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By Dick Polman
The Democratic party appears to have finally come up with a way to explain why so many of its elected leaders gave President Bush the authority to wage war in Iraq.
Three simple words: "We were duped."
A parade of top Democrats have contended in recent days that they would have been antiwar in 2002 had they known then what they now believe to be true: that the Bush administration manipulated the intelligence in order to build a bogus case for war. In pursuit of that theme, Senate Democrats on Tuesday successfully demanded that their GOP colleagues quit stalling and finish a long-promised investigation that could determine whether the war planners were dishonest.
Many Democrats believe it's good politics these days to say that they were lied to. This message, actually a rite of confession, is designed to help their erstwhile pro-war politicians get back in sync with the party's liberal antiwar base. That's especially important for some of the original pro-war Democrats who want to run for president in 2008. After all, liberal voters tend to dominate the Democratic primaries, and they're expecting to hear apologies.
Hence, Sen. John Kerry (who wants to try again) said in a speech on Oct. 26: "The country and the Congress were misled into war. I regret that we were not given the truth... knowing what we know now, I would not have gone to war in Iraq." Hence, Tom Daschle (the deposed Senate Democratic leader, who is weighing a campaign) said in a speech Wednesday that senators voted incorrectly because "on so many fronts, we were misled."
At least four other Democratic senators who voted to authorize war have use the dupe argument in recent days, including Christopher Dodd of Connecticut (who periodically voices White House ambitions) and Tom Harkin of Iowa (who now calls his war support "one of the biggest voting mistakes of my career"). And once having confessed, these Democrats believe they have sufficient credibility to call for the phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
But not all the prominent Democrats who voted with Bush have embraced the dupe message. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton - who continues to exasperate the liberal base - hasn't renounced her vote; when asked about it the other day by NPR, she dodged: "I can't talk about this on the fly; it's too important." Sen. Evan Bayh, another presidential hopeful, hasn't renounced. Former Sen. John Edwards, another prospective candidate, hasn't renounced. Sen. Joe Biden hasn't, either.
Their reticence might stem in part from awareness of the George Romney rule of politics: Gullibility is not a character asset for a presidential candidate.
The late George Romney (father of current Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romney) was the anointed front-runner of the 1968 GOP presidential race - until he tried to explain, in a radio interview during the summer of 1967, why he had renounced his previous support for the Vietnam war. The Michigan governor complained that, while visiting the hot zone, he had been duped by the brass into backing the war:
"I just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get when you go over to Vietnam. Not only by the generals, but also by the diplomatic corps over there, and they did a very thorough job."
Romney plummeted in the polls, and his candidacy soon evaporated; voters didn't like the idea of electing someone who admitted he was capable of being fooled. And, as many political observers argue, that's the lesson for Democrats today.
Charlie Cook, a Washington analyst who runs the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said Friday: "If Democrats want to argue that the administration misrepresented and distorted the prewar intelligence, OK, that's one thing. But if they push the argument that they have been duped, fooled and victimized - well, to a lot of [independent swing] voters, they're just going to come across as weak."
The Romney rule is also invoked by moderate Democrats who see Iraq as a noble cause. Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, warned on his blog the other day that the Democrats "are positioning themselves as a party that is gullible, feckless, and indecisive... beware of the long-term impact on the party which already suffers from a perception of being weak on national security."
But David Sirota, a liberal antiwar activist and organizer, contends that the Romney rule is irrelevant today, because of the public's broad-based opposition to the Iraq war. (Most Americans still generally supported the Vietnam war at the time Romney committed his gaffe).
Sirota said Thursday: "Obviously, the [dupe] message needs to be played properly. But most Americans already believe that Bush misled the country" - polls support his contention - "so it makes perfect sense for Democrats to say they too were misled... . They followed tradition and gave the benefit of the doubt to a president on a national security issue, and they were lied to. That doesn't mean they were stupid. They were being patriotic.
"And rather than just apologize for being misled, Democrats need a message of outrage. Make the argument that this administration deliberately manipulated the intelligence."
That message is dismissed by critics as paranoid; Wittmann calls it "Michael Moore territory." But the Republican Senate leaders did promise, back in February 2004, that it would investigate whether the war planners had been deliberately dishonest. Asked in October 2004 (before the election) why that key question had not been resolved, Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts replied: "We simply couldn't get that done with the work product that we put out." Then, eight months ago, Roberts said the probe had been put "on the back burner."
Early last week, Senate Democrats employed a parliamentary maneuver to force a showdown over the sluggish probe; as a result, a progress report will be issued within the next several weeks. Liberal bloggers were thrilled by this rare act of boldness; in the words of Philadelphia-based billmon.org, it was a treat "watching the Democratic jellyfish rear up on its hind tentacles and sting someone."
If the GOP report concludes that the Bush team manipulated intelligence, it would buttress the Democratic message about being duped. But the party's strategy could fail anyway. There is always the possibility, as some Democrats say privately, that the report will exonerate Bush, leaving Democrats to merely complain that there must have been a whitewash.
And the dupe message may be only as good as the individual messenger. Kerry, in his Oct. 26 speech, declared that "as I said more than a year ago," he would not have voted for the war if he had known about "the Bush administration's duplicity." Yet, on Aug. 9, 2004, he said he would have still voted to authorize Bush even if he had known in advance that no mass weaponry would be found. Those statements don't necessarily contradict each other, but a fresh round of Kerry nuances may not boost his fortunes.
Clearly, gaining traction on Iraq is a Democratic imperative. Bush may be tanking in the polls, but Democrats have barely moved the needle their way. In the words of party pollster Stan Greenberg, summarizing his late-October numbers, "Democrats have not made noticeable gains on thinking long-term... knowing what they stand for, or being trusted to keep America safe."
As for the 2008 race, Charlie Cook suggests a way for Democrats to dump the dupe message entirely: "By 2008, there will be a tremendous constituency for a candidate who can argue clearly that the war was always a mistake. Forget all the senators. The answer for Democrats is to nominate a governor, somebody who never had to vote at all on the damn war."
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"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
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