Democrats remain stalled on Iraq debate
By Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris, Politico

As the congressional session lurches toward a close, Democrats are confronting some demoralizing arithmetic on Iraq.

The numbers tell a story of political and substantive paralysis more starkly than most members are willing to acknowledge publicly, or perhaps even to themselves.

Since taking the majority, they have forced 40 votes on bills limiting President Bush’s war policy.

Only one of those has passed both chambers, even though both are run by Democrats. That one was vetoed by Bush.

Indeed, the only war legislation enacted during this Congress has been to give the president exactly what he wants, and exactly what he has had for the past five years: more money, with no limitations.

Disapproval of the Democratic majority in Congress has risen steadily, albeit with no corresponding increase in enthusiasm for Republicans.

Even more notably, public opinion about the war — while still dominated by opposition to a military adventure most people think was a mistake — has risen modestly in recent weeks, according to several nonpartisan polls.

Democrats plan to spend the December recess reviewing their strategy and determining if they missed opportunities to put limitations, even if they were smaller than war activists were demanding, on Bush’s war policies.

Some Democratic strategists are warning that congressional leaders are “muddling through” with a strategy that carries both political and military risks for the party.

John Podesta, who runs the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, is advising Democrats to try to shift war policy around the edges while carefully setting the stage for an easier withdrawal when the next president takes office.

There may well have been paths not taken this year that would have produced better results.

But what the year has mostly highlighted is that Democrats and anti-war activists were in the grip of two illusions after their triumph in the 2006 elections.

The first illusion is that taking power on Capitol Hill was by its very nature — no matter the precise legislation that emerged — something that would alter the basic dynamics of Iraq policy.

Instead, it’s now clear that even a weakened, and in many ways discredited, president remains the dominant policymaker on Iraq.

For 50 years, legislators of both parties have ceded war-making power to the executive branch, and there is no reversing that in a matter of months — least of all when the opposition party is itself divided over what to do.

What’s more, it turns out that Washington matters less than many Democrats and even many journalists supposed in determining political momentum in the Iraq debate.

Events on the ground — including regular, if still fragmentary, evidence that security is improving somewhat in the wake of the military’s “surge” policy — matter more.

The second illusion is that Democrats could stall substantively and still prosper politically.

A few months ago, many lawmakers were saying something like this: “It’s true we can’t force Bush’s hand on Iraq because we do not have veto-proof majorities. But the longer he sticks with an unpopular war, the better it will be for Democrats, and eventually the moderates and war skeptics in the GOP will stage a full revolt.”

This might yet come true by the next election, in 2008. For now, it looks like substantive weakness — the failure to drive policy changes on Iraq — has reinforced political weakness.

“Republicans (including the president) have made real progress in swaying opinion to their side, while 10 months of Democratic efforts have failed to persuade citizens that the war continues to be a disaster,” according to Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist who analyzed public opinion on the nonpartisan Pollster.com.

“The war of partisan persuasion has tilted towards the Republicans and away from the Democrats, at least in this particular aspect.”

This surprising turn has prompted a what-if debate among Democratic lawmakers.

Some of them have told us privately that their leaders botched a chance earlier this year — before the surge appeared to have some success — to work with Republicans on modest restrictions on the war.

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) told us last week his biggest fear early on was that Democrats would seek compromise solutions with moderate Republicans on the war and other issues.

Blunt suggested the strategy probably would have worked.

But once Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), a staunch war opponent, returned from a visit to Iraq and applauded the surge, any chance of a compromise clampdown ended.

Repeated predictions that GOP support was on the verge of collapsing never materialized, and Republican support for the war is probably stronger today than when Democrats took power.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said the only strategic miscalculation Democrats might have made was “failing to grasp how much Republicans were willing to stick with the president.”

Still, he said Republicans pursued unity at their own peril.

“The Republicans own this thing, lock, stock and barrel.”

For the first time in years, Republicans are privately telling their members with a straight face that the war, in political terms, may be neutralized for next year’s election, which would have big ramifications for both sides.

A word of caution before we go into the numbers: Republicans remain broadly disliked, the war remains powerfully unpopular and opinion is prone to shift rapidly with events.

That said, 44 percent of Americans now believe the war is going “very” or “fairly” well, a high point in the past year, according to The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, a nonpartisan group.

At the same time, CBS News polling has found U.S. opposition to Bush’s troop surge softening a bit.

Yes, public opposition to the war remains high.

But there has been a small uptick even in the number of independents and Democrats who are optimistic the surge might work (though most remain pessimistic).

The Democratic base’s negative view of the war also has lessened of late.

This summer, CBS News found that 57 percent of Democrats thought the war was going “very badly.”

Today, the number has fallen by 12 points, to 45 percent.

The changing views probably have little to do with Congress, said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“You have also had the near absence of the war coverage in the last months, and since the coverage is generally negative, the less coverage, the less negative communications that reaches people’s living rooms.”

Pew reported Friday that only 16 percent of Americans name the Iraq war as the news story that first comes to mind today — a huge shift.

In January, when Democrats took office, 55 percent of Americans said Iraq was on the top of their minds.
Pelosi is trying to end the congressional year on a familiar note.

She is pushing for a House vote on legislation that would directly tie new money for the war to specific troop withdrawals.

It would provide Bush only $50 billion of the $196 billion he requested for war operations.

And it has no chance of becoming law. Manley said the Senate would push similar legislation, likely next week.

Meanwhile, both sides must contemplate the most dispiriting piece of Iraq arithmetic of all.

At the start of the year, there had been 3,003 U.S. military casualties in Iraq.

Now there have been 3,860 — already making this the deadliest year of the five-year military campaign.