Admin. created Iraq quagmire-responsibility of powerless Dems to solve

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The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060403/alterman

the liberal media | posted March 16, 2006 (April 3, 2006 issue)
Iraq: The Democrats' Dilemma
Eric Alterman

A master narrative, once formed in the collective mind of the mainstream media, becomes impervious to interference from inconvenient reality. Today the political narrative demands that the Democrats be derided for their "disarray." Yes, George W. Bush is the most unpopular President since Nixon in the days before his forced resignation. In the most recent AP/Ipsos poll, nearly 70 percent of those questioned believe that the country is on the wrong track. The Bush domestic agenda is politically dead, and his Iraq adventure looks increasingly like it contains the seeds of a regional Armageddon. Yet according to the accepted story line, none of that matters. The Democrats' disarray on how to handle the war dominates the reporting of Adam Nagourney and Matt Bai in the New York Times, of Shailagh Murray and Charles Babington in the Washington Post, of Joe Klein in Time, of the smart boys who write ABC News's "The Note" and Slate, along with that of virtually everyone else charged with reporting on the topic.

Personally, I have a hard time understanding why, if it was the Administration that created the Iraq quagmire with its toxic combination of mendacity, incompetence and ideological obsession, it is somehow the responsibility of powerless Democrats to solve it. Given the right wing's stranglehold on both the political process and public discourse, Democrats cannot hope to address this problem or even have their public proposals treated fairly. Why then should they make themselves politically vulnerable by offering up a target for Rove and O'Reilly to torture, twist and otherwise pervert for the purpose of political assassination both in 2006 and again in 2008?

What's more, the Iraq situation is deteriorating so rapidly, it is impossible to imagine what will face a Democratic presidential candidate when a genuine plan does become obligatory. Until then, all a potential nominee can do is foreclose future options. Consider 2002. Democrats were desperate to remove the question of Iraq from the agenda in order to fight the election on domestic issues, where they retained their traditional polling advantages. Endangered Southern Dems were begging the Congressional leadership not to put the party out front against Bush on Iraq, lest it open up avenues for a Rovian assault on their patriotism and support for the military.

As a result, John Kerry, who began with a genuinely antiwar critique of Bush's folly, was put in the position of having to find a way to support it, lest he compromise his ability to secure the support of his colleagues for his presidential candidacy two years later. According to sources I trust, Kerry actually gave an impassioned speech against the war to an internal Democratic gathering before reversing himself and backing it, albeit in an entirely incoherent fashion. The net result proved to be a disaster, for Kerry and the country, when his various contradictory statements were easily employed to paint the Democratic candidate as indecisive and untrustworthy. (And of course the party's timidity on the war vote did little to protect vulnerable officeholders, making the entire exercise one of futility.)

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1. kick