The silver lining of November 7
Tuesday wasn't an utter disaster, people.
I believe that the results of Tuesday's election will have minimal impact in 2008. And yes, there is a considerable silver lining. The Democrats are right about one thing: with both the Executive and Legislative branches in Republican hands, there has hitherto been little oversight- and little constitutional opposition to- the Bush administration. This has had the double effect of insulating the Administration from reality and even from its own base, while forcing opposition into the very shrill, paranoid, personalized, repulsively hate-filled form it has largely taken over the past six years. A change from the status quo is not altogether a bad thing.
The White House has exacerbated this (as little as the Republican red meat crowd might want to hear it) by isolating the natural leadership of the Democratic party, who depend for their political lives on remaining at least somewhat aware of the relationship between ideas and consequences, from even a consultative role in policy making. In doing so, it has rendered more responsible Democratic spokesmen irrelevant- and made the likes of Michael Moore and Al Franken and George Soros the effective voices of the Democratic party.
Now the Bush administration will be forced to govern collegiality with the Democrats- and the Democrats, in turn, will be forced to isolate the Moores and the Frankens. If the moonbat wing of the Democratic party remains its popular voice for the next two years, the verdict of last Tuesday will appear to the American people in 2008 to have been a mistake. In the meantime, less will get done than before- and without George Bush to run against, the Democrats will start the next campaign in a hole out of which they are unlikely to be able to climb. Bush will no longer be on the ballot; they, however- will be, and they will have a hard time arguing that they are the solution to problems which their control of Congress has empirically made worse.
What do we do now in Iraq? In 2003, we could have followed Colin Powell's sage advice, and occupied Iraq with a force so large and overwhelming that it could have crushed the insurgency. Now that we are not only fighting the terrorists but also trying to keep Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurd from killing each other, this is not an option; it's doubtful whether we could muster the troops, for one thing, and the mission as currently defined has become one that it is simply beyond realistic achievement. This state of affairs is one for which President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld are equally responsible. Rumsfeld has quite rightly been called to account by being fired. Bush was called to account, too- though less drastically- on Tuesday night.
By all accounts Sec. Rumsfeld micromanaged the Pentagon as no Defense Secretary in history has done before. He, rather than those trained academically and professionally for the task, effectively ran the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The generals became figureheads, reduced to enforcing the dictates of the Secretary of Defense. By all accounts, there was dancing in the halls of the Pentagon when Rumsfeld was at long last shown the door.
Ironically, as many observers have pointed out, if Rumsfeld had been fired as little as two months ago, the Republicans would likely have retained control of both the House and the Senate on Tuesday. Their massive defeat was due to the President's own personal miscalculations, both military and political- miscalculations which were likely the result, at least in part, of the very isolation which Tuesday's defeat effectively ends.
I remember the President speaking at a campaign rally I attended in 2000 of a "more humble foreign policy." And he really did govern in Texas as " a uniter, not a divider;" that very same rally was addressed by a Democratic member of the Texas legislature who testified to the role he'd played in getting Democrats and Republicans to cooperate. The President's greatest mistake, I believe, has been to allow events to influence him to govern in a manner alien both to his nature and to his preference. The lack of perspective and the arrogance which are born of isolation, coupled with a burgeoning sense of conviction untempered by the benefit of reasonable, constructive opposition, have been greater enemies of this administration than even the moonbat wing of the Democratic party has been. In a very real sense, Tuesday's defeat could be the making of the last two years of the Bush presidency, rather than its effective ending; these enemies have been defeated as soundly as the Republican party itself was. Ironically, Mr. Bush will spend his last two years in the White House in he very sort of situation for which he showed such an unusual flair as governor of Texas. Whether the personal resentment and even hatred of Democrats will him from being effective in that role remains to be seen, but it would be a fascinating thing to watch if he were to prove as effective at cooperating with a Democratic majority in Congress as he was with a Democratic majority in the Texas legislature.
