Persuasive Iraq policy could work wonders
NEW YORK -- The convention season is over and confirmed what the primary season revealed: The Iraq war is as much of a political problem for the Democrats as the Republicans.
The Republicans know what they have to do -- insist Iraq is a vital part of the post-9/11 war on terrorism -- while the Democrats are caught between insisting that it wasn't a necessary fight and yet proving their own willingness to take strong measures to fight terrorism.
There's an appearance of contradiction to the Democratic position, which Republicans have been exploiting, even though criticizing the Iraq war and fighting terrorism don't inherently conflict. But the contention of contradiction resonates because everyone knows the party is divided between full-throated opponents of the war and those like nominee John F. Kerry, who supported it but object to how President Bush has handled it.
Moreover, there are so many emotions swirling around a fight that includes American soldiers dying, American commanders being held responsible for torture, hunts for alleged war criminals from the fallen regime, and a messy debate over prewar intelligence. Kerry has chosen to offer hedged statements of regret about each development as it emerges, but they don't make for a digestible critique until he adds them up and says he would have done almost everything differently, as he did in a speech before an American Legion convention last week.
It's surprising he waited so long, since his primary-election campaign only took flight when he looked beyond the clotted nuances and started shouting at audiences, ''If you think I would have handled it like Bush, don't vote for me."
The Republicans, for their part, have been far more methodical, linking Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in principle and framing the facts in a way that suggests more than is actually said.
Speaker after speaker segued from talking about the Sept. 11 attackers to Saddam Hussein's support of terrorists without pausing to point out that they were different terrorists. On weapons of mass destruction, GOP talking points acknowledge the failure to find ''stockpiles," a word choice that implies Hussein had the capacity to produce such weapons -- a contention the Senate Intelligence Committee found little evidence to support.
Bush, in his acceptance speech, offered an explanation to those who think he moved too aggressively: After 9/11, he could not ''take the word of a madman" and so acted quickly to protect the United States -- a justification that ignores the UN inspections process but seems true to Bush's intentions. He sounded like a father turning to the family and saying, ''You may not appreciate it, but I did it for you."
This last position also puts Bush where swing voters may be: Polls indicate a willingness to see the Iraq war as a mistake, but also a desire for an aggressive war on terrorism.
For the Democrats, simply opposing the war raises as many questions as it answers. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean opposed it from the start, and many of his misgivings proved prescient. But rather than congratulate him for his foresight, most Americans viewed with suspicion his willingness to stand against the use of force when 70 percent of the country favored it.
Dean found it nearly impossible to shake the perception that he was a pacifist. Despite Dean's support for the 1991 Gulf War and the Afghanistan war, most commentators depicted his views as a revival of the McGovernite left. There was hand-wringing even among Democrats who opposed the war as to whether the party could withstand such a position.
Instead, the party chose Kerry, whose Vietnam War heroism seemed to guarantee inoculation against the pacifism charge. The recent contentions of the swift boat veterans opposing Kerry may not have damaged Kerry's authenticity as a hero, but they seem to have punctured the authenticity of the Democratic approach of offering only a cautious, moderate critique of the Iraq war while pushing a war-hero candidate on the basis of military credentials alone.
While some Democrats are blaming Kerry for overemphasizing Vietnam, it's worth remembering that virtually the entire Democratic electorate was complicit in this strategy, telling pollsters that they were supporting Kerry for electability, above all else.
Now, with Kerry entering the fall campaign as an underdog, he's showing signs of shedding the war-hero garb for a more prosecutorial posture. And someone who would have done almost everything differently in Iraq ought to have a lot to say -- and a lot to criticize in Bush.
Kerry, in his acceptance speech, seemed to hope that voters would choose him simply because he was better: A more credentialed military leader, a wiser man. That doesn't seem likely to happen.
Running as a prosecutor exposes him to even greater vulnerabilities -- the public may, indeed, recoil at sharp criticism of its president in wartime, as Senator Zell Miller, Democrat of Georgia, promised.
But it would provide the electorate with an open debate on realistic choices at a time when they seem to matter quite a bit.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspectives is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond. 