He’s not a flip-flopper; he is a shape-shifter

Robert Shrum

November 23, 2011|By Robert Shrum

John Kerry pauses during a 2004 campaign 2004 speech. Dina Rudick/Globe…

THERE’S A new and misleading story line that casts the 2012 presidential campaign as a replay of 2004: Democrats, it’s said, will borrow a page from the reelection playbook of George W. Bush, brand Mitt Romney a “flip-flopper,’’ and try to transform him into John Kerry.

Kerry and Romney have little in common except central-casting presidential jawlines. In 2004, Kerry inartfully and too memorably said he voted for $87 billion supplemental appropriation for operations in Iraq before voting against it. It was a self-inflicted wound, the memorable trigger for an instant and persistent attack. But it was no flip-flop. Kerry had voted to fund the money so long as Republicans paid for it by rescinding one one-hundredth of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. The flip-flop attacks on Kerry’s record were all like this, based on distortions like Senate votes stripped of context. They had to be, because Kerry’s real record is a lifetime of consistency.

But consistency and Romney don’t belong in the same sentence. That’s why using the Bush-Cheney playbook against him isn’t just an insult to Kerry; it’s an insult to flip-flopping. Romney isn’t a flip-flopper; he’s a shape-shifter.

In contrast, Kerry’s principled record reaches all the way back to his call to end the Vietnam War, an act of moral clarity summed up in a compelling challenge still quoted today: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?’’

The only pearl of moral wisdom Romney has offered thus far came in a recent debate: “I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake, I can’t have illegals!’’

Make no mistake: Democrats don’t have to turn Romney into Kerry. They don’t have to reinvent Romney - they just have to reveal him. They need to turn Mitt Romney into … Mitt Romney.

In fact, the anti-Romney playbook was written in Massachusetts in the 1994 Senate race, not the 2004 presidential campaign. I know it because I was a senior strategist and media adviser in both elections. Just dust off the words that doomed Romney when he challenged Ted Kennedy - who summed him up in a phrase that rings ever truer today: Romney wasn’t “pro-choice, but multiple choice.’’