Abstract

Kerry's Challenge

The author argues that, in the upcoming general election, U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry should stick to the strong positions he took during the nomination contest, rather than move towards centrist platitudes. The John Kerry who won nine of ten Super Tuesday states, and with those victories Democratic nominee-in-waiting status, was not the John Kerry who officially launched his presidential campaign six months ago. Kerry underwent a campaign-season "extreme makeover" that transformed him from a tiresome noncontender who echoed the failed themes of the Democratic Party's disastrous 2002 campaign into a credible alternative to George W. Bush. And while the fall campaign will turn on factors as diverse as unemployment figures and Osama bin Laden's fugitive status, the extent to which Kerry embraces and expands upon that evolution could be decisive in determining whether he beats Bush in November. Kerry's changing colors have already provided fodder for charges that he's a hypocrite. Kerry should get used to being called names. And he should recognize that whether his transformations on everything from trade policy to support for the Iraq war are condemned as hypocrisy or hailed as genuine growth, it is the evolved John Kerry that voters like. With the nomination fight winding down, Kerry will be pressured to devolve toward the cautious centrism that characterized the early, "going nowhere fast" stage of his campaign. If Kerry is Smart, he'll learn from Gore's mistakes and remember that when he started evolving into a more aggressive and progressive candidate, he started winning.