A syndicated cartoon that appeared in the New York
Times earlier this month depicts a Republican elephant
protesting outside of President Bush’s ranch in Crawford. The
elephant is holding a sign that reads, “End The War (Before The ‘06
Elections).”
History may inevitably repeat itself, but it isn’t supposed to
start showing reruns so quickly.
Not even a year has passed since liberals failed to exploit
opposition to the Iraq war to defeat President Bush, but that isn’t
stopping them from believing that resurrecting the same strategy
will bring them electoral success in the 2006 congressional
elections. President Bush’s declining poll numbers, enthusiasm for
Cindy Sheehan’s protest in Crawford, and the strong showing of
anti-war candidate Paul Hackett in a special Ohio election earlier
this month have all combined to give liberals hope.
“We have delivered a lesson — the Fighting Dems will win the
day,” read one post on the influential liberal blog Daily Kos, after
Hackett’s narrow defeat in a heavily Republican district. “On to
2006, when we take back the Congress.”
The mainstream media thinks that Republicans are already quaking
in their boots. “Bad Iraq War News Worries Some in G.O.P. on ‘06
Vote,” was the headline of one recent New York Times
story.
But in reality, the political climate is eerily close to what it
was at this time in 2003. Then, as now, the media were publishing
stories that showed Americans’ growing pessimism about Iraq.
An Associated Press story from August 23, 2003, opens:
With public confidence declining in President Bush’s
handling of the war in Iraq, nearly 70 percent of Americans feel
the United States will be bogged down in the country for years
without achieving its goals, a poll finds.
Around this time of year in 2003, dark horse candidate Howard
Dean was capitalizing on anti-war sentiment and surging in polls
for the Democratic nomination. Sen. John Kerry was desperate to
shore up his reputation with anti-war Democrats and in October he
cast his now infamous vote against $87 billion of military funding
for Iraq. The vote, and Kerry’s subsequent attempts to justify it,
crystallized President Bush’s central argument that Kerry changed
his views with the wind and couldn’t be trusted as a wartime
leader.
War is unpredictable, and if you eliminate those who are either
ardently for the Iraq war or dead against it, you are left with a
large chunk of Americans who change their mind based on how things
seem to be going.
This month, an uptick of violence in Iraq, uncertainty over the
status of its constitution, and wall-to-wall coverage of Cindy
Sheehan’s protest all contributed to a negative impression of the
war. But this impression could quickly change.
The Sheehan story is what you get when bored journalists are
forced to spend a month in Texas without any news to report.
Sheehan coverage has already started to wane as the media move from
one of their favorite spectacles — protests — to another, storms.
This week, images of the grieving Sheehan have been replaced by
images of Hurricane Katrina toppling trees as if they were
matchsticks.
The next few months hold great promise for Iraq. If Iraqis
approve their new constitution in October and hold successful
parliamentary elections in December, Americans could suddenly feel
pretty good about the war going into the new year.
SOME MAY POINT TO President Bush’s record low approval ratings and argue that Americans are much more
pessimistic about Iraq than they ever have been, and therefore it
is unfair to draw parallels to other periods of waning support. But
certain fundamentals still hold.
When asked in an Associated Press/Ipsos poll
taken last week whether the United States should “keep troops in
Iraq until the situation has stabilized” or “bring its troops home
from Iraq immediately,” 60 percent of Americans responded that we
should keep the troops in Iraq, compared to 37 percent that favored
bringing the troops home.
Democrats are aware of this reality, which is why members of the
party have not joined Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis) in his call to withdraw troops from Iraq by the end of
2006.
Any discussion of Iraq puts Democrats in a bind because they
must criticize the war to energize their base while avoiding talk
of complete withdrawal to reassure moderates. It isn’t a surprise
that once they move beyond bashing President Bush for bungling the
war, Democratic leaders have a tough time articulating their own
strategy for Iraq.
This is not to say that Republicans will coast to victory in
2006, because congressional elections tend to be decided on local
and domestic issues. In these areas, the GOP’s abysmal spending
record, among other failures, certainly makes them vulnerable.
But if Democrats turn the 2006 elections into a referendum on
Iraq, they will soon find themselves in what some might call a
quagmire.
Philip Klein writes from New York.
