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Sunday, January 04, 2004

# Posted 9:40 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

CAN THE DEMS WIN ON NATIONAL SECURITY? That question is the subject of a long and ponderous cover story in this week's edition of the NYT Magazine. Although worth reading, the article never fully grasps why it is that the Democrats have an image problem when it comes to issues of war and peace. It instructive, however, to read what author James Traub has to say about John Kerry:
The Democrats seem trapped between two irreconcilable impulses, or litmus tests. This is especially obvious, and painful, with figures like John Kerry, who has tried to have it both ways. In the run-up to the war, Kerry harshly criticized President Bush for alienating our allies and then voted for the resolution authorizing war. Then he voted against the $87 billion appropriation, complaining that the president lacked a clear postwar plan. As Baghdad plunged into chaos and Dean worked his magic, Kerry began to sound more and more like an antiwar candidate. And then when Saddam Hussein was captured, Kerry criticized Dean for failing to acknowledge the full magnitude of the achievement. It's no wonder that Chris Matthews tied Kerry into a pretzel when he pressed him on ''Hardball'' to supply a ''yes or no answer'' on Iraq.
In short, Kerry's fence-sitting prevents him from sending a clear message to either hawks or doves. The same is true of all the other 'yes-but' candidates in the Democratic fold, namely Gephardt, Edwards and (sort of) Clark.

In an election where national security will be the first- or second-most important issue, voters will want to know what separates the Democratic challenger from the Republican incumbent. And having no clear answer is almost worse than being to the left of the mainstream.

To be a 'yes-but' candidate indicates both a lack of decisive leadership potential and a quiet admission that the Bush administration has basically gotten things right.

Which brings us to Howard Dean and Joseph Lieberman. If he had a real shot at the nomination, Senator Joe would have to hope for a fall campaign that centers on domestic issues, given that he offers no alternative to the Bush foreign policy. And the obvious question for Dean is whether 51% of Americans will embrace an anti-war stance so firm that it seems to grow out of a fear of American power.

In sum, each Democratic candidate -- no matter what his or her position on Iraq -- has a problem presenting a credible challenge to Bush. That is why national security is the Democrats' Achilles heel.

One objection to the argument laid out above is that 'national security' is not the same as 'Iraq'. As Traub points out
The consequences of unilateralism in Iraq dominate the debate. Yet if you talk to Democratic policy experts, Iraq rarely appears as the country's top national security priority. In ''An American Security Policy,'' a study ordered by Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, and written by a group that included top former Clinton aides like William Perry, the former defense secretary; Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state; and Sandy Berger, the former national security adviser, Iraq appears as only the fourth of six major areas of concern. The first is ''The Loose Nukes Crisis in North Korea,'' and the second is the overall problem of weapons of mass destruction in Russia, Pakistan, Iran and elsewhere.
Before the war, one could have laid out a coherent rational for treating Iraq as a secondary concern. Yet in supporting the war, all of the yes-but candidates certified the President's decision to raise Iraq to the top of the agenda. More importantly, the overwhelming bulk of current anti-administration criticism focuses on Iraq. If it weren't important, why bother?

Thus, it is essentially unfair for the yes-but candidates to hold Howard Dean responsible for making Iraq the big issue in this campaign. Traub, however, does hold dean responsible. Consider the following:
''Dean made Iraq a political manhood test,'' laments Will Marshall, a well-known Democratic centrist and head of the Progressive Policy Institute. ''His conflation of anti-Bush sentiment and antiwar sentiment ratcheted the debate toward what has at least echoes of the old antiwar stance.'' By the time President Bush submitted his request for an $87 billion supplemental appropriation for Iraq and Afghanistan in September, the politics of the war inside the party had shifted drastically. Conventional wisdom had it that no candidate seen as pro-war could get a foothold among the highly liberal primary voters in New Hampshire and Iowa, even though polls found that Democrats in both states preferred a candidate who had approved of the war but criticized its conduct.
Yet if the polls favored the yes-but candidates, why was the 'no' candidate the only one able to generate widespread enthusiasm at the grassroots?

From where I stand, the best hope for the Democrats is the long term. As Traub notes, the Democrats' aspiration is to reclaim the tough-minded liberal internationalism of Harry S Truman and John F. Kennedy.

What he doesn't note is that for the moment, George W. Bush has done far more to advance the liberal internationalist cause than any of his critics. For example, what is the last time a Democratic candidate talked about the importance of human rights? Journalists often compare Dean to Carter, but they forget that Carter had the clear moral high ground vis-a-vis his Republican challenger.

What Dean can offer is multilateralism, a doctrine that subordinates moral concerns to the demand for consensus. In a certain sense, he is the true Kissingerian in this race.

Why then, you might ask, is there any hope that the Democrats can reclaim the internationalist mantle? Answer: because the Bush administration and the Republican party may never fully embrace it.

Neither Cheney nor Rumsfeld nor Powell nor Rice has demonstrated more than halting support for the President's apparent worldview. Only Paul Wolfowitz, a second-tier figure with an overgrown media profile, seems to share the President's views. Congressional Republicans don't seem to be much more interested.

But can the Democrats do any better? Probably not. They are at least as divided as Republicans. But the history is there. If my generation of Democrats can seize on that precedent, the opportunity will be there.
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