Watching Washington

Common Ground On The Time Horizon?

Almost overnight, the debate over the war in Iraq has taken a new direction. For the first time in years, it appears possible to achieve a working consensus between warring factions in both countries.

That would mean some form of reconciliation among Sunni, Shia and Kurds -- and among the various factions of each. In the U.S., consensus involves bringing together those who want American forces in Iraq indefinitely and those who never wanted them there in the first place.

It's hard to say which set of conflicts may prove the more implacable, ours or theirs.

For a long time, you could get agreement in this country only by saying the Iraq situation was a mess. Everybody knew that. But policymakers and critics and ordinary citizens would immediately divide over what to do about it. We've had years of stale debate and impasse as a result.

But in little more than a week, the unpredictable politics of Iraq have churned up a new reality. That is what is driving the new discussion of timelines, time frames, time horizons and other euphemisms. Parse the words anyway you want, the Iraqis are envisioning a world in the very near future with U.S. forces substantially reduced. They are promoting that vision.

If that sounds off-key with the themes sounded by President Bush, it is. So the White House has been working hard for days now to re-harmonize with the Baghdad regime.

If the new notes coming from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sound more like Barack Obama's music than that of John McCain, they are. So the McCain forces are trying to remind everyone it was their surge concept that made possible the new facts on the ground.

But we need to realize this is not primarily about the U.S. or our presidential election. It's about the Iraqis' effort to pull their own country together on a basis other than a Pax Americana.

The Iraqis, in search of a governing consensus, have become quite tough on certain elements of the Status of Forces Agreement now being negotiated with the U.S. (and needed to legitimize U.S. forces in the country after their U.N. mandate expires).

Surprising in his tenacity, Maliki has insisted on making it clear the U.S. will be leaving -- and soon. Although they have hedged their own statements at times, Maliki and others in his government have made it clear they consider 2010 a realistic endpoint for the current U.S. role and presence in Iraq.

This will strike many Americans, especially conservatives, as overly optimistic. It also seems disrespectful of President Bush, who has resisted any such specificity in talking about getting out. After all, Maliki's regime owes its existence to the steadfast support of the Bush administration. Don't they know that?

Of course they do. But they also know their future depends on someone else, and it's not the next U.S. president. Their chief concern is selling themselves to Iraqis. And to do that, to hold the various parties and factions together, the current crew in Baghdad needs NOT to be seen as the agents of America any longer than absolutely necessary.

As for the deep divisions on our side of the ocean, why shouldn't we be willing to let the success of the Iraqi regime make possible a lighter U.S. presence?

Was this new, happier scenario made possible by the surge? Fine. Let it be so. And let the surge, the success and the reconciliation free the U.S. government to pursue the rest of its rightful agenda, at home and abroad.

6:52 PM ET | 07-22-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

Romney Moves Up As Potential McCain VP

Once upon a time, people who wanted to be president were not expected to admit it in public. This mask of false indifference had to be dropped when the rise of primaries forced candidates to campaign actively for the office.

Until recently, however, we still expected those who wanted to promote themselves for VICE president to do so quietly, perhaps even while denying interest in the job. Active pursuit was still regarded as unseemly.

Now even that last bit of coyness seems unnecessary. The current crop of potential No. 2 persons is increasingly willing to show interest and even compete where the world can see.

Take the potential running mates for Republican John McCain. In the months since he became the presumptive nominee, McCain has summoned several prospective partners to his home for barbecue. All but one came running. The one, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, pleaded a previous commitment. But that probably didn't help his standing.

More recently, McCain has auditioned several from his short list in the role of surrogate, pushing them out into the media to talk up his candidacy and argue with critics.

Some have handled this better than others. South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford probably eclipsed his modest chances of getting the nod when he said he was "drawing a blank" when asked to name an economic disagreement between McCain and President Bush (CNN July 13).

Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, may have lowered her stock when she said McCain was "not one of those running around trying to overturn Roe v. Wade." There was just too much videotape of McCain saying Roe "ought to be overturned," and the McCain folks could not have been pleased about seeing all of it aired repeatedly.

Much more successful has been the comeback of former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who opened the latest edition of the Today Show by telling NBC's Matt Lauer that Barack Obama's "sweet talk" would be trumped by McCain's "straight talk." It's a line Romney has been shopping around on other networks as well.

Beyond that, the prospective running mates themselves are taking some extraordinary steps that seem timed to improve their chances of being chosen.

For example, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist ended nearly three decades of confirmed bachelorhood by proposing to his girlfriend this month. It might have been a total coincidence, but the proposal followed a New York Times Sunday Magazine interview that dwelt on his single status (after a brief marriage in his student years). It has long been axiomatic that voters expect their president to be married, and vice presidents must generally meet all the requirements of the presidency.

Romney stunned much of the political world this week by announcing he would not seek donations to cover the $45 million he loaned his own campaign for the primaries. Romney had indicated when he dropped out in February that he was facing enough personal financial exposure to force a difficult decision. At the time, the full weight of that debt was not yet clear.

Like other contenders, Romney could go on seeking money for his failed campaign, collecting money to pay down some of what his campaign owes him. But to do so would compete for his time and divide his loyalties, which right at the moment have been transferred to the man he savaged as "a liberal" not too many months ago.

