IT’S BEEN TOUGH for Democrats to avoid the temptation to badmouth the president. With Senate minority leader Tom Daschle calling him a “diplomatic failure” and worse, reporters seem to be begging prominent Democrats to bash Bush at every press conference, in every interview. Conflict does make for good TV.
But now the nation is at war. A few Democrats quickly stepped up to support the president and the goal of disarming Saddam Hussein as heartily as they could manage. For the duration of the campaign in Iraq, at least, they are war Democrats.
Everyone “supports the troops,” but not all support the mission and the president by name. Daschle gives away the game when he says, “There’s a difference between the troops and the administration of a war.” Not all Democrats think so.
Some of them endorse the goal of disarming Saddam, but refrain from praising the president’s tactics. “I have not always agreed with the steps the administration has taken during the preparations for this military action,” said Senate minority whip Harry Reid, “but I agree with–and have long supported–the ultimate goal of disarming Saddam Hussein.”
Reid is one of the many Democrats who seem to have redirected their name-calling from Bush to Saddam for the time being. Reid calls Saddam a “despicable tyrant.” Other Democrats have come up with choice epithets such as, “brutal, brutal sadistic dictator,” “scum,” and “evil aggressor.”
Presidential hopeful John Edwards, senator from North Carolina, was willing to get booed last week at the annual California Democratic party convention for saying that he backs the aims of the war. “I believe that Saddam Hussein is a serious threat, and I believe he must be disarmed including the use of military force if necessary.” His speech on foreign policy was interrupted by chants of “No war! No war!” and “We want [Howard] Dean” from the crowd of delegates.
Edwards hopes that dissenting from the ranks of antiwar Democratic candidates will set him apart as a man of presidential stature and conviction. He says it is “a test of presidential leadership to have the backbone to say to those who strongly disagree with you, even your friends, what you believe.”
Senator Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana and member of the intelligence and armed services committees, has long supported disarming Saddam. On “The O’Reilly Factor” last Monday he was unstinting in his praise of Bush. “I support the president’s efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein. I think he was right on in his speech tonight,” he said. When asked what Bush could have done differently to gain an eighteenth U.N. resolution, Bayh responded that he could not think of “a single thing.”
Bayh prefers not to talk of the war in political terms “because the subject is too important.” Also trying to avoid partisan divisions now that the war is underway is Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. A well-established hawk, Lieberman said in a speech to the International Association of Firefighters early last week: “We stand together with [the troops] today and pray for their swift victory and safe return. We do not do so as Democrats or Republicans or Independents, but as Americans. We must never forget that there is no ‘D’ or ‘R’ on the uniforms of our soldiers . . . only the letters U.S.A.” Then Lieberman joined the small pro-Bush chorus: “It is time to come together and support our men and women in uniform and their commander in chief.”
Another point on which these Democrats refuse to dwell is the failure of diplomacy. “Some people are disappointed that diplomacy didn’t work,” said Bayh when asked to account for the divide in his party. “And some people blame the United States. I blame the United Nations. I blame some of our allies.” Either way, diplomacy is in the past, he says, since “Saddam responds to force, not negotiation.”
Sen. Joe Biden sides with Bayh on diplomacy. Last week he said the magic words: “I support the president. Diplomacy over avoiding war is dead. It does not make any sense to debate whether we screwed up the diplomacy.”
New Mexico’s Democratic governor and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson agrees. “I regret how the U.N. issue turned out. But I think this is a time to close ranks, to support the commander in chief, support our troops, and I do want to commend the administration.”
Early on, the few war Democrats stood out, but by the end of the week, even Daschle seemed to show a change of heart. “Once our president makes the decision to commit troops,” he said, “the Congress has always come together to speak with one voice for one purpose. . . . We may have had differences of opinion about what brought us to this point, but the president is the commander in chief, and today we unite behind him.”
Katherine Mangu-Ward is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.
