War is Hell . . .
HAYES, STEPHEN F.
War Is Hell . . . for the Democrats Gore and Daschle flail at Bush. BY STEPHEN F. HAYES IS IT POSSIBLE for two top 2004 Democratic presidential candidates to knock themselves out of contention...
...In 1994, with 21,000 U.S...
...But moments later, after raising precisely those doubts and detailing what he sees as politicization, he claimed that "all of this [is] apparently in keeping with a political strategy...
...Said Gore: "In the case of Iraq, it would be difficult to go it alone but it's theoretically possible to achieve our goals in Iraq unilaterally...
...Daschle had delivered a much-ballyhooed attack calling the Bush economy "atrocious"—a speech that might have failed to change the debate in any event but that was instantly forgotten once Gore went after the administration's war record...
...My theory is that he's trying to protect his members by saying to the White House that these things should not be political...
...This is unworthy of this great body...
...And also, it must be said, not overly concerned with the congressional wing of his party...
...BY STEPHEN F. HAYES IS IT POSSIBLE for two top 2004 Democratic presidential candidates to knock themselves out of contention on consecutive days some two years before the election...
...Senate—on the one-year anniversary of 9/11—with malice and forethought, deliberately weaken the powers of the president in time of war...
...This is an American issue...
...Theoretically possible...
...It'll help us determine how secure we'll be...
...in the space Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...In the end, Daschle and the leaders are looking at a bunch of really close races...
...Daschle, not to be outdone, took to the Senate floor the following day and picked up on that last point, offering a furious attack on the administration for campaigning for Republicans on the war...
...There's a deep suspicion on the Democratic side about the president's motives on this," a prominent Democratic adviser told me last week...
...But the ever-cautious Daschle is seemingly always a step behind the curve...
...It is despicable, it is unpatriotic, and as is often the case with statements from Oliver North, it is also patently untrue...
...This is an issue which is vital to our future...
...And if he does not, then the resolutions spell out exactly what he can face," Gore warned...
...Gore's transformation last week into the leading critic of a war on saddam thus came as a particular shock to hawkish Democrats like the editors of the New Republic...
...in January 1998, Gore said on CNN that his patience with saddam Hussein was running out...
...But a neglected point that may come back to haunt him was his implicit depreciation of the military—not just in describing the operations in Afghanistan as easier than they were, but in his odd criticism of the Bush administration's objective of "regime change...
...In typical Democratic style," they lamented, "Gore didn't say he opposed the war...
...The House responded, but the Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people...
...And he noted that all of this is happening in "this high political season...
...And he deserves a lot of credit for that...
...What's striking about this entire debate is the extent to which Democrats—including several who support the president on Iraq—argue in one breath that the Bush administration is inappropriately politicizing the debate, and in the very next praise Tom Daschle for protecting Democrats in close races...
...After the president's U.N...
...Bush's comments— special interests versus national security— enveloped as they were in praise of bipartisanship, were hardly the harshest criticism of Democrats on Homeland Security...
...When Bush announced his intention to seek congressional approval for action against Iraq, Daschle sought to slow the process down...
...probably not...
...Gore ripped the Bush administration's war on terror more directly than any Democrat has thus far...
...Daschle is too little, too late...
...Gore initially distanced himself from suggestions that he was accusing Bush of being motivated by politics, saying, "I have not raised these doubts, but many have...
...Daschle built his tirade around the notion that President Bush and Vice president Cheney are politicizing the debate on Iraq...
...Does Gore doubt the capability of the U.S...
...In other words, what's politiciza-tion for thee is not for me...
...In fact, he endorsed the goal of regime change—before presenting a series of qualifications that would likely make that goal impossible...
...A fair amount of thought and planning had gone into the outburst...
...Gore said that those who planned and conducted the September 11 attacks have "gotten away with it...
...Now, the day after Al Gore excoriated the president for politicizing the war, Daschle followed...
...And Bush, in the passage Daschle found so offensive, was speaking not about Iraq, but about unionizing the Department of Homeland Security...
...And then why did this Senate—in all its puffed up vainglory—rear back and deliver the ultimate slap in the face of the president by not even having the decency to give him an up or down vote on his bill...
...If Gore's speech was about the politics of 2004, Daschle's was primarily about the politics of 2002...
...Gore's response was ferocious: North, he said, was "giving aid and comfort" to Saddam Hussein...
...Then, not two minutes later, I asked the same adviser about Daschle and his speech...
...Why was the U.S...
...Why did they put workers' rights above American lives...
...military to carry out its mission in Iraq...
...Daschle ticked off a long and detailed list of alleged administration offenses, and Democrats have privately made this case to reporters since last spring...
...Gore's speech has been dissected many times over...
...Saddam must comply with the mandates of the world community...
...If the Commonwealth Club speech was the new Al Gore, then the new Al Gore is a lot like the 2000 version—a calculating, opportunistic, and condescending political animal...
