There's something kamikaze about the past week's skirmishing between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry over Iraq.
By challenging Kerry to say whether he too would have invaded Iraq, Bush has targeted what may be Kerry's greatest weakness with voters: a reputation for vacillation and hairsplitting.
But Bush simultaneously may be spotlighting what many voters like least about him: a reluctance to change course even amid changing circumstances and a belief in his own decisions so unwavering that it straddles the line between confidence and arrogance.
Bush began the exchange this month when he introduced new language into his stump speech unequivocally defending his decision to invade Iraq even after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and challenging his Democratic challenger to say whether, as president, he would have done the same thing.
"There are some questions that a commander in chief needs to answer with a clear 'yes' or 'no,' " Bush said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire. "My opponent hasn't answered the question of whether, knowing what we know now, he would have supported going into Iraq.
"I have given my answer," Bush continued. "We did the right thing, and the world is better off for it."
In posing this question to Kerry so starkly, Bush is jabbing at a vulnerable spot.
In his stump speech, the Massachusetts senator implies that he would not have invaded Iraq when he declares that under his administration America will "never go to war because we want to, we'll only go to war because we have to." And Kerry has often said he believes Bush did not need to invade so quickly before devoting more time to assembling international support or planning for postwar reconstruction.
But Kerry hasn't definitively said whether he would have sent in the troops at a later date under different conditions. James P. Rubin, one of his top foreign policy advisors, caused some consternation in the campaign a few days ago when he said that if a long list of requirements had been met -- including passage of a U.N. resolution explicitly authorizing the war -- Kerry "in all probability" would have invaded Iraq as president.
Kerry hasn't been that explicit. In a recent interview, he rejected the argument from William F. Buckley, the conservative eminence grise, that any president presented with the information on Bush's desk at the time would have invaded Iraq.
