Miller
Times Staff Writers
July 29, 2004
BOSTON — Late one night in September 2002, Senate Democrats were bitterly debating whether to authorize war with Iraq. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) had been agonizing over the issue, but now was urging colleagues to support a compromise that would still give President Bush much of the power he sought. Liberals were steamed.
"Why would you trust the president?" asked Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).
Despite such objections, Kerry two weeks later voted for the congressional resolution paving the way for the war. And no issue has dogged him more than that single vote, which has come under fire from the left and the right.
Many Democrats have criticized him for supporting the war. Republicans have accused him of changing his position for political gain.
A look at how Kerry made up his mind on the war vote indicates that he was conflicted before he cast his vote. The concerns that apparently plague him — the questions he asked at public hearings, the caveats and reservations he voiced on the Senate floor before casting his vote — reflected his ambivalence as well as his ambition. And that ambivalence sowed the seeds of Kerry's future shifts on the issue, including his vote a year later against a bill providing $87 billion in aid that went mainly to Iraq.
Republicans sought to spotlight Kerry's record on Iraq by releasing a video Wednesday that portrayed him as inconsistent and indecisive — an attack launched as Democrats formally nominated him as their presidential candidate. But what critics assail as opportunism, supporters praise as evidence of his ability to rethink issues and respond to changing circumstances.
