The gap between public opinion and Washington reality has rarely been wider than on the issue of the Iraq war. A clear national mandate is being blocked -- for now -- by constraints that make sense only in the short-term calculus of politics in this capital city.
Perhaps all us dirty-mouthed liberal bloggers were actually penetrating that balding pate after all! Broder at least manages to recognize the reality that is clear to the rest of us - the war, and the architects of that war, are about as popular as bullet ants at a family picnic. Broder goes on to wonder, as if this question has not been discussed ad nauseum by liberal bloggers, why it is that the war has yet to end, if in fact that is the public's express desire.
His answer?
Part of the answer lies in the Constitution. It makes the president commander in chief of the armed forces, the only elected official whose orders every general and every private must obey.
Congress shares war-making power under the Constitution but can exercise it only through its control of the money the president needs to finance any military operation.
In this moment, the commander in chief has a clear plan -- to apply more military force in and around Baghdad in hopes of suppressing the sectarian violence and creating space for the Iraqi politicians to assemble a functioning government.
It is a high-risk policy with no guarantee of success. But it is a clear strategy.
The Democratic-controlled Congress, on the other hand, lacks agreement on any such plan. Most Democrats are unwilling to exercise their right to cut off funds for the war in Iraq, lest they be accused of abandoning the troops in the middle of the fight.
Lacking the will to do that, they are forced to an uncomfortable alternative. They are proposing to continue financing a war that most of them oppose, while placing conditions on the conduct of the war that the president says will reduce the chances of his strategy succeeding.
That claim, whatever its merits, places the Democrats on the defensive. It is not a comfortable position, but it is where they find themselves -- for now.
So, Washington politics is in the way of performing the one overarching task the Democrats were elected to perform - getting the United States out of Iraq as soon as possible, if not sooner. Part of that political calculus (I didn't highlight it because I wanted it to be a surprise) is that the Democrats in Congress fear "be[ing] accused of abandoning the troops in the middle of the fight." And who might accuse them of that? Maybe the Washington-based pundits who repeat that particular line of Bush Administration bullshit every chance they get?
This is the kind of nonsense that drives me absolutely nuts. What Broder gives with one hand, he takes away with the other, but he does so in a way the eschews responsibility for any role he or others in his particular profession might play. Indeed, one would think that Broder, of all people, "concerned" as he seems to constantly be with "gridlock" and "partisan bickering", would compose a column in which he might actually take an unpopular President to task for blocking the express will of the people through his intransigence. That would be to place blame, and blame is not the name of the game. Broder is offering passionless analysis here, not seeking to fix responsibility for a political impasse.
Broder is correct, actually, when he states that the Republican position vis-a-vis the Presidency in 2008 is untenable should we still have a significant presence in Iraq. Actually, I would go further and state unequivocally that no matter what President Bush does between now and November, 2008, the Republicans will lose the White House, fall even further behind in Congress, governorships, state legislature control, and become a minority party for a significant portion of the future. That Broder cannot see that far ahead, or refuses to acknowledge that particular reality, shows that he, as much as the Washington insiders who butter his bread, are more concerned with short term political calculus rather than serious policy change. In the end, he is as wrong as he is right, and the two do not cancel each other out, but show him to be, alas, still lost in Washington.
