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.
What can't easily be foretold is how exactly the Democrats in
2008 will get around to formulating a foreign policy on the shaky
legs of their pronouncements as enunciated in the years since
9/11. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and John Edwards have problems
absorbing the postulates of policies-gone-by, when they
encouraged going into Iraq.
Consider just one derivative problem they face. If the defense
of Israel is accepted as an inflexible commitment, then the
health of the American military in the Mideast is a concern that
goes beyond merely the replacement of Saddam Hussein. If Iran,
Syria, Lebanon and Iraq evolve as a support system of radical
Islamist mobilization concentrating on the elimination of Israel,
friends of Israel can't be expected to ignore the consequences of
U.S. inertia in the Mideast.
Democratic policy for 2008 has to go a step further than mere
expressions of disapproval of President Bush. Yet anti-Bushism is
about the only plank of existing Democratic policy at this point.
Critics can counter and say that the Republican Party is itself
without strategic definition, and that indictment is better
winced at than denied. The Universal Emancipation Proclamation of
President Bush, as enunciated in his second inaugural address, is
going to leave candidates for political office in great
difficulty when explaining what it is the GOP wants to
accomplish.
Add to this problem the great big hole in Republican domestic
orientation. The record of the Bush administration in spending
and in advancing the social agenda leaves the Democrats with not
much room to position themselves as the party of social concern.
There isn't much left to advance after the GOP policies of No
Pimple Left Behind. The result is that Democratic strategists,
warming up this time around for the major stakes in 2008, haven't
any clear goal to associate themselves with. That's why we hear
nothing much more that clings to memory than that Bush and his
legions must be replaced.
So? Hate Bush. Is that truly enough as the agenda of the
Democratic Party?
COPYRIGHT 2006 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE