Dr. Frank's What's-it

Joshua Micah Marshall joins the

Joshua Micah Marshall joins the chorus of commentators who see the Democrats' lack of credibility on Iraq and national defense as key to the thoroughness of their recent defeat. (It's Salon "premium," which means that those who are too cheap/sensible to pay for the "$120 value" have to forward through several screens of advertising for a car they'll probably never be able to afford, but in this case it's worth it: the article is excellent.)

Here's the meat of it:

The simple fact is that American foreign policy has for more than a decade been based on our unwillingness to allow Saddam to acquire the bomb. The policies we'd been using to hold him in check have broken down. And we're thus faced with a simple decision: accept what we'd been unwilling to accept -- a nuclear-armed Saddam; find some way to get Saddam back in check; or settle our beef with him once and for all, as the White House proposes. For all the administration's swaggering indifference to international institutions and simplistic readings of the dynamics of Middle Eastern politics, this is a basic fact that the administration confronted squarely and the Democrats did not.

The Democrats had excuses aplenty -- many of them valid. The Democrats wanted the president to make the case for the necessity of war. Fair enough. But it was never clear why the president had to "make his case" before the Democrats could figure out what their own Iraq policy should be. Other Democrats argued that, as important as Iraq might be, our first priority is al-Qaida, and going after Iraq now might hobble our more pressing struggle against terrorism. Again, good argument. But it would be a lot more convincing if these same Democrats had been pushing to resolve the Iraq question before Sept. 11. And of course most of them weren't. That fact makes this argument sound like what, for most of them, it was: an excuse.

There's a lot in this. I think it's also pretty clear that the Democrats' best hope, if any, of countering this situation would be to field some "hawkish yet sensitive" candidates: aggressive on defense, warm and fuzzy on just about everything else. At least they'd stand a fighting chance.

(As Marshall also points out, on his blog, it's probably more likely than not that the Republicans will end up doing themselves an injury by over-zealously pushing an unpopular paleo-conservative domestic agenda. But there's still no way the Democrats will be able to benefit from any of that if they continue to have such little credibility on defense.)

Posted by Dr. Frank at November 12, 2002 01:30 PM | TrackBack