Ever looking for a way to revise history and justify their votes giving the President the authority to go to war with the Hussein regime, Democrats are floating a new rhetorical trial balloon, articulated by erstwhile Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. From the LA Times, “Timing Entwined War Vote, Election”:
Tom Daschle, the former Democratic senator from South Dakota, remembers the exchange vividly.
The time was September 2002. The place was the White House, at a meeting in which President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney pressed congressional leaders for a quick vote on a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.
But Daschle, who as Senate majority leader controlled the chamber’s schedule, recalled recently that he asked Bush to delay the vote until after the impending midterm election.
“I asked directly if we could delay this so we could depoliticize it. I said: ‘Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?’ He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: ‘We just have to do this now.’ “
Daschle’s account, which White House officials said they could not confirm or deny, highlights a crucial factor that has drawn little attention amid rising controversy over the congressional vote that authorized the war in Iraq. The recent partisan dispute has focused almost entirely on the intelligence information legislators had as they cast their votes. But the debate may have been shaped as much by when Congress voted as by what it knew.
Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush, did not call for a vote authorizing the Persian Gulf War until after the 1990 midterm election. But the vote paving the way for the second war with Iraq came in mid-October of 2002  at the height of an election campaign in which Republicans were systematically portraying Democrats as weak on national security.
Few candidates sparred over the war resolution itself. But Republicans in states including Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota and Georgia strafed Democratic senators seeking reelection who had supported military spending cutbacks in the 1990s, accepted money from a liberal arms-control group, opposed Bush’s preferred approach for organizing the new Department of Homeland Security, and voted in 1991 against the Persian Gulf War.
With national security then such a flashpoint in so many campaigns, many Democrats believe, the vote’s timing enormously increased pressure on their party’s wavering senators to back the president, whose approval rating approached 70% at the time.
Leaving aside the Times’ misleading characterization of the Bush I presidency and the timing of troop deployment (George HW Bush deployed U.S. forces to defend Saudi in Operation Desert Shield in Aug, 1990), this latest Dem argument is a stunningly tone-deaf admission of their own baldfaced opportunism, and of the unseriousness with which they treat matters of national defense—not to mention that, following their logic here, the soldiers who died in Iraq did so not for a just cause, but so that the Democrats wouldn’t look weak before midterm elections.
That oughtta go over big.
As John Cole puts it, “I am still not sure how the Democrats think ’We only voted for the war because we thought we wouldn’t get re-elected otherwise‘ is somehow the sort of campaign slogan that inspires confidence. ‘Vote Daschle! I’m too gutless to vote my conscience!’”
I’m beginning to think maybe Ellen Ratner’s weekend “slip” came directly off a Dem talking point sheet…
****
update: Seems EJ Dionne got the message, too. BECAUSE OF THE SYNCHRONICITY!
Post is right on, but hosed ending link, dude.
TW: girls. Where? Where? None worthy in this office.
Bush is truly blessed by the exceedingly crappy quality of his opponents. I mean, stuff like this is just divine intervention, man. There’s no other explanation.
hilarious.
So, we had to vote for Bush’s resolution or he would…he would…he would call us weak! (sniffle)
Just like the attempt at revisionist history, did no one mention the possible Sunday-morning/blog/editorial defenses that would be raised against this!? Did no one at the DNC halt the fever-swamp that must comprise Dean’s office meetings and say,”yeah, but….won’t they ask why we’re so worried about looking weak on national security?”
oh, and…the “half-smile on his face?–you mean, a smirk?
nice touch.
Does Biden really remember it as having all taken place in a matter of days?
Well, he does think he looks good in that used-Brillo-pad-hair, so I guess it’s possible.
Revisionism 101: As I recall, the main argument against the first Gulf War was “to give sanctions a chance.”
Now remembered as an “honest political debate.”
So let’s extend this backward a little–as the antiwar folk were prescient about future Iraq events (quagmire, Vietnam, blah, blah), but politically afraid to espouse their views in 2002, Saddam would have caved somewhere around Labor Day 2001 in Kuwait–it was all a question of TIME. We all remember how sanctions bothered him, right? Right? Bueller…Bueller…Bueller…
Is there a serious liberal left? I’ll settle for an old Scoop Jackson Democrat.
“Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush?”
Um…because it’s urgent? Are you slow, boy?
I don’t think that Joe-Average-Citizen is savvy enough to boil this article or title down to its essence. The LA Times headline is too confusing. Simply put:
DEMOCRATS VOTE YES TO NOT LOOK WEAK
Clear and concise is what Joe-Average needs to put things into perspective.
T/W: lost, “The Senate Minority Leader, Tom Daschle, lost reelection.â€Â
This being a democratic republic and all, shouldn’t our elected officials be subject to political pressure from time to time?
I read someplace that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Has something changed?
(Tom nods head and makes a hollow rattle sound)
Yes, my son. But political pressure from where?
Now grab the damn pebbles out of my hand and get out of here. My egg sandwich just went off!
So, a Cheney half-smile is all it took to turn the Senate Minority Leader into a tower of Jell-O?
My problem with the Democrats isn’t that they’re ‘soft of national defense’; my problem with the Democrats is this: If they can’t beat imagined evil, how are they going to beat actual evil?
Is there any serious person left who can believe anything that comes out of a democrat’s mouth concerning national security?
You know,
There are so many ways that the Dems could criticize Bush, including the handling of the war. But instead, all we get is this weird pathological lying and evasiveness.