Not surprisingly, the reactionary wing of the Republican party has proven a broken reed on which to lean. One of President Bush's greatest achievements has been to build a strong affinity for the Republican party among Hispanics, a socially conservative voting bloc with a strong sense of family which hitherto had voted solidly Democratic. By far the fastest-growing bloc of voters in the United States, the Hispanic vote is one of the keys to the political future of the United States. Mr. Bush's ability to reach out to the Hispanic community resulted in solid incremental gains among Hispanics by fhe Republicans in 2000, in 2002, and in 2004 which played no small role in the Republican victories in those years. By 2004, the Democratic advantage among Hispanic voters had shrunk to ten percent, and the clear trend until recently was toward the fastest-growing American voting bloc becoming a predominantly Republican one within an election cycle or two.
The immigration demonstrations of last year effectively ended that. They represented, as I warned at the time, a serious miscalculation on the part of the pro-immigration forces. Talk of Atzlan and reconquista, and the militant, in-your-face tone of the demonstrations generally, alienated the vast majority of the American people, and aroused the ire of a far Right already motivated by a quite legitimate concern about the inability of the United States to control its own southern border, other aspects of the immigration issue aside. The red meat Republicans are correct in pointing to the solid majority of the American people which is concerned about the status quo; they monumentally miscalculate the popular support for a one-sided reliance on ineffective enforcement measures.
President Bush, like realists generally, recognizes that while beefing up border security might accomplish something, border security alone would accomplish very little; "securing the border," in the sense that the immigration "hawks" speak of it, is a practical impossibility. The border is simply too long, and to geographically diverse; there is no way to seal it tightly enough that highly-motivated illegal immigrants cannot sneak through in huge numbers. If the border is going to be effectively secured, it would have to be at least in part by creating disincentives for trying to enter the country illegally. Another effective approach would be economic investment Mexico itself, and even direct economic aid, so as to provide a higher standard of living for those who stay on their own side of the border and reduce the incentive to try to sneak across.
Mr. Bush tried to construct a package combining realistic military steps which would not hamstring the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan with positive incentives for entering the country legally, and for those already in the country illegally to leave and re-enter through legal channels. But regrettably, the Democrats are not the only ones with an extremist wing which has no particular reason to be concerned with the practical consequences of their own positions. The President found himself fighting a civil war within his own party, and many who disagreed with him- already angered by the spending record of the current Congress- made the irrational decision to sacrifice every other issue they cared about in order to indistriminately punish a party in which their own position on the issue of immigration was very probably in the majority!
Meanwhile, the Hispanic community itself once again shot itself in the foot. Largely blaming the President and Republicans generally for a position Mr. Bush himself actively fought, and upon which there is in fact no agreement about the Republicans, the Hispanic vote returned Tuesday night to its status as a solid and dependable Democratic voting bloc. When Dick Morris says that the Republican party is on the cusp of alienating the Hispanic vote for the next century, he may well be optimistic; the unrealistic and unreasonable rigidity of many Republicans on the issue of immigration may already have turned what is instinctively a socially conservative voting bloc- which may soon actually be an ethnic plurality in our nation- into a cohesive, strong, and permanent part of the Democratic coalition George W. Bush had begun to dismantle.
The spending necessitated by Clinton-era neglect of the military, of homeland security, and of our intelligence capability played a strong role in the current deficit. But earmarks and pork-barreling also played a role. With vocal and powerful opposition in Congress, and a renewed sense of accountability to the Republican base, there is little doubt that this will change in the next two years. But the damage done by far Right extremism on the immigration issue may be difficult for the Republican party to overcome. The red meat Right's instinct for self-destruction has already become manifest in the degree to which it either stayed home or voted Democratic Tuesday night, and its own lack of any sense of accountability to the consequences of its folly does not bode well for the prospect of its coming to its collective senses. But the hard, cold fact is that Hispanic voters outnumber them (though I am sure they think otherwise). Now that the Democrats control Congress, something much more like the President's proposal than the position of the fanatics is going to pass. Doubtless the kamikaze Right will continue to foam at the mouth on the issue. But their opposition- especially now- is as irrelevant as their defection from the Republican party has rendered the people who hold it. The irony, of course, is that anti-immigration conservatives who stayed home or voted Democratic contributed to the replacement of a Congress in which their position was powerful enough to prevent the steps they oppose with one in which the adoption of those steps is inevitable.
