Whether you are a politician or a political activist there can be a real tension between acting as an advocate and acting as a pundit. To put this another way, sometimes telling the truth about what you think will happen can come into conflict with what you want to happen. Barack Obama got into trouble when he forgot his role as an advocate trumps his role as a pundit.
In Sioux City over the weekend, Senator Barack Obama said that if President Bush vetoes an Iraq war spending bill as promised, Congress quickly will provide the money without the withdrawal timeline the White House objects to. Obama says that’s because no lawmaker wants to play chicken with American troops.
The problem isn’t that Obama told the truth, the problem is that telling the truth showed weakness to the other party. It’s the equivalent of showing your cards…do that and no amount of bluffing will work. Harry Reid’s office has the same problem. Reid talked tough yesterday by agreeing to co-sponsor Russ Feingold’s withdrawal plan. For a brief moment I though I detected the glimmer of a ballsack from the Senate Democrats. But those hopes were crushed this morning when I opened my Washington Post to read this (emphasis mine):
The Feingold-Reid bill calls for Bush to begin withdrawing troops within four months, similar to the language in the Senate’s $122 billion spending package. But it would prohibit funding beyond the March 31 deadline, except for counterterrorism, security and training operations.
Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the Democratic leader does not expect the bill to become the official position of Senate Democrats, given its strong terms, but rather the “next in a series of steps designed to try to force a change in administration policy.”
And here I thought, however briefly, that Reid’s decision to co-sponsor the bill was an indication that this would be the official position of the Senate Democrats. Silly me.
You know what it is? It’s the crappy vote we get as compensation for a complete capitulation to the President. And the vote won’t even pass, and several gutless Democrats will vote against it.
Let me put down my activist hat for a minute and don my pundit hat.
Reid is going to do exactly what Obama predicted…fund the war without restrictions…then he is going to try to make it up to us by bringing Feingold’s bill to the floor. He’ll really try to win us over by speaking in favor of it as an individual senator, while not whipping for it as our majority leader. Feingold’s bill will fail to pass in the senate. It will divide our caucus, anger the base, hand the Republicans a big victory, and accomplish nothing.
That’s what it looks like to me. And I can’t really think of a better example of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The President is weak, the people are behind us, the troops want to come home, Kissinger thinks it’s over.
Reid better make Feingold’s bill the official position of the Democrats. Even better, it should be attached as an amendment to the next (post-veto) supplemental funding bill. And Reid should whip it.
Keep pushing…the Republicans are weak and afraid, and much less united than they appear. And stop showing your damn cards.