Elemental Caution in Immoderate Times

January 30, 2007
Politicus
By JOHN VINOCUR
International Herald Tribune

NEW YORK Barack Obama tells of Democrats who rush up to him at events insisting “that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats.”

It’s then, the presidential candidate says, that he points to graver intervals in American history, and suggests, no small wisdom here, “we all take a deep breath.”

It’s that time in American politics, with the run-up toward the presidential primaries in 2008 under way, when constraints on overkill have fading appeal and moderation can taste stale or bland.

And when this consecrated idea gets repeated and repeated: you can’t win in the state primaries without having pitched to the passions of the party activists, fueled on excess, do who do much of the voting.

But Republican or Democrat, the elemental caution here is that in the midst of an immoderate presidency - and deep in a war in Iraq without an easy end short of withdrawal and chaos - the candidate who can become president in 2008 will be someone who has not become so elastic or doctrinaire during the primaries’ long march that he or she can’t win the election.

Ideally, that means the emergence of a hard-nosed conciliator who can meld into perspective the reality of America’s self-interest and its obligations to stand guard over the world’s stability. This, above all, in a way that the American middle class can digest and support.

Interestingly - amazingly might be the more exact adverb - the United States’ early rush toward the next presidency has produced four central actors who are not dissimilar in wanting to move their parties far enough beyond overkill and caricature so as to prevail.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, for the Democrats, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani (still officially undeclared) for the Republicans: Each is capable of not saying what each’s base most wants to hear. Each can reject what’s ludicrous in tones that sound reasonable, resolved and, in relation to the Bush White House, representative of change.

Basically, Clinton has stated she opposes cutting off any funds for troops in Iraq, will not rush to set a deadline for their withdrawal, and proposes capping their number at about 130,000. Obama, who would be the first black, mainstream presidential nominee, holds to a similar line.

But appealing to party activists in Iowa, among the first states to nominate a candidate next year, Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor who wants to block funds for the forces in Iraq and withdraw, said that the troop cap proposal “is nothing more than staying the course” and that “Hillary reflects the continuation of a failed policy.”

The activist/moderate clash, Democratic version, comes in here.

Clinton’s response, tortuously carved to fit her status as someone who voted to enable the war, is “that I have been a constant critic of the war planning and implementation.” All the same, she warns about “heartless, ruthless enemies,” terrorists who would come after America tomorrow, and describes herself, in contrast to her get-out-now critics in the party, “as cursed with the responsibility gene.”

Obama, free of the activists’ stigmatization of having approved the war, just skips around the word withdrawal. Aiming instead to score with the vast middle ground angry with the war’s failure but tortured by the implications of an American defeat, Obama makes it sound as if he’s hit on a way for the United States to wind down while standing tall:

“I think all of us are talking about phased redeployment which would leave American troops in the region to send a strong message not only to the Iraqi government that we want to help them, but also to neighbors like Iran, that we’re not abandoning the field.”

McCain, who has had his differences with the Republicans’ supporters on the Christian right, also has cast himself as free of responsibility for failure in Iraq.

But it is from the point of view of a Republican critic of the losing strategy of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and as someone who began calling for an increase in American troop strength almost two years before George W. Bush did so this month.

McCain says this is the only chance for “some modicum of success.” The approach, he warns, may initially result in an upswing in casualties, and he does not guarantee that 20,000 more troops are sufficient to do the job.

If McCain says he would rather not be president than lose the war, he also sought last week to reach for moderation and daylight between himself and Bush when he urged Congress and the administration “to come up with a list benchmarks that we think need to be accomplished and perhaps even a time frame associated with them.”

Indeed, Giuliani, the former Republican mayor of New York, while also backing a troop surge in Iraq, spoke out ahead of McCain for benchmarks to gauge the surge’s effects. And in spite of positions in favor of gay marriage, abortion and gun control that clash with the instincts of some Republican activists, Giuliani as a not-quite- yet candidate has run ahead of Clinton, Obama and McCain in many polls.

Talking to Republicans in New Hampshire, where the first primary will be held in 2008, Giuliani said he prayed for a good outcome in Iraq. “We have to get it right,” he said. But, hedging away from Bush, he added, “If we don’t, we have to make sure we can still move on.”

What is clear in the enormous attention Americans are giving a presidential election still more than 600 days off is that it reflects the presence of a core group of competent, essentially moderate candidates who many people feel can do better than a president now deep in the approval ratings’ netherworld.

It also assures that the process of picking a successor to Bush will be a central factor in everything the United States, the global player, proposes or does in the time that’s left him. This creates an election, at least notionally, with a world constituency.

Americans, of course, will make the decision. Inevitably, it is a situation where Bush himself, confronted with choices between moderation or excess on Iraq or Iran over the next 21 months, can still sway the election’s outcome. Any day, any hour.

E-mail: pagetwo@iht.com