It looks like the Democratic candidates are going to focus on the Iraq War for the next few days, and although there's nothing new here substantively, I think this may end up becoming one of the defining moments of the campaign. First some background, and then some speculation
One of the big mysteries of the campaign has been the near-complete absence of the Iraq war as a subject of debate. On the one hand, its not terribly difficult to understand why. There is really very little difference between the front-runners, and what differences do exist are almost entirely confined to a debate over "residual forces." On the other hand, the differences in the history of the candidates in their initial support for the war is immense. Edwards voted to authorize the use of force, and he has since called it a big mistake. Hillary Clinton, like Edwards, voted to authorize the use of force, and has made clear that although she considers the war to be a mistake, she has no problem with her vote to support its authorization. Obama, by contrast, was openly opposed to the war from the start, and has made that opposition an important part - but crucially, not a centerpiece - of his campaign.
Everyone expected these differences to become one of the key elements of this campaign, but that hasn't happened. The reason, I think, is that the Clinton campaign has successfully managed to keep the campaign focused on the period of time during which both her and Obama have been in the Senate. During that period their records are quite similar, and so long as that has been the focus, there really hasn't been much room for debate.
After today, however, that may change. But I stress may...
As Greg Sargent reports over at TPM, one of the key exchanges between Clinton and Russert this morning on Meet The Press revolved around Clinton's vote for the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). Here's Greg's description and analysis of the exchange:
Hillary added a nuance to her defense of the war vote that I hadn't heard before, though I probably missed it: That supporting the resolution was the best available option because Bush would have gone to war without a resolution.
Hillary made the case, as she has before, that the vote for the war was really a vote to give Bush increased diplomatic leverage over Saddam, something she claimed made war less likely.But this time she added that there would have been a war without any such resolution in any case. The point being that a vote for a resolution -- which, again, she claims would make war less likely -- was the best available choice and the only chance for averting war.
As I've argued here before, the problem with her defense of the vote is that it presumes that there was any chance at all that Bush would decide against invading -- which there wasn't. The result is that all the resolution did was make it easier for the President to do what he was going to do anyway.
I agree completely with his analysis, except that I think he doesn't take it far enough. First off, the full title of the resolution was the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002." Its primary purpose, as its name clearly suggests, was to authorize the use of military force, not authorize the use of diplomatic pressure. It really couldn't be more plain. Unless, apparently, you are Sen. Clinton, who described it to Russert as follows:
Well, Tim, let's put this in context. You didn't show my entire speech--of course, you don't have time to do that--because I made it very clear that my vote was not a vote for preemptive war. I said that on the floor, I said it consistently after that. It was a vote to put inspectors back in to determine what threat Saddam Hussein did in fact pose.
Go ahead and read the text of the resolution for yourself. I'll wait. Go ahead.
OK, done? Notice anything? That's right... the only mention of "inspectors" is during the "Whereas" preamble. There is nothing whatsoever about inspectors in the text of the resolution itself.
It was after Russert pressed her on precisely this point that she fell back on the "war would have happened anyway" argument that the excerpt from Greg points out above. Here's the exact quote from Clinton:
But, you know, Tim, that was exactly what would happen if we weren't successful with the diplomacy and if we weren't successful in persuading Hussein to do something. And let me just add here that when we were moving toward the preemptive war that George Bush decided to wage, the inspectors were in Iraq, we were getting information, finally, that would give us a basis for knowing. I believe if the inspectors had been allowed to do their work, we would've learned that what Saddam Hussein had constructed was a charade. It could've very well brought him down by his own people.
The argument here, so far as I understand it, is that because Bush was going to war no matter what, this resolution offered one last-ditch effort to ratchet up the diplomatic pressure and, with some luck, avoid war.
But... and I really don't know how else to put this... this is nonsense.
Clinton portrays this vote as if it was an either/or choice. Either she voted for this and did something, or she voted against it and did nothing else. But there were plenty of other options - both legislative and not - she could have pursued. And as just one example, she could have done precisely what Obama did - give a speech openly opposing the president and his effort to rush the country to war. And unlike Obama, who at the time was a state Senator hoping to move up in the world, Clinton was an actual US Senator, one with a high profile and an important name. Its hard to predict what the impact that speech would have had, but I can promise you one thing - it wouldn't have been ignored.
Ask yourself this: if her primary goal was to do everything possible to give diplomacy a chance, did she meet this goal? And more specifically, did this action - to vote yea on a resolution entitled "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq" - help her accomplish that goal? The answer I think is self-evident. And yet... Clinton acts as if it is not.
