Forcing the Vote Posted by Michael Signer

As Josh Marshall and Ryan Chiachere note, a spectacular WaPo column today by E.J. Dionne, which reinforces my point from yesterday -- that the President is reaping what he sowed by forcing the Congressional vote in 2002 just three weeks before the mid-term elections.  Dionne writes:

The big difference between our current president and his father is that the first President Bush put off the debate over the Persian Gulf War until after the 1990 midterm elections. The result was one of most substantive and honest foreign policy debates Congress has ever seen, and a unified nation. The first President Bush was scrupulous about keeping petty partisanship out of the discussion.

And the coup de grace:

 

The bad faith of Bush's current argument is staggering. He wants to say that the "more than a hundred Democrats in the House and Senate" who "voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power" thereby gave up their right to question his use of intelligence forever after. But he does not want to acknowledge that he forced the war vote to take place under circumstances that guaranteed the minimum amount of reflection and debate, and that opened anyone who dared question his policies to charges, right before an election, that they were soft on Hussein.

 

The real question is whether Democrats in Congress will grow some cojones, and admit their complicity in the President's maneuvers.  This may be just too much to expect right now (with the exception of John Edwards' surprising mea culpa).

Comments

[JohnFH]

I wonder how many other Dems will follow Michael's advice and Edwards' lead. After all, many Dems, Edwards included, should they now claim they were misled by the president, will have their own earlier speeches thrown back at them. The logic of those speeches does not depend on the correctness or faultiness of this or that individual intelligence finding, but on larger geopolitical considerations and a judgment about the trustworthiness of the Saddamite regime.

I think Edwards cooked his own goose with this flip flop.

[owen]

Josh Marshall also posts a very interesting email from a reader:

"When did it become appropriate for the Commander-in-Chief to go onto a military installation before a military crowd and denounce the opposition party? I cannot remember a time in my 21-year career when anything remotely like this happened. Is it just me or are we embarked on something very dark and dangerous for our democracy?"

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007009.php

Also, when did it become appropriate to attack veterans (John Kerry) in a Veterans' Day speech. At least he didn't invite the Swift Boat Republicans to come slander other war veterans in the opposition.

[Mike Signer]

Owen: great point; I couldn't agree more -- it seems like he's flustered. What's particularly weird is why he's going on the attack when it will just reinforces in the public mind everything that's bad about Iraq. At this particular time, two wrongs (attacking an attack) will never lead to a right (a shift in public mood about the whole thing).

[Dave Dilegge]

"...he does not want to acknowledge that he forced the war vote to take place under circumstances that guaranteed the minimum amount of reflection and debate, and that opened anyone who dared question his policies to charges, right before an election, that they were soft on Hussein."

Well, there are good arguments on both sides of this debate. Still, for our Congressional leadership to be more concerned with votes during an election year while the country is beginning its trek down WW III (Freidman is right) makes me uncomfortable at best, disgusted at least. I do not particularly like Edwards but I give him credit for his admission as such as it is (positioning for 2008? - I hope not).

If the Democratic Party leadership truly believed the Iraq war was wrong at the time - they should have had the balls to say it then. You cannot play both sides and expect the American public to forget.

[J Thomas]

"You cannot play both sides and expect the American public to forget."

Why not? It worked for Bush for a good long time.

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