Nancy Pelosi may be on to something. During her portion of the
State of the Union rebuttal (I am one of the unprivileged few who
stayed awake through it), Pelosi touched on an issue that could be
a winner for the Democratic Party.
After a few minutes of laying out the Democrats’ cut-and-run
strategy for Iraq, Pelosi said, “Despite the Administration’s
rhetoric, airline cargo still goes undisputed, shipping containers
go unscreened, and our railroads and power plants are not secure.”
This made me think something I can’t ever recall thinking when
hearing Pelosi speak: She’s absolutely right.
You don’t need to be a counter-terrorism expert to realize that
the United States’ domestic defense is woefully inadequate. Anyone
who’s been to a U.S. airport in the last three years understands
that the security has changed little since September 11. Sure, the
banned item list is a bit longer and travelers get a whiff of each
other’s foot odor when asked to take off their shoes. But no
revolutionary changes have taken place.
Even though having an air marshal on every U.S flight would
virtually assure that there would be no hijackings, only a small
fraction of flights have air marshals onboard.
A major subway fire in New York City last month, which was
initially blamed on a vagrant, exposed how ineffective security has
been in keeping homeless people out of subway tunnels. If homeless
people can freely wander through the city’s subway tunnels, how do
we expect to control a well-orchestrated terrorist plot against a
transportation system that serves millions of people each day?
Examples of holes in our domestic security can fill several
volumes, but Democrats have yet to realize that this issue could be
their most effective way of opposing President Bush. Democrats must
prove to voters that they can be strong on national security,
because the issue is going to remain the most important to
Americans for the foreseeable future.
John Kerry’s failed candidacy demonstrates how difficult it is
for Democrats to wage an effective attack on the president’s
national security record from the foreign policy side.
The base of the party’s support came from people who were
vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq and generally against the
aggressive use of American military power. Moderates may have been
skeptical about President Bush’s Iraq policy, but they still
supported aggressively hunting terrorists. Senator Kerry was
criticized for his inconsistency during the election, but it was
the dynamics of his party and the need to appeal to both of these
groups that spawned his flip-flopping.
With the elections in Iraq largely being viewed as a success,
the Democrats’ predicament on foreign policy has gotten even worse.
Now they must choose between engaging in me-tooism or sounding as
if they were raining on Iraq’s parade.
That’s why seizing on domestic security issues is the only
effective option for Democrats. By becoming domestic security
hawks, Democrats would prove to swing voters that they are serious
about fighting terrorism. Less-partisan conservatives who have been
frustrated with President Bush’s don’t-rock-the-boat approach to
the domestic side of national security may even throw their support
behind the Democrats’ efforts.
Currently, when Democrats condemn President Bush’s Iraq policy,
it leads to charges that they are being unpatriotic by attacking
U.S. policy while troops are in harm’s way. This charge could not
be made were they to focus on criticizing the president for his
domestic polices.
At the same time, the Democratic Party’s left wing would not
feel alienated by a hawkish approach to domestic security, because
proposing increased airport safety or more thorough inspection of
shipping containers does not raise the specter of American
imperialism.
But for Democrats to succeed they have to move beyond merely
attacking President Bush and instead present a comprehensive
strategy for overhauling domestic security.
I wouldn’t count on it, though. We’re more likely to get what
Harry Reid would call the Groundhog Day effect. The same
ideology over and over again.