...Throughout the eight years of the Clinton administration Gore was, rhetorically at least, a hawkish, no-nonsense adviser to the president on saddam Hussein...
...He has put the rankest form of partisanship ahead of the national interest in a manner which is insulting to our armed forces, to our flag, to the soldiers who are prepared to go into battle if necessary...
...Senate's refusal to grant this president and future presidents the same power that four previous presidents have had will haunt the Democratic party worse than Marley's ghost haunted Ebenezer Scrooge...
...resolutions, he's simply wrong...
...When Daschle took to the Senate floor on Wednesday, the economy was the furthest thing from his mind...
...It is demeaning and ugly and over the top...
...He dismissed the crushing of the Taliban as merely the defeat of a "fifth-rate military power" (not that he was likely to poll well anyway among the Special Forces units who've been enjoying that walk in the park for the last year...
...And he'll find that out...
...Well, the message may have been new (he reportedly consulted with the likes of Hollywood director Rob Reiner), but the rant was vintage Gore...
...Paul D. Well-stone (MN) could lose his seat because he will likely vote against the Bush resolution, that they are drafting an alternative resolution 'because he has to have something to give him cover,' a Democratic Senate aide said...
...Gore did not take kindly to similarly baseless fears when he was vice president...
...See, this isn't a partisan issue...
...Daschle's speech was not in fact a spur-of-the-moment reaction to a newspaper article...
...Just as congressional Democrats were hoping to put the Iraq debate behind them and change the conversation back to the economy, Gore prominently asserted himself as leader of the opposition, making news on iraq the only way he possibly could have: by doing what amounts to a reversal of his previous position...
...Said a visibly angry Daschle: "I read in the paper this morning, now even the president—the president is quoted in the Washington Post this morning as saying that the Democratic-controlled Senate is 'not interested in the security of the American people.'" Here are the president's words: So I asked Congress to give me the flexibility necessary to be able to deal with the true threats of the 21st century by being able to move the right people to the right place at the right time, so we can better assure America we're doing everything possible...
...Cheney, in fact, said nothing about Iraq in the speech Daschle cited...
...It was filled with factual inaccuracies and exaggerations...
...Many Democrats, even some on the antiwar left of the party who were delighted to see Bush challenged, say privately that Gore's speech was fundamentally self-serving...
...If he believes that he does not have to comply with U.N...
...I will not accept a Department of Homeland Security that does not allow this President, and future Presidents, to better keep the American people secure...
...speech won him high-profile Democratic support, Daschle began to seek an expedited vote...
...As much as the Democratic base may have appreciated a strong voice in opposition to the administration, it's not clear that they wanted that voice to be Gore's hectoring monotone...
...The Gore speech came as Senate majority leader Tom Daschle and his House counterpart Dick Gephardt had begun trying to shift attention away from the war by agreeing to an expedited vote on an Iraq resolution in Congress...
...Senate so fixated on protecting jobs instead of protecting lives...
...So Daschle, rather than concede the role of opposition leader to Gore, launched his own attack on the Bush administration...
...The president is, in a very ham-handed way, trying to squeeze politics into the debate...
...troops stationed in Haiti and Saddam Hussein amassing forces on the Iraq-Kuwait border, Oliver North (then running for the Senate in Virginia) worried aloud about military readiness...
...in an aggressive speech last Tuesday at the Commonwealth Club in san Francisco, the former vice president suggested, among many other things, that the war on terror has been a failure, that a war on saddam Hussein would be a dangerous distraction, and that the Bush administration is politicizing national security...
...Why did that 2002 U.S...
...Indeed, the Washington Post's account the next day, in an article headlined "Daschle: President is Politicizing Security Debate," offered this nugget: "Senate Democrats are so concerned that Sen...
...That distinction belongs to one of their own, Georgia's Zell Miller, who on the same day Daschle exploded, provided his fellow Democrats with a stern warning...
...If he believes that this is an indefinite process, he's sadly mistaken...
...He argued that the Bush administration is refocusing on Saddam Hussein because defeating al Qaeda "is proving to be more difficult and lengthy than was predicted...
...He did say, after all, that he is "deeply concerned that the course of action we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century...
...The U.S...
...Aides to Gore suggested his speech would provide a sneak preview of the new, consequences-be-damned, un-candidate...
...But as Washington last week descended into a sour partisanship not seen since the last presidential election, both Al Gore and Tom Daschle may have done significant damage to their chances in the next one...
...He's mentioning this in campaign appearances, for God's sake...
...There are members who are in tight races who don't want a big brouhaha on this," he said...
...of less than 24 hours, Americans saw the fundamental flaws of the top two Democrats: Gore is too much...
...And people are working hard in Washington to get it right in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats...
Vol. 8 • October 2002 • No. 4
