More on Kerry's foreign policy

James Mann discusses differences between the Republicans and the Democrats in the Washington Post. He includes this statement:

As much as any Democratic leader today, Kerry has been buffeted by the crosswinds inside his party. He knows the tangled legacy of Vietnam. He opposed the use of force overseas at a time when most of his fellow Democrats did; he supported military intervention when a majority of the Democrats in Congress did likewise. "Like most senators, he hasn't reached the point of formulating a policy that you can sustain, so that when things are going bad, you can hold to it. He hasn't done it on Iraq," says Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Defense Department official in the Carter administration.

While I recognize that over time a person’s perceptions of problems and their solutions can, and should, change, I don’t want a president who is buffeted by party crosswinds. I am willing to give Kerry the benefit of the doubt that he has changed his mind on various foreign policy over the years and not simply responded to polls if he will explain clearly what he believes now, how that differs from what he has believed in the past, and why he has changed his mind.