Kerry in New York
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Any day that Senator Kerry spends in New York is one that he isn’t spending in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, so we were pleased to see him here yesterday at Cooper Union. The Kerry campaign made much of the fact that President Lincoln spoke there, but our more recent memory is that Howard Dean spoke there shortly before his presidential campaign cratered. If Mr. Kerry sticks with the message he delivered yesterday, he’ll end up like Dr. Dean. And the Kerry Cooper Union speech – like the Howard Dean scream in Iowa – may yet go down in campaign history as the beginning of the end for candidate Kerry.
Mr. Kerry yesterday accused President Bush of having “no positive vision.” Then he spent the rest of the speech criticizing Mr. Bush. “The Bush campaign and its allies have turned to the tactics of fear and smear because they can’t talk about jobs, health care, energy independence, and rebuilding our alliances – the real issues that matter to the American people,” Mr. Kerry said.
Notice anything missing from the list? How about winning the war against the extremist Islamic terrorists who attacked us on September 11, 2001? We’d wager there are some American people, even here in New York City, who would put that as a priority above “rebuilding our alliances” with the French.
For someone who talks of “rebuilding our alliances,” Mr. Kerry is in the same breath offering American voters a message that sounds almost isolationist. He spoke of “an urgent and undeniable truth – a stronger America begins at home.” In case anyone missed the point, he said, “We can’t be strong abroad unless we’re strong at home.” And in case that message still hadn’t penetrated, he said it again, “a stronger America begins at home.”
No one is for weakness at home. But America already is strong at home. And it is a false choice. America can be strong abroad and at home. Mr. Kerry’s priority on “home” during the campaign would leave a President Kerry dangerously without a mandate to confront terrorist-sponsoring states like Iran. Only Friday, authorities arrested a man they described as an operative of the Hamas terrorist group in Maryland as his wife videotaped the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Hamas is funded by Iran. If Mr. Kerry wins the presidency during wartime while running on a peacetime, America-first agenda, the amount of flip-flopping he is going to need to protect America may be more than even the acrobatic Mr. Kerry can manage.