David Corn is the Washington editor of The Nation and the co-author, along with Michael Isikoff, of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War . Read his blog at http://www.davidcorn.com.
The 2008 presidential campaign is already under way, with aspirants in both parties declaring candidacies and opening exploratory committees. And thanks to George W. Bush, who is about to call for a “surge” of troops in Iraq, the war there is likely to dominate the discourse within both the Republican and Democratic primaries. At this point—only one year until the Iowa caucuses!—Republican John McCain and Democrat John Edwards may have the best starting positions among the major contenders for the coming political jockeying over Iraq, even though they are advocating opposing policies. Allow me to explain.
McCain, the Arizona senator, has adopted a hawkier-than-thou stance. He has been calling for more troops in Iraq since it became obvious the war was no cakewalk. The Pentagon’s resistance hasn’t mattered to him (nor that of GOP senators who have rejected the McCain plan). Several weeks ago, General John Abizaid, the now-outgoing chief of Central Command, testified before the Senate and told McCain directly that he didn’t have extra troops to deploy to Iraq and that he did not believe dumping more U.S. soldiers into Iraq would lead to victory. Though the military commanders are apparently yielding to Bush’s let-do-something desires and go along with the so-called surge (that’s spin-talk for escalation), it is unlikely that McCain will get the full-scale ramp-up he wants. That would be politically beneficial for McCain.
By urging the deployment of more troops, McCain, like Bush, is marching against public opinion. But to attain the Republican presidential nomination, he need not worry about vox populi. McCain, who in years past has alienated conservatives, has to win the votes of diehards within the GOP, who mostly still support Bush and his war. (They are practically the only ones.) Though McCain’s send-more-troops proposal has been an implied criticism of Bush, it conveys a clear message to those Bush-backing voters: I’m tough enough to be the next kick-ass president you Republicans know you want .
McCain’s position has a built-in advantage: His up-the-ante idea has not been fully tested. Consequently, on the campaign trail he will be able to say, If we had sent more troops when I advocated doing so, we might not be in such a fix today. And should he win the GOP nomination, he won’t have to stick with his escalation strategy. If Iraq has descended further into chaos and conflict by then, McCain could say that the time for injecting more troops has passed and that boosting the U.S. presence in Iraq would no longer be productive. McCain could get points for having been a gutsy hawk without having to be accountable for the consequences of his hawkishness. Not a bad political play for a Republican.
There are potential minefields for McCain. The war, post-surge, could get so ugly that even the hardest-core Republicans become turned off and cannot be won over by McCain’s tough-guy talk. McCain might also face an anti-war Republican challenger who will try to put the former Navy pilot on the spot. Sen. Chuck Hagel, a sometimes maverick-ish Republican from Nebraska and another Vietnam vet, has called for withdrawal from Iraq, and he has been pondering a presidential bid. None of the other non-McCain GOP candidates—outgoing Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback—are as qualified (or perhaps as willing) to challenge McCain as is Hagel, a member of the foreign relations committee who has been raising questions about the Iraq war since the start, even when he voted to give Bush the authority to attack. If Hagel jumps into the pool, the smart money would still be on McCain. But Republican voters—and the rest of the public—could be treated to an electrifying and dramatic debate.
On the Democratic side, primary voters will likely have one overriding question for their presidential candidates: What have you done and what will you do to end the Iraq war? At first glance, it may seem that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama—should he run—will be the top-tier candidate most able to tap the antiwar sentiment of Democrats. He was not yet a member of the Senate in October 2002, when a majority of Democratic senators—including Hillary Clinton of New York and John Edwards of North Carolina—voted for the war authorization legislation, but at the time Obama declared his opposition to the war. Still, he and Clinton share a problem.
The Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, who are now in control of Congress, have repeatedly said they are going to press Bush to devise a withdrawal plan, not force him to do so. That is, they have no intention of defunding the war. Not even Pennsylvania Rep. Jack Murtha, the leading Democratic critic of the war, favors pulling this plug. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has threatened to withhold funding for Bush’s surge, but other Democrats have questioned such a strategy. The Democrats fear being cast as unsupportive of the troops and worry about being blamed for losing Iraq. If Bush remains deaf to the Dems’ pleadings—as is likely—grassroots Democrats can be expected to become increasingly peeved at their congressional leaders and demand that the Democrats do more than issue demands. How will Clinton and Obama deal with this? They could each become caught between the Democrats’ strategic aim (don’t do Bush’s dirty work for him) and beyond-the-Beltway Democratic sentiment (get us out of there).
Edwards, the losing vice presidential candidate of 2004 who officially kicked off his 2008 campaign last week, will be in no such jam. He has already declared his 2002 vote was a mistake (“I was wrong,” he wrote in The Washington Post in November 2005), and he has called for beginning an initial withdrawal of 40,000 to 50,000 troops from Iraq. But best for Edwards, he is out of the Senate. He is not encumbered by office. Whether he decides to call for defunding the war or not, he will have more maneuverability than either Clinton or Obama. And he will not have to back up his position with action or votes. Edwards is free to fire away at the war—and perhaps even at House and Senate Democrats should they not do enough (in the eyes of Democratic voters) to stop Bush’s misadventure in Iraq.
Within the Republican primary contest, there will be major disagreements among the candidates on issues beyond Iraq, including such hot-button topics as abortion and gay rights. (Imagine Giuliani and Brownback squaring off.) Global warming could make the list. (McCain has called for cutting back greenhouse gases.) But among the leading Democratic candidates (a group unlikely to include the already-announced Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, a progressive firebrand who favors defunding the war), there will not be much issue separation, except perhaps regarding what to do in Iraq. And one of the front-of-the-pack Democrats (for reasons of politics or policy or both) will distinguish him or herself by calling for a more-and-faster approach to disengagement in Iraq. As of now, Edwards has the space to do so. But however all this plays out, the presidential campaign of 2008 will produce extensive debates on Iraq—as the war continues and perhaps grows.
