Inside The Mind Of John Kerry

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Kerry's yea was hedged. The United Nations had to be involved, he said on the Senate floor. There had to be a broad international coalition in favor of war if the use of force proved necessary. He tried to gain some control over the process by supporting an amendment offered by Senators Joe Biden of Delaware and Richard Lugar of Indiana: to require the President to go back to the Senate before actually going to war. "A legislative vote is different from an executive decision," Kerry told me. "When I'm in an executive position, I can call the shots hard, straight and true. When I'm faced with a legislative vote, I'm not in total control of the outcome. That makes it far more difficult."

As the military situation deteriorated in postwar Iraq--it was not for nothing Winston Churchill once called the region "an ungrateful volcano"--Kerry's efforts to explain his vote became downright inchoate. At one point, reported the New York Times, Kerry spent 40 fruitless minutes trying to defend his position. And there was one more Iraq vote to come, perhaps the most embarrassing of all. The vote on $87 billion to continue the Iraq mission, in October 2003, was yet another reaction to the previous vote. Having voted for the war, Kerry now said he didn't want to give Bush another blank check. "I'm sure John felt that way," says a Kerry confidant. "But that vote was all about Howard Dean," who had become the Democratic front runner with an antiwar message.

Once again, Kerry tried to shape the outcome by co-sponsoring a Biden amendment--to pay for the $87 billion by increasing taxes on the wealthy. Once again the amendment failed--and it provided the most damaging line that Kerry has uttered in this campaign: "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." Bush has been using it in nearly every speech as an example of Kerry's fecklessness.

"John's judgment when it comes to the substance of policy is excellent," Biden told me. "We're usually in agreement. We don't even have to talk about it much. The truth is, he usually spends more time talking about the politics of a vote--at least he does with me--and that was certainly the case on the $87 billion. That told me this: John doesn't have as much confidence in his political judgment as he does in his policy decisions."