If the choice boils down to writing off either the anti-immigration extremists or the Hispanic vote, it would be political folly to even hesitate to write off the extremists. Unfortunately, that may not be an option any longer. Immigration "hawks" would have been better advised to push for stronger enforcement provisions within the context of incentives for obeying the law- including measures they often inaccurately describe as "amnesty." As it happens, those who stayed home or voted Democratic have cut of their own metaphorical noses to spite their faces on the very issue of immigration. Now, they have no influence at all.
What will happen in Iraq? Clearly, there will be a change in direction. The isolation and the distaste for humble pie which led the President and Karl Rove to the disaster of Tuesday night are no longer relevant. There will be a change in policy- but one oriented toward success for the newborn Iraqi democracy. And while the voice of the moonbat will still be heard in the land, both inside and outside the halls of Congress, my hunch is that the new approach will at least initially be a basically bi-partisan one. Whether the bi-partisanship holds is another matter. But the very desire of the Democratic party to position itself to retain its new majority in Congress and to reclaim the presidency in 2008 will be a powerful incentive not to make a situation they were rewarded on Tuesday night by the voters for promising to fix even worse. If the Iraqis lose, Tuesday night's results mean that the Democrats will now have to share at least some of the blame.
A Democratic friend of mine (and a supporter of the war, btw) has suggested withdrawing our troops to an easily defended desert base, and using them solely against terrorist targets, strongholds, and training camps while aiding the Iraqi government only indirectly in controlling the violence among Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurd. I disagree with only one aspect of this formula, but it is a significant- though subtle- one.
My friend's proposal fails to recognize that of Iraq's eighteen provinces, the situation is utterly out of control in only two: Baghdad and Bazrah. What my friend suggests may be a reasonable policy there. Certainly taking a more defensive posture throughout the country, and wherever possible supporting the Iraqis rather than doing the fighting ourselves, would be the reasonable course of action at this point- and now that Sec. Rumsfeld is gone, it is a far more likely one. But I'm not sure that we need to hunker down quite as radically outside Baghdad and Bazrah as we do where the situation is at its worst, or that offensive operations ought to be utterly out of the question in places where they are tactically sound.
This step might be accompanied by some reductions in troop levels; the reality of the matter is that we simply don't have the resources to put the number of troops which might have won the war in 2003 on the ground, and it is doubtful that it would help much at this point if we could. The intramural fighting between Sunni and Shi'ite has simply made this a different war, and reversing the "mission creep" which has given our troops the impossible dual job of impartial referee among the Iraqi population and partisan combatant against the terrorists has to be reversed. We need to concentrate on fighting the war, and on turning the war over to the Iraqis in a timely fashion, while letting the Iraqis themselves deal (with our indirect support) with the internal quarrels of the Iraqi people. Whether or not they succeed will be the ultimate test of the Iraqi democracy.
In any event, is is simply not true, as it is often said, that we "have no good option." We will have to wake up and realize that stability is a more important goal than democracy in Iraq, and govern ourselves accordingly. Nor is so large and immediate withdraw as would hand the enemy a decisive propaganda victory either necessary or desirable; the withdrawal should be prudent, gradual, and deliberate.
I expect the Iraq Study Group and Secretary-designate Gates to recommend something very much like this approach- with at least significant bi-partisan support in the new Congress. Demands for our absolute withdrawal- and effectively a terrorist victory and a national bloodbath- will continue, but I expect that the adoption of a new and more realistic direction in Iraq will effectively marginalize those who persist in that demand.