Had Clinton stopped there, I'm not sure this would have had much of an impact on the campaign. But she didn't. Instead, she used her mischaracterization of her own position to mischaracterize Obama's. Here's the relevant part of the transcript:
SEN. CLINTON: Now, we can sit here and argue about 2002 or we can say what has happened since and what needs to happen going forward in the future. And I think that you have two different story lines here. You have Senator Obama's story line, the speech he gave in '02, to his credit, which then was not followed up on. By '03, it was off his Web site. By '04, he was saying he didn't know he would vote and that he basically agreed with George Bush on the conduct of the war. There were others, Tim, who voted against it, spoke out against it and never wavered over that period of time.MR. RUSSERT: But you voted for all the funding for the war.
SEN. CLINTON: I did. I never--I'm not premising my campaign on something different.
MR. RUSSERT: And then until '06 was against the timetable.
SEN. CLINTON: But I did what I--my principle concern has always been doing what I thought was best for our country and what I thought was best for our troops. I'm not here saying anything different than that. I'm not giving you a story line that does not hold up...
MR. RUSSERT: But did he have better...
SEN. CLINTON: ...under the facts and the times we were in.
MR. RUSSERT: Did he have better judgment in October of 2002?
SEN. CLINTON: You know, look, judgment is not a single snapshot. Judgment is what you do across the course of your life and your career.
MR. RUSSERT: A vote for war is a very important vote.
SEN. CLINTON: Well, you know, Tim, we can have this Jesuitical argument about what exactly was meant. You know, when Chuck Hagel, who helped to draft the resolution, said it was not a vote for war, when I was told directly by the White House in response to my question, "if you are given this authority, will you put the inspectors in and permit them to finish their job," I was told that's exactly what we intended to do. Now, I think it's important to take a look at the entire context here. If Senator Obama's going to get credit for his speech and his position against the war, then he deserves to be asked what happened in '03, '04, '05, '06 and '07. I voted for the authorization...
MR. RUSSERT: I asked him those very questions...
SEN. CLINTON: And his answer was very political.
MR. RUSSERT: ...in November.
SEN. CLINTON: I mean, his whole point is that he doesn't make political decisions.
This presents what may be a significant opening for the Obama campaign. From the beginning, Obama has made it very clear that he wants to run a positive campaign, and as a result I have a hard time seeing how he could have used this exchange to his advantage had Clinton not moved from a defense of her position to an attack on his. Given the way campaigns are covered by the press, any effort by his campaign to highlight her inconsistent explanations and poor judgement would have inevitably led to an extended discussion about the importance of Obama "going negative," with little to no discussion of the underlying issue. But with Clinton having attacked first, Obama now has a chance to respond, something he has begun to do at his campaign events today:
I have to point out that instead of telling the American people about her positive vision for America, Senator Clinton spent an hour talking about me and my record in a way that was flat out wrong. She suggested that I didn’t clearly and unambiguously oppose the war in Iraq when it is absolutely clear and anyone who has followed this knows that I did. I stood up against the war when she was voting for it, at a time when she didn’t read the intelligence reports or give diplomacy a chance.
This response is fine so far as it goes, but - and I'm speaking as an Obama partisan here - I just don't think goes far enough. To be truly effective, I think you need to connect it up with something Clinton said a few minutes earlier on MTP:
SEN. CLINTON: You know, look, judgment is not a single snapshot. Judgment is what you do across the course of your life and your career.
I understand why Sen. Clinton wants us to see things this way, but let's be honest about this. This definition of judgement is nonsense. Judgement isn't what you do over the course of your life. Judgement is about your ability to look at specific evidence and specific circumstances and reach the appropriate conclusions. It isn't about the general body of work you have put together, but rather the specific reasons and understandings you used to guide your actions. It isn't, in short, about the ends you produce, but about the means you used to produce them.
And this, I think, is the real opening for Obama. Clinton's entire narrative hinges on the idea that hard work is everything. She isn't just talking about change, as she says, she's spent her whole life creating it. With her, there's no need for "false hope," because with her change will inevitably made real through effort. It isn't something she will do, but something she's been doing her whole life. Just look, she proudly proclaims, at her record!
Clinton has questioned Obama's record on the war, which under our electoral rules of engagement, allows him to answer by questioning hers. And if I were Obama, I would use this opportunity to bring the issue of Iraq into the debate over how you "make change." Clinton has suggested that we should compare their records to understand how each of them would make change. He opposed the war; she supported it. When it mattered most, he did what he could to "make change," while she claimed to want change but acted in ways that clearly - both at the time and in retrospect - made the changes she wanted to see much less likely to appear. And this is precisely why day-to-day judgement matters. On the single biggest issue of our time, her judgement was wrong and his was right. Had her judgement been better, she might have been able to change the debate. But it wasn't. She failed to make change because she used poor judgement, and worse, because she refused to do the work necessary to make sure her judgement was properly informed.
Framed correctly, that's not just a debate about the past, its also a debate about the future. Framed correctly, its a way to use her vote on the Iraq War to undermine the narrative she has constructed about change. Framed correctly, its something that I think could change the entire nature of the entire debate.
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