Mickey never said a truer word!
After all, there already is an effective anti-Bush opposition party in America. It's called the media.
The Hillary Train Wreck
What all her planning failed to anticipate.
By Mickey Kaus
Updated Thursday, Aug. 25, 2005, at 4:23 PM PT
Recent multiple exposures to Westside L.A. liberals confirms that (as George Will and Kevin Drum suggest) Hillary Clinton is currently heading for a much bigger train wreck in her party than anticipated--a wreck all her cautious planning failed to anticipate, and probably exacerbated.
The same press drumbeat of defeatism about Iraq that has helped bring down Bush's numbers has also emboldened the party's mainstream left base (i.e., not just MoveOn or the DailyKos crowd). They hardly care whether Hillary is a member of the DLC. But they do not want to support someone who voted for the war, as Hillary did. Worse, they want a Democrat who is willing to break from the respectable Beltway Tough-It-Out Consensus now, publicly, in a way Hillary has been unable to do. They're so desperate for a champion they're even temporarily captivated by Sen. Hagel's mere mention of "Vietnam." Hagel/Dean for America! Or maybe Hagel/Gingrich. ...
P.S.: Hillary's dilemma is similar to the one that must have been faced by Bobby Kennedy in 1968--how to break with LBJ and the surface D.C. consensus in favor of the war. But Hillary's dilemma is worse, because Iraq isn't Vietnam and the current Beltway consensus she's being asked to denounce is a lot righter than LBJ was. Even mainstream Bush-bashing libs, in my experience, readily recognize that just withdrawing from Iraq now would be a global strategic disaster in a way withdrawing from Vietnam wasn't. That of course makes them even more deterimined to hold accountable politicians who got us into Iraq in the first place, and Hillary is arguably one of them. ...
P.P.S.: The obvious, crowd-pleasing Kabuki-move--which Hillary has to be considering right now--is to follow Drum's advice and come out for
a gradual, phased withdrawal based on specified interim goals and a hard end-date two years from now.
I say it's a Kabuki move because it's mainly for show: It's hard to believe that Hillary, or any leading contender, will really leave Iraq if the "specified interim goals" aren't met and two years from now it looks as if staying another year is necessary to prevent a failed, Somalia-like state. Either there will (under press questioning) be an explicit contingency escape clause to this effect or if there isn't the public won't believe there isn't. That's because sticking to a hard end date in that circumstance would be insane!**
Given this reality, there's mainly a rhetorical difference between a) setting a chronologically explicit (but actually flexible) timetable in order to get the Iraqis to "take the training of their own security forces more seriously"--what the Drum position amounts to--and b) making an explicitly flexible (chronologically vague) pledge to get out as soon as Iraqis can defend themselves, coupled with leaks about actual, planned troop reductions--which is the current U.S. position. Either way, we're getting out as soon as we can! (Or as soon as we're kicked out.) Still, in the current news climate any politician who calls for (a) will get lots of press and effectively register displeasure with the war. Hillary might not be able to resist.
**--In contrast, during the Vietnam years many on the left (myself included) were ready to withdraw even if it meant the South Vietnamese government would not survive.
P.P.P.S.: WaPo's David Ignatius laments the Democratic Party's lack of a strong spokesman who can fulfill "the role of an opposition party" in Bush's time of troubles. I'm not sure it's a big dilemma for Democrats (as opposed to for Hillary) if the party remains championless. After all, there already is an effective anti-Bush opposition party in America. It's called the media. We don't need two of them! Alert kf reader G.S. suggests leaderless Democrats take another look at that Amazing Dr. Pollkatz Polling Graphic. The only time Bush's steady polling decline stopped was in 2004, when he actually had some identifiable Democratic champions (Dean, then Kerry) to be set off against. G.S.'s upshot is
Midterm political advice for the Dems: Keep the party face-less through the 2006 races.
It's good to be kingless! ..
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