Dwight Stephens

The opinion peddlers in the media are criticizing the Democratic 2008 presidential hopefuls for playing toward the middle–lacking courage and any real conviction. As described by Bob Herbert from The Times this week, “such a timid crowd . . . The candidates for the most part are listening to their handlers and gurus and fat-cat contributors, which is the antithesis of democracy. It’s not easy for ordinary men and women to be heard above that self-serving din, but it can be done.”

In the same vein, Frank Rich of The Times concluded today’s column: “This in other words is a moment of crisis in our history and there will be no do-overs. Should Mrs. Clinton actually seek unfiltered exposure to voters, she will learn that they are anxiously waiting to see just who in Washington is brave enough to act.”

Into the Democratic “leadership vacuum” boldly stepped rookie Virginia Senator Jim Webb this week. Plain spoken, articulate, with a family history of military service, including his own experience as a Vietnam veteran, and already with one well-publicized direct personal confrontation with President Bush concerning the war in Iraq, Mr. Webb declared in his ‘rebuttal’ to the President’s State of the Union on behalf of the new Democratic majority: “The President took us into this war recklessly.” Then, Mr. Webb addressed what would happen if the President did not listen to the Democratic call for a dramatic change in Iraq policy, stating: “If he does not, we will be showing him the way.” The time for deference to the Commander-in-Chief, in the view of many, is apparently over.

Mr. Webb’s voice is welcome now. Unfortunately, his voice was not heard before the war. In September 2002, Senator Webb wrote in The Washington Post that “unilateral wars designed to bring about regime change and a long-term occupation should be undertaken only when a nation’s existence is clearly at stake.”

Before the Iraq War, my own test for whether the U.S. should invade Iraq was whether the evidence that Hussein was a threat to the U.S. was such that I believed that it justified sending my sons to join the invasion. At that time, the most persuasive case, in my view, was the one articulated by Condoleezza Rice in an op-ed column in The Times. Ms. Rice’s point was, in effect, that Iraq had acquired known quantities of nuclear materal and it had failed to document when and how it had disposed of that material. According to Ms. Rice, when Russia had been in a similar position, it had been able to document the destruction of its nuclear material. Made sense to me but it still was not enough evidence of a threat to U.S. security to justify sending our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, into harm’s way in Iraq. The alleged Iraqi connection to international terrorism made no sense and the direct evidence was non-existent.

The sub-text of Senator Webb’s message, whose son is a Marine presently deployed in Iraq, is that a similar test should guide our present policy discussions as to what should be done in Iraq. Bush and Cheney haven’t put their daughters in harm’s way, and the Administration continues to be out of touch. As Robert Novak reported in his column on Thursday (1/25/07) quoting two unidentified sources (one from each party), “The Republican, a ranking House committee member, said: ‘The president and his aides are irrelevant and out of touch, removed from realizing what happened in the 2006 . . . election.’ A Democratic party leader said that, ‘Bush is in such bad shape that the result of the 2008 election is already decided.’”

The question for us now is: Will the U.S. electorate look for a leader who is brave enough to act? one who is guided by convictions more than handlers and financial contributors? It remains to be seen whether a democracy will allow the election of such a leader. In the meantime, as the democratic process grinds along toward another national election, the words of Dwight Eisenhower in 1954, as quoted by Bob Herbert this week, have never been more relevant: “Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.”