By Darren Mcvey

The date was Feb. 16, 2005. The Boston Globe reported that former Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry called for as many as 40,000 additional troops to be sent to Iraq, a sentiment echoed by most of Kerry’s Democratic colleagues.

Fast forward to last Thursday and you will find the same Boston Globe reporting that Sen. John Kerry is among a group of senators condemning President Bush’s plan to send an additional 21,500 troops to Baghdad.

Then Friday, Kerry announced that he will not seek the Democratic presidential nomination for 2008 and is, instead, refocusing his efforts on bringing our troops home from Iraq. Kerry will soon have the chance to deliver on this promise, unless he changes his mind.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a resolution describing President Bush’s proposed troop surge as “not in the national interest.” The resolution should be on the Senate floor this week and is expected to pass with support of nearly all Democrats and maybe eight Republicans.

Such a move summarizes perfectly the current platform of the Democratic Party: “whatever Bush wants, we don’t.”

Since the day President Bush inconveniently slipped by Al Gore in 2000, the Democratic Party has simply been the Anti-Bush Party. This is typified by the party’s flip flop on the issue of more troops.

But that’s not the only issue on which Democrats have shown their shallowness. President Bush worked with Democratic hero Edward Kennedy on the education reform bill, “No Child Left Behind.” But, in 2004, Kerry made “the failure of No Child Left Behind” a key example of President Bush’s failure.

In fact, Kennedy criticizes “No Child Left Behind” on his own Web site. Now that’s a great plan, co-sponsor a bill with the president while he is popular and if it doesn’t work out, blame it all on him. That Kennedy is a slick one.

So, Kerry is irrelevant, but there are important Democrats employing the same strategy. In 2001, the Senate passed the, “USA PATRIOT Act” by a vote of 98 to 1. The only Democrat that had the guts to stand up to public opinion and the president’s popularity was Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold.

Only four years later President Bush was hurting in the polls, the ACLU was fussing about civil liberties and the Democrats successfully filibustered the renewal of the PATRIOT Act led by Harry Reid D-Nev. and Robert Byrd D-W. Va. Both Reid and Byrd voted for the act when it was popular.

It seems the difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Republicans take whatever position will confuse their base the most, while Democrats deny ever taking any positions at all. This strategy worked for President Clinton for eight years, but there are only so many Clintons out there.

Darren McVey is a junior majoring in political science. E-mail him at opinion@louisvillecardinal.com.