Red State / Blue State | An election season blog

In the December 2001 edition of the Atlantic, David Brooks wrote an essay titled "One Nation, Slightly Divisible," in which he suggested that America is divided largely into two political cultures, one "red" and one "blue." His idea is based on those electoral maps in 2000 that colored majority-Republican states in red and majority-Democratic states in blue. Brooks' witty essay pictures the red-state voter as trending rural, a salt-of-the-earth type, concerned with individual liberty and family values, whereas the "blue" voter trends urban, more of a book-reader, a Beltway-savvy intellectual, the environmentally conscious soccer mom or dad.

Cliches? Maybe. But Brooks does have his finger on two very strong currents in the American votership. It's not that Pennsylvania is a "blue state" or Alabama is a "red state." It's that our two political cultures don't talk to each other much, or even know much about each other. To bridge that gap, we've brought together two "red" voters - John Franklin and Cynthia Sneed - and two "blue" voters, Terri Falbo and Timothy Horner. Each week, they'll ponder and debate the issues arising in the election campaign. The hope is that they'll model an intelligent discussion, a great big conference room where red and blue sit down together.

Joe Franklin, Red Stater

Question Number Four: Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said on Aug. 9 that he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force against even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would we found. How does this affect the way you view his credibility on the issue of national security?

Did Sen. Kerry make this statement? Did he qualify it with some long, confusing rhetorical dialogue - "I did; I did not . . . I will; I might . . . I will not . . . I'm for it; I'm against it . . . it's to be; it's not to be"? Who gave him this line, President Bush or Vice President Cheney? Has someone been plundering in Washington other than Sandy "Burgler"? He should have cleared this statement with Howard Dean's supporters before opening his mouth and inserting his foot.

Has Kerry ceased to flip-flop and totally flipped? Kerry supporters have described him as a very complex man. Now I believe them. I have detected considerable support for Kerry in South Alabama because of the voters' disapproval of the war in Iraq. If Kerry keeps talking as he did on Aug. 9, many of these voters may stay at home on election day.

It could have been much simpler for Sen. Kerry if he had attended those intelligence committee meetings and voted against the war powers resolution along with Sens. Kennedy, Byrd, Graham, and 20 others back in October of 2002. Kerry has hedged on the war throughout his campaign for president. Is he now trying to firm up his position on the war? He stated that as president, he "would have used that authority effectively." He had previously said that he would have formed a broader coalition. So, if he were president now, would be still be waiting on France and Germany to join in?

On the same day, Aug. 9, he told Stars and Stripes magazine that the guards and reserves are overstretched, that Bush had conducted a back-door draft, and that he [Kerry] supported the military strategy. He charged the administration with failing to send the troops all the equipment - body armor and armored Humvees - they needed and deserved, and that Bush had not deployed enough troops to establish security. make it secure. Kerry promised to make sure that the military has state-of-the-art equipment, create two new divisions in the army, and double the number of Special Forces troops we have to fight terror. How can he promise all this when his record shows that he has consistently voted against defense spending?

Perhaps Kerry suffered a memory lapse on Aug. 9. He forgot about the many Democrats who oppose the war in Iraq. Thus far, the Kerry campaign has repeatedly criticized President Bush for his prosecution of the war in Iraq and made a huge issue of the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found. In criticizing President Bush last week for withdrawing troops from Europe and Korea, the senator described North Korea as a "country that really has nuclear weapons," thus insinuating that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

Kerry's campaign is best described as a revolving flip-flop. Maybe he is an evolving, revolving flip-flopper. How else to explain how he began his political career as an antiwar activist, did not support the Gulf War under the elder George Bush, and yet voted for the congressional resolution on authorizing the President?

And more to the point: With these incredibly contradictory statements, how can anyone put any credence in his national security plan?

posted at # 2:04 PM