No, Tuesday's defeat is not an unmitigated disaster for the Republican party. An interesting historical phenomenon- basically ignored by the MSM- needs to be borne in mind: the results of the 2006 congressional elections were by no means historically atypical for off-year elections in the sixth year of a two-term presidency. Even Ike suffered a loss of 44 House seats and three Senate seats in 1958, and Bill Clinton was saved from a similar disaster only by having lost the Congress in the first off-year election of his presidency. By 2008, I am confident that at least our direct involvement in the Iraq war will be over, and whatever blame or credit there may be for whatever has happened will be shared by both parties, and no longer as compelling an issue for the voters. At least a beginning of a return to fiscal restraint will have been necessitated by the fact that we now have two-party government again. And George W. Bush- however much the Democrats may want to pretend otherwise- will not be on the ballot.
But Hillary Rodham Clinton very well may be. Despite the apparent general impression to the contrary, I am convinced that no candidate who starts out with upwards of forty percent of the electorate saying that they would not, under any circumstances, vote for her has a realistic chance of being elected president. And I am not sure that her strategy of posing as a moderate is going to be altogether successful. Hillary Clinton's political persona is already too well defined to achieve her husband's success in trying to create the impression of being more of a centrist than he actually is. It is a commonly-accepted rule of politics that when the candidate of the "out" party becomes the issue, the success of the "in" party is assured. And I have a strong hunch that if she is nominated, Hillary Clinton will be the issue in 2008- especially if the Republicans pick their own candidate wisely.
I expect that Mitt Romney- or either of the two somewhat less likely options, John McCain and Mike Huckabee- will win in 2008 if Hillary is the nominee, and have a solid shot even if she isn't. Especially McCain. And depending on the direction events take in the next two years, there is no reason why the Republicans can't take back the Senate and maybe even the House in 2008. In fact, as regards the Senate, I would be surprised if they don't.
Despite all the moderate words and soothing reassurances by the incoming Democratic leadership, I have no doubt that Nancy Pelosi will have a great deal of trouble reining in people like John Dingle and the John Conyers and the Henry Waxman. There will probably be repeated House investigations and fishing expeditions which, with the help of the MSM, will undoubtedly create a series of wholly artificial Bush administration scandals in the next two years -and maybe a few legitimate ones, too. But the partisan urge for blood has a significant downside: however they disapprove of President Bush's policies, the American people continue to like him as a person- and if the Democratic congress is perceived as unreasonably bullying him, it can count on losing its congressional majority in 2008. And given the pent-up frustration and hostility of the more extreme members of the Democratic caucus, it is not a remote possibility that this is exactly what is going to happen. In fact, I see it as likely.
None of this changes the fact that John Paul Stevens is rumored to be on the cusp of retirement, and that Democratic control of the Senate will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to confirm any nominee to replace him who has a conservative history, and perhaps even one who does not pledge in advance to uphold Roe v. Wade, Cruzan v. Director, and other socially radical mutilations of the Constitution by the activist justices of the past. But if the Republicans- and President Bush- play their cards right, there is no reason why conservatives can't have a fresh start in 2008, however weakened by the unnecessary alienation of the Hispanic community. And in time, who knows? Perhaps even that alienation can be undone.
Perhaps. One of the many advantages of two-party government is, after all, that everybody who matters has to worry about accountability. True, not everybody will. But those who don't, by that very fact, tend to make themselves irrelevant. And that includes the more extreme wings of both parties. They make a lot of noise, but somehow never seem to notice how very little of their agendas they ever manage to bring about.
On the other hand, on the night of his own defeat in a Congressional election, Abraham Lincoln is said to have accidentally tripped over something on the ground on his way home. For a moment, it seemed that he would tumble head over heels, and perhaps be injured. But somehow, he managed to regain his balance- and just then had a thought which is said to have buoyed his spirits and sustained him until the night of his election as president: "A stumble... but not a fall!"
On the night of November 4, 2008, the same thing may well be said by his fellow Republicans of last Tuesday's results.
I believe that the results of Tuesday's election will have minimal impact in 2008. And yes, there is a considerable silver lining. The Democrats are right about one thing: with both the Executive and Legislative branches in Republican hands, there has hitherto been little oversight- and little constitutional opposition to- the Bush administration. This has had the double effect of insulating the Administration from reality and even from its own base, while forcing opposition into the very shrill, paranoid, personalized, repulsively hate-filled form it has largely taken over the past six years. A change from the status quo is not altogether a bad thing.
