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I want to somewhat belatedly respond to Kevin Drum's response to my post on Barack Obama's missing the vote on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to the Defense Authorization bill, which passed the Senate 76-22, with Obama and John McCain as the only absences. Drum, in response to my contention that the Obama campaign's efforts to paint the amendment as the second coming of the 2002 resolution on the use of force in Iraq made me wonder if he'd have skipped that vote, too, writes:
there's simply no reason to suspect Obama would have missed the most important floor vote of the entire year if he'd been a senator in 2002. Considering that all 100 senators were there, he would have been rather conspicuous by his absence.I actually believe Obama would have showed up for the 2002 vote, and voted no, had he been a Senator. (I'm not that cynical.) I was trying to make a broader point about the ridiculousness of comparing the two votes and acting as if history were repeating itself, but perhaps my sarcasm didn't come through. Let me be perfectly clear: War with Iran would be a complete disaster, and I very much appreciate the actions of those Senators and Representatives who are working to make sure it does not happen. But as the liberal foreign policy hands I talk to are now of the opinion that war with Iran is unlikely, and that critical parts of the administration have backed away from the idea over the past year, I presumed the amendment was not, in the end, much more than the largely symbolic measure it appeared to be post-modification.Further, if Obama were right about the significance of this amendment, it would speak very poorly of all the institutions of the new progressive movement that have sprung up since 2003, as well as his own leadership. I mean, why didn't anyone see it coming? Where were the protests? Where were the conferences calls and organizing meetings on how to stop it? Where were my sources who pitch me stories? Why wasn't I getting bombarded on this by MoveOn? Why weren't the candidates giving speeches about the vote, trying to one up one another over who could most vehemently oppose it? Why did no one send me a text message? Where was the GOP organizing on the measure's behalf, the GOPUSA spam messaging? Why didn't anybody but bloggers seem to notice until it was too late? Why did the Senate Majority Leader vote for the amendment? Are the Democrats really that dumb? (Don't answer that.)I know the signs of a legislative battle over an issue that matters, and they were by and large absent when it came to this amendment. Either the whole new progressive organizing apparatus seriously whiffed on this issue -- with the exception of the political blogs, who did sound the alarm on the unmodified version of the amendment -- or else Obama was making this vote out to mean more than it did. I am open to being convinced that the Kyl-Lieberman resolution will help grease the skids to war. That's why the Obama argument on this point was so maddening. I want Obama -- and Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd, as well -- to help keep us out of another war. I would expect Clinton to take a more hawkish stance on a symbolic vote than would Obama, but I also have, perhaps erroneously, developed an expectation that Obama would up and use some of that much-advertised (literally) judgment of his to prevent another war if there were really another important vote before the Senate that could actually lead to one. But for Obama say that Clinton voted for more war (rather than for symbolism) while simultaneously doing nothing to stop the measure from passing smacked of playing post-hoc politics with the vote. Ultimately, I didn't find this argument credible, because I still hold out hope that if there's ever a vote as important as Obama now says this was, he -- and the progressive groups -- will be there to fight against it. And if I can't count on that...well then, what has everyone been doing for the past four years?--Garance Franke-Ruta
