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Dems under the spell of midsummer's dream (Zev Chafets, 7/23/03, Jewish World Review)

Summer is the Democratic season of hope.

Last year around this time, they launched a campaign against the impending war in Iraq. President Bush was in Crawford, Tex., playing cowboy when a front-page New York Times headline announced, "Top Republicans Break With Bush on Iraq Strategy."

According to The Times, Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser under Bush's father, thought the U.S. should be more unilateral. So did Henry Kissinger. House Majority Leader Dick Armey had voiced similar concerns. A mutiny was brewing.

It soon emerged that Kissinger was actually in favor of the war. The posse of critics never grew. Still, many Democrats convinced themselves in the summer of 2002 that Bush was in trouble.

For weeks, nobody could talk about anything else. Nobody that is, on the TV talk shows. The rest of the nation pursued its normal summer activities, which did not include an impassioned analysis of the opinions of Brent Scowcroft.

In September, Bush came back from Crawford, put on a business suit and went to the UN. In short order he gave the critics of the war what they said they wanted, a UN Security Council Resolution, and, in November, what they did not want - a thrashing in the congressional elections. Then, popularity soaring, the President took the country to war.

Now it's summer again...

One of the things that Karl Rove and George Bush talked about long before the latter won the office is the idea that a President has only a limited stock of political capital, which should only be expended on a limited set of truly important issues and which can be squandered if he is constantly before the American people. They well understand, as they demonstrated last summer, that no one is paying attention right now, no one deciding that the war was a mistake, so there's no need to trot Mr. Bush out to answer every attack. What's remarkable is that they've had the discipline to follow predetermined strategy, something few White Houses in memory have had. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 24, 2003 11:11 AM