The White House has exacerbated this (as little as the Republican red meat crowd might want to hear it) by isolating the natural leadership of the Democratic party, who depend for their political lives on remaining at least somewhat aware of the relationship between ideas and consequences, from even a consultative role in policy making. In doing so, it has rendered more responsible Democratic spokesmen irrelevant- and made the likes of Michael Moore and Al Franken and George Soros the effective voices of the Democratic party.
Now the Bush administration will be forced to govern collegiality with the Democrats- and the Democrats, in turn, will be forced to isolate the Moores and the Frankens. If the moonbat wing of the Democratic party remains its popular voice for the next two years, the verdict of last Tuesday will appear to the American people in 2008 to have been a mistake. In the meantime, less will get done than before- and without George Bush to run against, the Democrats will start the next campaign in a hole out of which they are unlikely to be able to climb. Bush will no longer be on the ballot; they, however- will be, and they will have a hard time arguing that they are the solution to problems which their control of Congress has empirically made worse.
What do we do now in Iraq? In 2003, we could have followed Colin Powell's sage advice, and occupied Iraq with a force so large and overwhelming that it could have crushed the insurgency. Now that we are not only fighting the terrorists but also trying to keep Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurd from killing each other, this is not an option; it's doubtful whether we could muster the troops, for one thing, and the mission as currently defined has become one that it is simply beyond realistic achievement. This state of affairs is one for which President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld are equally responsible. Rumsfeld has quite rightly been called to account by being fired. Bush was called to account, too- though less drastically- on Tuesday night.
By all accounts Sec. Rumsfeld micromanaged the Pentagon as no Defense Secretary in history has done before. He, rather than those trained academically and professionally for the task, effectively ran the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The generals became figureheads, reduced to enforcing the dictates of the Secretary of Defense. By all accounts, there was dancing in the halls of the Pentagon when Rumsfeld was at long last shown the door.
Ironically, as many observers have pointed out, if Rumsfeld had been fired as little as two months ago, the Republicans would likely have retained control of both the House and the Senate on Tuesday. Their massive defeat was due to the President's own personal miscalculations, both military and political- miscalculations which were likely the result, at least in part, of the very isolation which Tuesday's defeat effectively ends.
I remember the President speaking at a campaign rally I attended in 2000 of a "more humble foreign policy." And he really did govern in Texas as " a uniter, not a divider;" that very same rally was addressed by a Democratic member of the Texas legislature who testified to the role he'd played in getting Democrats and Republicans to cooperate. The President's greatest mistake, I believe, has been to allow events to influence him to govern in a manner alien both to his nature and to his preference. The lack of perspective and the arrogance which are born of isolation, coupled with a burgeoning sense of conviction untempered by the benefit of reasonable, constructive opposition, have been greater enemies of this administration than even the moonbat wing of the Democratic party has been. In a very real sense, Tuesday's defeat could be the making of the last two years of the Bush presidency, rather than its effective ending; these enemies have been defeated as soundly as the Republican party itself was. Ironically, Mr. Bush will spend his last two years in the White House in he very sort of situation for which he showed such an unusual flair as governor of Texas. Whether the personal resentment and even hatred of Democrats will him from being effective in that role remains to be seen, but it would be a fascinating thing to watch if he were to prove as effective at cooperating with a Democratic majority in Congress as he was with a Democratic majority in the Texas legislature.
Not surprisingly, the reactionary wing of the Republican party has proven a broken reed on which to lean. One of President Bush's greatest achievements has been to build a strong affinity for the Republican party among Hispanics, a socially conservative voting bloc with a strong sense of family which hitherto had voted solidly Democratic. By far the fastest-growing bloc of voters in the United States, the Hispanic vote is one of the keys to the political future of the United States. Mr. Bush's ability to reach out to the Hispanic community resulted in solid incremental gains among Hispanics by fhe Republicans in 2000, in 2002, and in 2004 which played no small role in the Republican victories in those years. By 2004, the Democratic advantage among Hispanic voters had shrunk to ten percent, and the clear trend until recently was toward the fastest-growing American voting bloc becoming a predominantly Republican one within an election cycle or two.
