The Timid Politics of War
A generation ago, Vietnam blew up politics as we knew it. Why isn't that happening now?
As we approach the fourth anniversary of "Shock and Awe," I keep waiting for the war in Iraq to blow up politics as we know it, the way the war in Vietnam did a generation ago. That hasn't happened—at least not yet—and it's important to understand why. The main reason: Democrats haven't fashioned a compelling (even to themselves) alternative to George W. Bush's world view. Unless they do, they could lose in 2008.
Often in politics, what candidates DON'T say is more important than what they do. The Iraq issue is a prime example. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton gave the antiwar crowd a major opening to exploit against her, in an interview with The New York Times. But the response from her main presidential rivals was telling silence.
I mean to make only half a joke when I say that the junior senator from New York has spent years, especially since 9/11, trying to morph herself into Golda Meir, Israel's tough-as-nails matron turned military leader. Hillary chose a seat on Armed Services as her main committee assignment and has spent a lot more time at Fort Drum upstate than in TriBeCa downtown.
As other Democrats do, she says that she will vote to cut off funding for combat troops in 2008 if, as seems inevitable, certain benchmarks aren't met by the Iraqi government. But, at the same time, she declared this week that she envisions keeping a substantial—though she didn't say precisely how substantial—contingent of American troops in strategic spots around Iraq indefinitely.
The stakes are too high there, and the risks of regional instability too great, to do otherwise, she said. We need to protect the Kurds, contain Iran, guard Israel, keep the lid on Al Qaeda and maintain close watch from close range on the whole country even as we give up trying to prevent a full scale Sunni-Shia sectarian war.
In other words, we are there to stay.
I expected her chief rivals, Sen. Barack Obama and former senator John Edwards, to go on the attack. Instead, there was studied silence. Obama and Edwards have said nothing so far. Why?
Well, as far as I can tell, they aren't willing to disagree with her strategic premise. "Truth is," a strategist for one of them told me, "almost all proposals anticipate the need for a continued presence of noncombat forces. What she said didn't strike me as all that groundbreaking."
In other words, the Democrats are going to square the circle by fiddling with the definition of what "combat" and "noncombat" mean. A classic Washington solution.
They calculate, as does she, that the route to winning, say, southeastern Ohio, in a general election is to be "tough," which means, in this case, an unflinching willingness to use military force. Contributions from donors who care about Israel's survival and safety are important, especially to Democrats—and an absolutist, America-out-of-the-Middle-East stance is anathema to them.
Will there be a credible all-out "antiwar" candidate in the Democratic race? That's why serious people still think that Al Gore is going to crash the party in Iowa next fall.
The Republicans seem as flummoxed by the politics of the Iraq war as the Democrats do. More of them may be speaking out against the president's course, but when it came time to vote in the Senate, only one of them, Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon, broke with the White House.
Will there be an antiwar candidate in the Republican race? Sen. Chuck Hagel keeps toying with the idea. Polls show that perhaps a third of GOP voters would be open to a serious antiwar message. Totemic conservative figures such as William F. Buckley are among them. There are aging New Right activists who began as youthful supporters of the war in Vietnam but who now are facing the other way. "I'll vote for Gore if he runs," said one of them, Roger Stone.
It's not the late 1960s yet, but there is still time.
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
Fineman is married to Amy L. Nathan, a senior counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. They live in Washington with their two children, Meredith and Nicholas.
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