Despite dropping to historically low approval ratings since taking control of Congress, Senate Democrats may be having some unprecedented success in their surge to get 60 votes against White House policy on Iraq.
Congress returned to this week to a flurry of reports on the state of play in Iraq, and it appears that the assessment season will continue for a while. The reports, as predicted, are a confusing mix of good news and bad.
"You have a right to be confused," Majority Leader Harry Reid conceded Thursday, "This is report heaven here." Or hell, depending on how much longer you want the argument to continue.
This week's stories have Democratic leadership backing off, willing to compromise on deadlines for withdrawal. "Democrats Retreat on War End" blared Politico on Thursday, while the front page of the New York Times had them "mulling a compromise."
Already there have been charges of capitulation leveled against Reid, and the Democratic senators running for president will make his life more difficult. Some of them -- Clinton and Dodd -- have already said that they could not support any measure that does not include firm withdrawal dates.
"No one is backing off of anything," Reid insisted to reporters yesterday. His plan all along has been to line up 60 votes in the Senate that say the president's strategy is wrong. "The American people understand, and we understand that we need 60 votes," and we will do everything we can."
We may be on the verge of exactly such a development when the Senate moves back to debating Iraq on Sept. 17 with consideration of the Defense Department authorization bill. Democrats are looking at the 57 votes they got for an amendment proposed by Jim Webb earlier this summer as a good starting point. That amendment would have forced the Pentagon allow U.S. troops to stay home as long as they had been deployed before a second deployment. "With Senator [Tim] Johnson coming back," Reid said, "we need two Republican votes to do the right thing."
"We have to change course, and we will do everything we can to make that happen," said New York Democrat Chuck Schumer, echoing his leader. Reid's opening bid in the negotiations, as he told reporters Thursday, is that "nothing is off the table on Iraq."
The outlines of the compromise come in the form of legislation that forces the beginning of a withdrawal, but remains silent on a definitive end-date. Not an ideal situation, but it may be enough to move enough GOP votes. The question will be holding on to Democrats who worry the compromise represents a sellout to the White House.
But I'm not sure the country is bent of having an end date. We know it's going to take longer than a year to get out of Iraq, and there may be enough excitement about beginning a withdrawal, that the finer point of how it ends could fall into the TBD category.
What most Americans are agreed on is that we should get out of Iraq. The president is not there yet. If and when he ever gets there, the debate will change. What Americans want out, however long it takes to do so wisely.
There was a time when it was pure folly to even imagine that such a vote was possible. Now it looks likely, and we should not underestimate the effect it will have on the White House. The administration's Iraq policy has devolved into a game of how to exaggerate and extrapolate a little good news into a theory of success. Exhibit A, of course, is the president's declaration that "we are kicking ass" in Iraq.
It is hard to imagine, but there are some who say that outside the issue of withdrawal deadlines, the president could be surprisingly open on a course forward in Iraq. But trapped in his own macho, he can't see past the deadlines, and any way to compromise. That leaves Democrats only a single option, and that is to beat him head on. For that to happen they need GOP votes; hence Harry Reid's grind to 60 votes that could end a filibuster.
If Harry Reid is able to get his 60 votes for a withdrawal without an end date, it'll clarify for the president that his support on the Hill is evaporating even among Republicans. Last weekend, Delaware Democrat Joe Biden estimated that there were not a dozen senators who support the war as it is now being fought.
In this period of intense reassessment of Iraq and the high expectations for some kind of change, a withdrawal plan without specific deadlines may allow the president a chance to sign on to something that does not turn his stomach, and give him an out of an increasingly troubled war.
This is admittedly an optimistic view. "If you talk to the Republicans they will tell you that the problem is the president's adamance [sic]," Schumer told me yesterday. "He does not want an out."
But he needs one, and Democrats are counting on a little help from the president's friends to get him moving.
