Politics: Where we struggle to kneel in the muck.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by LessinSF
In an article in the local rag yesterday, the author tries to argue that Kerry's position on Iraq has been (mostly) consistent, yet he ends with this:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NGQK8TI8O1.DTL

Yglesias in Tapped, on the same article (by the DC bureau chief for the SF Chronicle):

• MEDIA SLOWLY AWAKENING. Marc Sandalow of The San Francisco Chronicle notes that "[n]o argument is more central to the Republican attack on Sen. John Kerry than the assertion that the Democrat has flip-flopped on Iraq." Nevertheless, writes Sandalow, "an examination of Kerry's words in more than 200 speeches and statements, comments during candidate forums and answers to reporters' questions does not support the accusation." Imagine that. Knight-Ridder's Thomas Fitzgerald has a similar piece. Kerry's "positions are not contradictory, but his attempts to explain the distinction between them are often complicated, and they have given President Bush an opening to caricature Kerry as a flip-flopper. However, beneath the torrent of campaign verbiage, Kerry's position on Iraq for the past two years has been consistent and defensible - just difficult to sell in a sound-bite world."
  It's about time, though as Nick Confessore wrote yesterday I would appreciate it if the media revisionists would stop pretending that Kerry's acquisition of an image as a flip-flopper is something that just happened, rather than something the press itself did. Going back to read the text of the speeches Bush and Kerry gave at the time of the vote on the use of force resolution isn't exactly the most arduous investigative reporting I can imagine.