DEMOCRATS WITHOUT A HOME
Democrats concerned about the 2008 elections will of course be
looking closely at the midterm elections one month away. Hard
thought upon the upcoming elections tells us interesting things,
salient among them that there is no policy extant, among
Democratic leaders, on which strategic political building can be
done with any confidence.
Peter Beinart, shining young light of The New Republic,
scolded Democratic leaders in Congress recently for carrying on
stupidly when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq came to
town. What provoked the Democratic leadership was Maliki's
rebuking Israel for the extremity of the war in Lebanon.
What Maliki had done, Beinart explained in The Washington
Post, was to speak as a Middle Eastern leader of a predominantly
Shiite country. Maliki's criticism of Israel's war against
Hezbollah had several objectives, but one of them was to voice a
position on U.S. foreign policy a little less slavish in the
matter of Israel than that of the Anti-Defamation League.
Beinart was objecting to the threat by House Minority Leader
Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to rescind the
invitation to Maliki to address Congress. The Democrats were
purporting to instruct Maliki on how to "play a constructive
role" in the Middle East. But Sen. Reid's letter, writes Beinart,
"wasn't really about strengthening the Iraqi government at all;
that's George W. Bush's problem. It was about appearing more
pro-Israel than the White House and thus pandering to Jewish
voters."
The flurry is one of many that will happen before there is
anything that can be classified as consolidated Democratic policy
on Iraqi leadership. "The Democratic Party's single biggest
foreign policy liability is not that Americans think Democrats
are soft. It is that Americans think Democrats stand for nothing,
that they have no principles beyond political expedience."
The final public evaluation of our Iraq venture probably will
not be fully illuminated until the 2008 election season. But
coming very soon is a clue to national Democratic orientation. It
is the election contest in Connecticut next month featuring Joe
Lieberman, deposed Democratic standard bearer, and Ned Lamont,
who opposes the entire Iraq undertaking.