CHOOSE WAR:

A Choice, Not an Echo: The country is split on the most fundamental choice facing it and the bulk of one party is opposed to the president's policy. The opposition deserves a chance to take its argument to the country. (William Kristol, 01/12/2004, Weekly Standard)

In polls, a majority of the Democratic party is anti-Iraq war, anti-Bush Doctrine, and anti-Bush's overall conception of the war on terror. Most of the country, on the other hand, basically supports Bush's foreign policy. That's why the president now runs ahead of his Democratic opponents, and why he must be favored in this election. But if the country is split about 60-40 on the most fundamental choice facing it, and if the bulk of one party is strongly opposed to the policy being promulgated by a president of the other party, the opposition presumably deserves a chance in the presidential election to take its argument to the country. They're going to get it. [...]

Visions of 1972 and 1984 dance enticingly in Republican heads. But we'll be engaged in Iraq in 2004, as opposed to having extracted ourselves from Vietnam, supposedly with honor, as in 1972. And despite all that was admirable about Reagan's foreign policy, one reason it could appear to be "morning in America" in 1984 was that we had (ignominiously and damagingly) pulled out of Lebanon in 1983.

It is to Bush's credit that he has committed to staying in Iraq until the job is done, and that he is committed to pursuing the war on terror comprehensively and unsparingly. In doing so, he has ruled out the easier path to victory taken by his predecessors in 1972 and 1984. It won't be "peace with honor," or morning in America, in 2004; it will be war on terror with honor, and something more like high noon in America. This puts a far greater burden on Bush to explain and justify his policies. But it also means his victory--if he achieves it--will be of greater significance, and more richly deserved.

Other than the fact that only the neocons considered Israel--and therefore Lebanon--to be the crux of the Cold War, this one's mostly sensible. It's worth considering that the elections following America's entry into WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam were all catastrophic for the Democrats and even Reagan's GOP lost seats in '82, after cranking up the Cold War. Indeed, the 2002 mid-term may have been the first election where the party of war fared well since the beginning of the 20th Century. If President Bush manages to pull off a landslide while conducting a war it will be historic, but, then again, this is the most popular war we've fought in at least a century.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 5, 2004 4:29 PM