As I hope to

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As I hope to discuss this weekend, <$Ad$>I think the Kerry campaign has made some missteps of late — small and I trust recoverable, but missteps nonetheless. But this article is a little disappointing.

The piece is running today on ABC News and the premise is that Kerry said voting against the $87 billion Iraq supplemental would be “reckless” and “irresponsible” just a few weeks before doing just that.

As we’ve noted, there were two bills — one which would fund the $87 billion by rescinding a portion of the president’s tax cut, another which would fund it by going $87 billion in to debt. Kerry voted for the first, the latter passed.

The article focuses on an appearance Kerry made on Face The Nation a few weeks before the vote. Doyle McManus asked him whether if his bill failed he would then vote for the other bill. That’s a good question. And here was Kerry’s response.

I don’t think any United States senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq to — to whatever follows as a result of simply cutting and running. That’s irresponsible. What is responsible is for the administration to do this properly now.

Kerry just ducked the question. He didn’t say he would vote for it or that voting against it was irresponsible or reckless. That itself might be something to knock him for.

But here’s how ABC characterizes it.

In the interview, Kerry never clearly stated whether he would or would not vote for the $87 billion funding bill, a fact that may offer him some sort of exculpation. But one of the few press outlets to cover his remarks on the subject, the Washington Times, wrote the next day that “Mr. Kerry said he would still vote to authorize the $87 billion. Not doing so, he said, would be ‘irresponsible.'”

This is great. Kerry didn’t say he would vote for it or that voting against would be irresponsible. But the tendentious misconstrual offered by the right-wing Washington Times says he did. So let’s go with that. And contradicting what the Times said constitutes a flip-flop. Pulling in the Times, along with the frequent uses of variants of verb ‘seem’ are, I think, a sign that it was clear to the author or the editor that they didn’t quite have it.

Of the ‘political observers’ who allegedly validate the flipflop charge, the only one referenced happens to be the author’s boss, ABC News political director Mark Halperin.

The Dems were clear at the time that they weren’t going to let the $87 billion go unfunded. They were trying to force a change in how it was funded and force some assurances that the administration would cut loose some of its more hopeless policies — both of which would be vastly better than what happened.

Some of these points are made clear in the piece. But the thrust of the piece points in quite the opposite direction.

I can understand the Republicans using the vote for all its worth. Kerry didn’t want to vote for a bad bill. And that gave his opponents a wedge. Politics is politics, I guess. But I’d figure we could do better from the news coverage.

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