After a week of political battles over our Iraq policy, it's pretty clear that the biggest losers in the drama are Washington politicians. All of them. And we're the worse for it.
From the disgraceful anti-Gen. David Petraeus advertisement from MoveOn.org in the New York Times to Democratic members of Congress to Republicans who failed to take advantage of a huge political opportunity, the political set came out smelling terribly soiled. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker gave their reports, and you can take them or leave them.
The Petraeus or Betray Us smear ad might have had political repercussions if it had been published a year from now. It will have no effect on the primaries, Democrats and Republicans will not face each other for 14 more months, long after it's impact has dwindled.
It might prove useful to the GOP eventually, as a small part of a wider strategic campaign. Here's how. Think back to the end of the Clinton administration. After eight years of any presidency, including Bush's now and Clinton's then, voters get tired of certain aspects. In the case of Clinton, what we desired as much as anything in the White House was adult leadership.
Advance about seven years, and MoveOn.org showed that not much has changed on the Democrat side of the ledger. Petraeus or Betray Us? Wow, there's some real thinking that went into that one. Really clever. Really sophomore, actually. How nice for whoever came up with that ad, they can make a joke about somebody's name.
Remember, every four years we not only vote for a man to be president, but also for the type of person who will be Secretary of State, the sort who will represent us before the United Nations, and the staffers who will do the grunt work in all the various federal agencies. In 2004, we not only re-elected President Bush, but we returned Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Donald Rumsfeld to their jobs.
If Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards win the presidency, it will be the type of people with the brash and moronic thinking of that advertisement who will take those positions. If we consider voting for Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney, we'll have to keep in mind the people they'll take to Washington with them.
The Republicans will probably spend the campaign season bashing us over our heads with their disgust of the ad, but by the time the elections arrive, we'll be numb to it. But if we're reminded about the type of people who will be filling thousands of executive branch jobs, it might give us pause.
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President Bush could have improved his position on the Iraq issue considerably if he'd delivered a strong address to the American people tonight. The president has often done well when he's taken the offensive on the subject.
The president asked for support of the Iraq operation, but he gave no outline of what the next few months would look like. He basically provided a watered-down rehash of the Petraeus report, said he supported the initial drawdown of troops and hoped to bring home more members of the armed services as "success" permits.
That's not saying a whole lot. If he'd given us some sort of sense which way we were headed, how we'd confront Iran and Syria's meddling, whether we would take on Shiite extremists in Sadr City and the southern end of Iraq, we at home would have something to get behind. Now we have nothing to look forward to except another Petraeus report to Congress in March. After this week, that's not a thrilling prospect.
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The failures of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress this week are already well-documented. Add Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island to the list after delivering the opposition response to Bush. I heard it on the radio instead of watching it on television. From that perspective, let's just say that someone who sounds like Baba-Wawa of Saturday Night Live fame trying to take on the president of the United States is bound to fail.
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It's been difficult for me to reach a firm opinion regarding the discovery of the NFL's New England Patriots videotaping of opponents' sideline signals, a scandal that has resulted in the team and head coach Bill Belichick being fined hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the club forfeiting draft picks.
On the one hand, the NFL has clear rules about videotaping procedures. On the other, teams have scouted each other and tried for years to recognize opponents' tendencies. Technology has made the job easier and easier and allowed for deeper and quicker probing of other teams' propensities. For example, it's common now for players to come to the sideline on a change of possession to study polaroids of formations and coverages.
As someone who lives in the general area of a team that was upset by the Patriots in the playoffs last year, I should perhaps be more upset. But I'm not. If the taping was against league rules, then the perpetrators should be punished. I just don't see it as poor sportsmanship that some team used advanced technology to get a jump on the competition.