The immigration demonstrations of last year effectively ended that. They represented, as I warned at the time, a serious miscalculation on the part of the pro-immigration forces. Talk of Atzlan and reconquista, and the militant, in-your-face tone of the demonstrations generally, alienated the vast majority of the American people, and aroused the ire of a far Right already motivated by a quite legitimate concern about the inability of the United States to control its own southern border, other aspects of the immigration issue aside. The red meat Republicans are correct in pointing to the solid majority of the American people which is concerned about the status quo; they monumentally miscalculate the popular support for a one-sided reliance on ineffective enforcement measures.
President Bush, like realists generally, recognizes that while beefing up border security might accomplish something, border security alone would accomplish very little; "securing the border," in the sense that the immigration "hawks" speak of it, is a practical impossibility. The border is simply too long, and to geographically diverse; there is no way to seal it tightly enough that highly-motivated illegal immigrants cannot sneak through in huge numbers. If the border is going to be effectively secured, it would have to be at least in part by creating disincentives for trying to enter the country illegally. Another effective approach would be economic investment Mexico itself, and even direct economic aid, so as to provide a higher standard of living for those who stay on their own side of the border and reduce the incentive to try to sneak across.
Mr. Bush tried to construct a package combining realistic military steps which would not hamstring the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan with positive incentives for entering the country legally, and for those already in the country illegally to leave and re-enter through legal channels. But regrettably, the Democrats are not the only ones with an extremist wing which has no particular reason to be concerned with the practical consequences of their own positions. The President found himself fighting a civil war within his own party, and many who disagreed with him- already angered by the spending record of the current Congress- made the irrational decision to sacrifice every other issue they cared about in order to indistriminately punish a party in which their own position on the issue of immigration was very probably in the majority!
Meanwhile, the Hispanic community itself once again shot itself in the foot. Largely blaming the President and Republicans generally for a position Mr. Bush himself actively fought, and upon which there is in fact no agreement about the Republicans, the Hispanic vote returned Tuesday night to its status as a solid and dependable Democratic voting bloc. When Dick Morris says that the Republican party is on the cusp of alienating the Hispanic vote for the next century, he may well be optimistic; the unrealistic and unreasonable rigidity of many Republicans on the issue of immigration may already have turned what is instinctively a socially conservative voting bloc- which may soon actually be an ethnic plurality in our nation- into a cohesive, strong, and permanent part of the Democratic coalition George W. Bush had begun to dismantle.
The spending necessitated by Clinton-era neglect of the military, of homeland security, and of our intelligence capability played a strong role in the current deficit. But earmarks and pork-barreling also played a role. With vocal and powerful opposition in Congress, and a renewed sense of accountability to the Republican base, there is little doubt that this will change in the next two years. But the damage done by far Right extremism on the immigration issue may be difficult for the Republican party to overcome. The red meat Right's instinct for self-destruction has already become manifest in the degree to which it either stayed home or voted Democratic Tuesday night, and its own lack of any sense of accountability to the consequences of its folly does not bode well for the prospect of its coming to its collective senses. But the hard, cold fact is that Hispanic voters outnumber them (though I am sure they think otherwise). Now that the Democrats control Congress, something much more like the President's proposal than the position of the fanatics is going to pass. Doubtless the kamikaze Right will continue to foam at the mouth on the issue. But their opposition- especially now- is as irrelevant as their defection from the Republican party has rendered the people who hold it. The irony, of course, is that anti-immigration conservatives who stayed home or voted Democratic contributed to the replacement of a Congress in which their position was powerful enough to prevent the steps they oppose with one in which the adoption of those steps is inevitable.
