As to that last, I don't believe it for a moment. If Bush were interested in compromise he wouldn't be pushing Bolton and the domestic survellience bill. And the Dems are (as always) posturing. They can hardly wait to start the hearings. From today's NYT:
After meeting with Mr. Bush at the White House, Senator Harry Reid, the incoming Senate majority leader, said "the first order of business" when Democrats formally take over in January will be to reinvigorate Congressional scrutiny of the executive branch, with a focus on Iraq.I agree with Rob's comment on this post that such public witch hunts are entirely counterproductive. But these people are genetically incapable of resisting the temptaion to try to score political points. One of the worst consequences of this election is that we will see lots of Henry Waxman on our TV screens for the next two years. It is going (I fear) to be a reprise of the last two years of the Clinton administration.
"Let’s find out what’s going on with the war in Iraq, the different large federal agencies that we have," said Mr. Reid, Democrat of Nevada. "There simply has been no oversight in recent years."
. . .
In Los Angeles, Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is to lead the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, said in a speech that war profiteering could also be a likely subject for his committee.
Mr. Reid is also interested in completing the long-delayed second phase of an Intelligence Committee review into prewar intelligence and the administration’s handling of it, Mr. Manley said.
Speaker Nancy? Who knows, I guess. Maybe she will grow into the job. But her public pronouncements since becoming minority leader have struck me as nothing short of inane, distinguished only by partisan venom and buzzwords cahined together to make invective. More generally, I have absolutely no confidence in the Democrats. What kind of a party is it whose last nominee is as inept as John Kerry, whose current front runner is Hilary Cinton, and whose most attractive candidate (by a long shot) has been a Senator for two years and has never had a job in which he had to make decisions. Moreover, on social issues at least, the effect of the election was to make both parties more intolerant, with Republicans like Lincoln Chafee losing and Democrats like Brad Ellsworth winning. On a lot of issues, many of the new Democrats willl be voting with the Republicans.
On the Iraq "issue": The Dems campaigned for "change," but have no more of an idea as to what to do than Bush does. Moreover, the very idea that an institution as fractious as Congress could come up with a coherent policy for Iraq is simply nonsense. When it comes right down to it, the Dems are no more inclined to simply leave than are the Republicans. They too realize that if they get blamed for the mess that will almost certainly follow from withdrawal, they will end up getting clobbered in 2008. So, the policy changes, if any, will all be at the margins. The essential fact will remain: we will stay until the spinmeisters believe they can "declare victory."
This mess is so much like Viet Nam. It's just the parties that are reversed. In Viet Nam, the Dems got us in it and it cost them the Presidency in 1968. Yet, it took Nixon 5 more years to get us out, and even then the leaving was an unmitigated embarassment. Now its the Republicans that got us in, and I suspect that it will cost them the Presidency in 2008. Yet, I also suspect that the next President (Hillary, Osama, who?)will still be trying (probably unsuccessfully) to bring the conflcit to an "honorable" end when he/she runs for re-election four years later.
In the end, we will leave as ignominiously as the Russians left Afghanistan -- and will similar results.
This election was a referendum on the war. The war lost, much as it did in 1968. But telling a current administrattion that they are fuck ups doesn't really solve anything. As somebody once said, wars are much easier to get into than get out of.
Sigh.
2 comments:
The only way Dems lost in 2008 is if they nominate Hillary. She is toxic to much of America. I can't believe people aren't mentioning Al Gore more when discussing serious candidates. To me he is the obvious choice. Shafted in 2000, right on the war, a true visionary/leader on the environment. The anti-Hillary, so to speak...
www.minor-ripper.blogspot.com
Ripper --
Oh yes. Let me add Al Gore to the list of reasons I find the Demcratic Party so lamentable. No, Al Gore would not have invaded Iraq. But he would not have invaded Afghanisatn either. So he's at best 1 for 2 on that score. Instead, he would have declared war on America in the form of a quixotic attempt to cut CO2 emissions to 1990 levels in ten years. I don't deny that global warming is an issue, but I do not want some zealot like Al Gore leading the charge. Al Gore believed Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" hysterics and before that was a devotee of the Club of Rome's "Limits of Growth." He is evry bit as much of a devotee of the politics of fear as Bush is. He just has a different bogeyman.
Also, he is even more toxic than Hillary, appealing to no one but the bluest of blue true belivers. It is Al Gore and his ilk that gave us a Republican dominance so thorough that the mid-term elections were remarkably close given all the Dems had to work with.
And finally, he is a total stiff with all the leadership appeal of a cardboard cutout.
In a sense, the whole sorry mess we are in is a result of the fact that the Dems nominated someone who couldn't even beat Gerge Bush in 2000. And then followed it up with John Kerry in 2004.
Until the Dems find someone better than Gore and Kerry to be their standard bearers, they will be able to win only by default,when anti-Republicanism is so strong that swing voters will vote for "anybody but Bush."
If it came down to a choice between Al and Hillary, I'd take Hillary any day. But I agree with this much: she can't win either.
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