John Kerry is No Tony Blair

Joe Katzman, in a roundabout sort of way, argues with my “hawkish case for John Kerry” approach. He makes good points, as always. In a nutshell: John Kerry is no Tony Blair.
Is he right? To an extent, absolutely. But ultimately, I don’t know. We have to guess at what a John Kerry foreign policy would actually look like. His campaign has been all over the place, so it isn’t a good predictor. His record is a poor predictor, too. Presidents can’t act like senators. They are leaders. They can’t just say yay or nay to someone else’s proposals.
And let’s be honest. We have to guess at what a second round of George W. Bush’s foreign policy would look like, too. Will Bush fix Iraq? I wish I knew. I wish I knew a lot of things that I don’t actually know.
If I had a crystal ball and could take a good hard look at two alternate futures I would know without a doubt which of our two candidates I would vote for.
Today I’m leaning 51 percent Bush and 49 percent Kerry. When I wrote my hawkish endorsement for Kerry I was leaning slightly his way. Now that I’ve written my “liberal case for Bush” (forthcoming at Tech Central Station.) I’m leaning a bit toward Bush again. Partly this is because I found my own endorsement for Bush slightly more persuasive than my own endorsement for Kerry. But it’s also, in part, because of what Joe Katzman says at Winds of Change.