If the choice boils down to writing off either the anti-immigration extremists or the Hispanic vote, it would be political folly to even hesitate to write off the extremists. Unfortunately, that may not be an option any longer. Immigration "hawks" would have been better advised to push for stronger enforcement provisions within the context of incentives for obeying the law- including measures they often inaccurately describe as "amnesty." As it happens, those who stayed home or voted Democratic have cut of their own metaphorical noses to spite their faces on the very issue of immigration. Now, they have no influence at all.
What will happen in Iraq? Clearly, there will be a change in direction. The isolation and the distaste for humble pie which led the President and Karl Rove to the disaster of Tuesday night are no longer relevant. There will be a change in policy- but one oriented toward success for the newborn Iraqi democracy. And while the voice of the moonbat will still be heard in the land, both inside and outside the halls of Congress, my hunch is that the new approach will at least initially be a basically bi-partisan one. Whether the bi-partisanship holds is another matter. But the very desire of the Democratic party to position itself to retain its new majority in Congress and to reclaim the presidency in 2008 will be a powerful incentive not to make a situation they were rewarded on Tuesday night by the voters for promising to fix even worse. If the Iraqis lose, Tuesday night's results mean that the Democrats will now have to share at least some of the blame.
A Democratic friend of mine (and a supporter of the war, btw) has suggested withdrawing our troops to an easily defended desert base, and using them solely against terrorist targets, strongholds, and training camps while aiding the Iraqi government only indirectly in controlling the violence among Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurd. I disagree with only one aspect of this formula, but it is a significant- though subtle- one.
My friend's proposal fails to recognize that of Iraq's eighteen provinces, the situation is utterly out of control in only two: Baghdad and Bazrah. What my friend suggests may be a reasonable policy there. Certainly taking a more defensive posture throughout the country, and wherever possible supporting the Iraqis rather than doing the fighting ourselves, would be the reasonable course of action at this point- and now that Sec. Rumsfeld is gone, it is a far more likely one. But I'm not sure that we need to hunker down quite as radically outside Baghdad and Bazrah as we do where the situation is at its worst, or that offensive operations ought to be utterly out of the question in places where they are tactically sound.
This step might be accompanied by some reductions in troop levels; the reality of the matter is that we simply don't have the resources to put the number of troops which might have won the war in 2003 on the ground, and it is doubtful that it would help much at this point if we could. The intramural fighting between Sunni and Shi'ite has simply made this a different war, and reversing the "mission creep" which has given our troops the impossible dual job of impartial referee among the Iraqi population and partisan combatant against the terrorists has to be reversed. We need to concentrate on fighting the war, and on turning the war over to the Iraqis in a timely fashion, while letting the Iraqis themselves deal (with our indirect support) with the internal quarrels of the Iraqi people. Whether or not they succeed will be the ultimate test of the Iraqi democracy.
In any event, is is simply not true, as it is often said, that we "have no good option." We will have to wake up and realize that stability is a more important goal than democracy in Iraq, and govern ourselves accordingly. Nor is so large and immediate withdraw as would hand the enemy a decisive propaganda victory either necessary or desirable; the withdrawal should be prudent, gradual, and deliberate.
I expect the Iraq Study Group and Secretary-designate Gates to recommend something very much like this approach- with at least significant bi-partisan support in the new Congress. Demands for our absolute withdrawal- and effectively a terrorist victory and a national bloodbath- will continue, but I expect that the adoption of a new and more realistic direction in Iraq will effectively marginalize those who persist in that demand.
No, Tuesday's defeat is not an unmitigated disaster for the Republican party. An interesting historical phenomenon- basically ignored by the MSM- needs to be borne in mind: the results of the 2006 congressional elections were by no means historically atypical for off-year elections in the sixth year of a two-term presidency. Even Ike suffered a loss of 44 House seats and three Senate seats in 1958, and Bill Clinton was saved from a similar disaster only by having lost the Congress in the first off-year election of his presidency. By 2008, I am confident that at least our direct involvement in the Iraq war will be over, and whatever blame or credit there may be for whatever has happened will be shared by both parties, and no longer as compelling an issue for the voters. At least a beginning of a return to fiscal restraint will have been necessitated by the fact that we now have two-party government again. And George W. Bush- however much the Democrats may want to pretend otherwise- will not be on the ballot.
