The American presidential election on Nov. 2 is John Kerry's to lose. He very well may, so ineffective has he been thus far. No contemporary incumbent president has been in so much trouble on so many fronts so early in the campaign as George W. Bush. The sins for which Lyndon Johnson quit, and Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush were defeated, were minuscule by comparison.
There is, of course, the Iraq war, waged illegally and under false pretences. And there is the botched occupation.
There is the anti-Americanism worldwide, including among democratic allies.
There is Abu Ghraib — the initial crimes and the subsequent avoiding of responsibility.
There is Guantanamo Bay, and the setting aside of the rule of law on American soil as well.
There is the fanning of fear and paranoia, along with the creation of a surveillance society where snoops have all the power and citizens few.
There is the inflation and politicization of terror alerts.
There is the censoriousness that dismisses dissent as anti-American and unpatriotic.
There is the deteriorating economy, with tax cuts for the rich, a ballooning deficit and 3 million lost jobs.
There is the crony capitalism, with Republican-friendly firms raking in billions of dollars in no-bid contracts in Iraq while Iraqis beg for the basics of life.
There is the degradation of the environment, with the presidential denial of science.
There is the theological opposition to stem cell research.
Despite all that, Kerry has failed to make an electoral breakthrough.
This is so because he has shied away from the great moral issues raised by Bush's post-9/11 policies — issues that Americans are, arguably, ready and even eager to confront.
Kerry's reticence emanates, in part, from his timidity in taking on Bush "the war president."
Hence the hyping of his valour in Vietnam. His opening line to the Democratic Convention — "I am John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty" — followed by a crisp salute was stirring. But repetition since has rendered the routine tedious.
The vicious, Republican-financed counter-campaign denigrating Kerry's war record only obscures the reality that he is not offering a foreign policy alternative when there is a crying need for one.
For the first time since 1972, foreign affairs and national security are of greater concern to Americans than the economy and could be "the trump card" in the election, according to the Pew Research Centre.
More than ever, the international is local: Get Iraq wrong and you get more anti-American terrorism, not less. Violate human rights at home and you get laughed at when promoting democracy abroad. Abandon neutrality in the Arab-Israeli conflict and you further fan Arab and Muslim hostility to America.
Yet Kerry is keen to sound as pro-Ariel Sharon as Bush, having abandoned his earlier criticism of the Israeli security wall/barrier and his proposal to name a special American envoy to broker peace.
On Iraq, he has been even more disappointing. Put on the defensive by Bush over his pro-war vote in the Senate, he has walked into the trap of saying he has had no reason to change his mind.
What he should have said was that he, like most Americans, was misled into backing the war, and that, knowing what he and Americans know now, he would have never voted for it.
On post-war Iraq, he has only criticized Bush's lack of preparation, as though that were the only, or even the main, problem.
Far bigger issues have been at work: American imperial arrogance, mixed with ignorance and naïveté; blatant anti-Arab racism; a trigger-happy troop culture; and monumental incompetence at providing the most basic needs for a citizenry desperate for some stability.
Saying so would doom Kerry, for sure. Americans may want to toss out the rascal who got them into this mess, but they aren't ready yet for the self-examination that would answer their most persistent query: Why do they all hate us so much?
But Kerry has been mum even on when, or even if, he would pull out of Iraq. He would lighten the American burden only by attracting more allies.
He also has been pandering to Bush unilateralists: "As president, I'll not wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake."
It is not good enough for him to have his surrogates to do the heavy lifting.
Jimmy Carter: "We cannot lead if our leaders mislead."
Senator Ted Kennedy, invoking America's War of Independence: "Our struggle is not with some monarch named George who inherited the crown, although it often seems that way. Our struggle is with the politics of fear and favouritism."
Rev. Jesse Jackson: "It's time to bring our troops home and send Bush back to Texas."
Kerry's excessive cautiousness is also explained by the current polarization of America.
"There are fewer swing voters than at any other point in the past," says the Gallup polling organization.
True. But nearly two in three Americans are telling pollsters they don't want America to attack anyone unless attacked. A leader would harness that into a cohesive policy.
It's not just the Hollywood glitterati, along with many artists and intellectuals, who are galvanized as never before. Some of the most experienced public figures are deeply disturbed at the wrong turn that America has taken under "the reckless and arrogant presidency" of Bush, in the words of Robert Byrd.
The veteran Democrat senator writes in his new book, Losing America: "Never, in my view, had America been led by such a dangerous head of state."
Kerry won't win the presidency by posing as Bush Lite. He must present a moral vision of America. Should he fail to muster the courage to rise to the occasion, he may end up squandering a historic opportunity.
hsiddiq@thestar.ca
Additional articles by Haroon Siddiqui