Also, by forgoing his shot at reimbursement, Romney looks like a stand-up guy and gets a positive news story at a critical time. McCain might choose his vice president early -- well before the convention in St. Paul, Minn. -- so as to raise his campaign's general profile and steal back some of the media focus lately lavished on Obama.

Romney's polish as a stand-in, combined with his business success and reassuring demeanor, look better and better as the economic issue ascends. Romney could help out in Michigan, where his name still works. He would also be at least some help in his other home regions of New England and the Mountain West.

Romney was also the guy who would have won in Iowa without the presence of evangelical preacher Mike Huckabee. Romney, who beat McCain soundly in Michigan, surely would have done so again in South Carolina and Florida if he had not been splitting the conservative vote in those states four ways with Huckabee, Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani.

So right now pressure is building again for McCain to set aside his personal distaste for Romney and put him on the ticket. The campaign has put out the story that the obvious animosity between the two men in the primaries has been set aside. No one will ever sense true chemistry in this relationship, but it's possible McCain could make the same judgement call that Sen. Bob Dole made in 1996.

Dole had endured considerable abuse from former Rep. Jack Kemp of New York when they both served in Congress, and it was clear that the Kansan had little use for the former pro quarterback. But if Kemp could help win the White House, Dole was willing to make the personal sacrifice and put him on the ticket.

It was a sign of some desperation on Dole's part, and in the end it did not get him elected. But Romney is a more mature and serious politician than Kemp ever was, and he may be a better antidote to McCain's specific problems than Kemp was for Dole's.

With his most recent moves, Romney has shown he is willing to forget past wounds and make sacrifices of a material kind that few can dream of making. He has done what he can do.

Will McCain feel the need to do as much?

1:20 PM ET | 07-19-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

Helms' Passage A Hinge Of History

Senate eulogies are models of the Latin maxim de mortuis nil nisi bonum. Speak no ill of the dead.

So it was this week when the Senate returned from its Independence Day recess to remember five-term Sen. Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican. Helms, who retired in failing health in 2003, died last week at 86.

Onetime colleagues who had fought the archconservative during his 30 years in the Senate found ways to salute his conviction, his courage and his kindness to those he held dear. Fierce as he could be in battle, Helms could be as sentimental as a greeting card, mentioning his wife, Dot, in a floor speech and calling her "that girl I met who is now my favorite grandma."

Several of the Senate tributes noted that Helms had been declared dead early on July 4, joining a list of national figures who had died on the nation's birthday (notably Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both in 1826, and James Monroe).

The day of Helms' death was also widely noted in obituaries over the holiday weekend. Admirers of the conservative icon will surely make it part of his patriotic legend.

Looking back, however, the month and day of Helms' passing will seem less important than the year. For Helms has died in 2008, in the summer when the Democratic Party is about to nominate an African American for president.

Historians will find these era brackets irresistible. Helms' passing marks the end of a long line of Southern senators for whom race was an abiding obsession. Barack Obama's nomination represents the improbable culmination of the Democratic Party's century-long transformation. The party of the Old South — of slavery, secession and segregation — is about to anoint its first black leader.

Helms began his political life as a Democrat, as nearly all ambitious young men did in the North Carolina of his youth. In 1950, he helped a segregationist Democrat, Willis Smith, win a close Senate primary. Helms denied involvement in the doctored photos that showed the wife of Smith's opponent dancing with a black man.

In the 1960s, when the civil rights movement was at its peak, Helms was a leader in the resistance. He made his hard-edged opposition heard as a newspaper editor, a radio and TV commentator and a city councilman in Raleigh. And, like his counterpart in South Carolina, Strom Thurmond, he changed his political allegiance to the GOP. The two would soon bring their states and their entire region into the Republican column in 1972, re-electing President Richard Nixon in a landslide and sending Helms himself to the Senate.

Through the rest of his career, whenever Helms had a tough race he turned to the issue he knew best. Facing a stiff challenge by Gov. Jim Hunt in 1984, Helms led the effort to reject the Martin Luther King holiday and railed against the "vote of the blocs." Under the gun again six years later against Harvey Gantt, the African-American former mayor of Charlotte, Helms ran the infamous "white hands" ad attacking affirmative action as "racial quotas" and "reverse discrimination at the hands of ruthless bureaucrats."

Why did Helms rely so heavily on the politics of race?

As a rural-born conservative with a populist touch, he enjoyed strong bonds with his "Jessecrats" that never weakened. Running as he did in the age of Ronald Reagan, Helms never lacked for winning issues. He could find ready audiences for his denunciations of abortion and gay rights, his jeremiads against the United Nations and foreign aid. As a long-standing anti-Communist, he could scarcely have served in a more propitious era than the one that saw the Soviet Union stagger and collapse.

And yet, with all that to work with, he would return again and again to what he knew best, drawing his water from the well of the South's deep and bitter past. Others who had done so, including Thurmond and Alabama's George Wallace, changed their ways in later life. But not Helms, who seemed anything but repentant.

It is not yet clear what the election will bring in North Carolina this fall. But Obama will have an uphill fight in the Tar Heel State. So will the Democrat challenging Helms' successor in the Senate, Elizabeth Dole. The past will still be present in North Carolina, and the arrival of the future may yet be some ways off.

But the day of Jesse Helms is gone, not to return. And that is a milestone in itself.

7:18 AM ET | 07- 8-2008 | permalink | e-mail column