But Hillary Rodham Clinton very well may be. Despite the apparent general impression to the contrary, I am convinced that no candidate who starts out with upwards of forty percent of the electorate saying that they would not, under any circumstances, vote for her has a realistic chance of being elected president. And I am not sure that her strategy of posing as a moderate is going to be altogether successful. Hillary Clinton's political persona is already too well defined to achieve her husband's success in trying to create the impression of being more of a centrist than he actually is. It is a commonly-accepted rule of politics that when the candidate of the "out" party becomes the issue, the success of the "in" party is assured. And I have a strong hunch that if she is nominated, Hillary Clinton will be the issue in 2008- especially if the Republicans pick their own candidate wisely.
I expect that Mitt Romney- or either of the two somewhat less likely options, John McCain and Mike Huckabee- will win in 2008 if Hillary is the nominee, and have a solid shot even if she isn't. Especially McCain. And depending on the direction events take in the next two years, there is no reason why the Republicans can't take back the Senate and maybe even the House in 2008. In fact, as regards the Senate, I would be surprised if they don't.
Despite all the moderate words and soothing reassurances by the incoming Democratic leadership, I have no doubt that Nancy Pelosi will have a great deal of trouble reining in people like John Dingle and the John Conyers and the Henry Waxman. There will probably be repeated House investigations and fishing expeditions which, with the help of the MSM, will undoubtedly create a series of wholly artificial Bush administration scandals in the next two years -and maybe a few legitimate ones, too. But the partisan urge for blood has a significant downside: however they disapprove of President Bush's policies, the American people continue to like him as a person- and if the Democratic congress is perceived as unreasonably bullying him, it can count on losing its congressional majority in 2008. And given the pent-up frustration and hostility of the more extreme members of the Democratic caucus, it is not a remote possibility that this is exactly what is going to happen. In fact, I see it as likely.
None of this changes the fact that John Paul Stevens is rumored to be on the cusp of retirement, and that Democratic control of the Senate will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to confirm any nominee to replace him who has a conservative history, and perhaps even one who does not pledge in advance to uphold Roe v. Wade, Cruzan v. Director, and other socially radical mutilations of the Constitution by the activist justices of the past. But if the Republicans- and President Bush- play their cards right, there is no reason why conservatives can't have a fresh start in 2008, however weakened by the unnecessary alienation of the Hispanic community. And in time, who knows? Perhaps even that alienation can be undone.
Perhaps. One of the many advantages of two-party government is, after all, that everybody who matters has to worry about accountability. True, not everybody will. But those who don't, by that very fact, tend to make themselves irrelevant. And that includes the more extreme wings of both parties. They make a lot of noise, but somehow never seem to notice how very little of their agendas they ever manage to bring about.
On the other hand, on the night of his own defeat in a Congressional election, Abraham Lincoln is said to have accidentally tripped over something on the ground on his way home. For a moment, it seemed that he would tumble head over heels, and perhaps be injured. But somehow, he managed to regain his balance- and just then had a thought which is said to have buoyed his spirits and sustained him until the night of his election as president: "A stumble... but not a fall!"
On the night of November 4, 2008, the same thing may well be said by his fellow Republicans of last Tuesday's results.
Comments
Have you seen Chris Atwood's Iraq piece over at Three Hierarchies?
I like that "desert base" idea....
One thing I find fascinating, btw, is the way prominent Democrats' positions on Iraq have moderated since last Tuesday.
Last night I heard Wes Clark explain that Carl Levin doesn't really want to force a timetable for withdrawal after all; that he just wants something to happen in about six months, give or take. Uh-huh.
I have some problems with Chris's analysis. I may do a comment over there on it.
As to the desert base idea, if it sounds familiar...well, it probably won't, given your age. But it was essentially what Gen. Thomas Gavin recommended in Vietnam. He called it the "enclave policy," and its proposal is close to the first legitimate parallel to Vietnam this war has had!