They really don’t have a fucking idea in their heads, do they?
:peter
TW: “radio,” as in
/Ground Control to Major Tom/Ground Control to Major Tom/Take your bullshit pills/and put your hipboots on…
I question the timing.
Does this strike anyone else as a little bit ludicrous?
Charlie, I was pondering that very thing. Why rush something that’s urgent? Ummm, because it’s urgent, maybe? Hmmm.
This either makes Daschle look weak or stupid, though ‘both’ may be the real answer.
Then why’d he even ask? If he had truly desired to “depoliticize” the vote, he could have (bravely and with patriotic might!) delayed the vote himself.
“Cheney intimidated us with a half smile.”
So it was like the scene in a million mafia movies, in which the capo nods or smiles at an underling who then breaks the supplicant’s arm.
Daschle was afraid that Lewis “Scooter” Libby or Andrew “Ice Pick Andy” Card were going to whack him right there in the veep’s office and then wrap his hairpiece around a cod and drop it off at the DNC.
“It’s an old Wyoming message. Tommy Daschle sleeps wit da fishes.”
OMG WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF HE USED THE WHOLE SMILE?????
No, no, no, Matt. Don’t you get it? Only Bush had the power to depoliticize the vote. And if Daschle had just done the right thing, or even tried to do the right thing, the stupid Chimperor would’ve just had KKKarl Rove outsmart him with some sort of devilish mind-trick.
Because everything bad is always Bush’s fault.
TW = “rather.” Just ask Dan. He knows.
Is he sure? It may just be part of the weirdness that is Cheney’s mouth.
I’d damn near kill for one.
I just can’t imagine anything more nefarious than implying legislators ought to go on the record about something as trivial as a military action by the most powerful country in the world.
Daschle should have resisted! For the children!
[prize for this thread goes to APF for the “whole smile” comment]
Good choice, but I was also quite taken with Tom W.’s imagery of a cod wrapped in Daschle’s hairpiece being dropped off at the DNC headquarters.
Would that make it a codpiece? (sorry)
Maybe Cheney had just farted. Who doesn’t smile after passing gas?
Did anyone else read that and think that Cheney’s half-smile is seared—seared—in his memory?
Oh, Tom W was a close second, all right. It was a very tough call. But that’s why they pay me the big bucks.
Here’s a link to a relevant post at Oliver Kamm’s place for any other Scoop Jackson fans.
<a href=”http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2005/11/henry_jacksons_.html” target=”_blank”>
The Daschle Gambit—new by Robert Ludlum. Available in paperback February 16. Excerpt:
EJ Dionne:
Are the Democrats conceding that their positions are so wrong that they can only be known to the public immediately after an election?
The 2002 midterm election is over. The 2004 election is over. We are nearly into 2006. Other than a clearly stated dislike for George Bush, do we know what the Democrat position is on Iraq?
One DemocRATs are allowed to pull political stunts, lie and cheat. It’s in the rules and you can look it up.
Can someone explain to me why John Cole has so many commenters from the Koskidz page?
I don’t read Kos because his opinions are crap as far as I’m concerned, same reason I don’t read Atrios or Olliver “Fried Twinkie” Willis. However, at John’s site he seems to get more troll crap commenters than any place I’ve ever seen. And yet they keep coming, post after post, like some bacteria that evolves every second and cannot be defeated by anti-biotics.
It’s really bizzarre.
I remember laughing about how the Democrats had backed themselves into a corner on the war vote. THEY pushed for it, and THEY got it. TWICE!!
Too bad for those lying imbeciles that they had to swallow their tongues and vote against their conscience, because if they hadn’t, they would have LOST EVEN MORE SEATS IN THE FUCKING ELECTION.
There’s nothing better than watching a bunch of simpering idiots piss on their own shoes, and then try to blame someone else.
Is there a slot for “weak, stupid, and mendacious”?
I thought that was what happened too, l-dog.
Weren’t the Dems pushing for the vote in a naked political gambit to force W’s hand?
There was something misleading from the media? That astounds me, especially considering the concluding paragraph from a story via Drudge from an AP writer about the Congressman admitting taking bribes:
“Cunningham’s pleas came amid a series of GOP scandals. Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas had to step down as majority leader after he was indicted in a campaign finance case; a stock sale by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is being looked at by regulators; and Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff was indicted in the CIA leak case.”
Nice objective reporting!
APF—If Cheney had used the whole smile, he would have had to release the electromagnetic force. Then god help us all.
They could’ve voted on it again, after the elections. In fact, a little known Democratic Senator named Ted Kennedy tried that very thing.
If I remember correctly.
The timing of the ‘war authorization vote’ was driven by the schedule in the UN Security Council, which was then discussing the 50th resolution concerning Iraq.
I question the timing of this revelation…if this rush to vote took place in Sept. 2002, why did it take Tom until Nov. 2005 to remember it?
Oddly, no one reports the bit where Cheney waves his hand and says, “these aren’t the votes you’re looking for…”
Amen.
I am coming in very late here, but it’s late and I couldn’t read all the comments, so I ask forgiveness if this has been covered:
ANY – any(!) attempt by any(!) party to say that they did not have time for a debate on this should open up his complete schedule book, and be forced to point out all the meetings, dinners, fundraisers, parties, etc., that were not essential to have attended. I am quite confident that there will have been many opportunities to find daylight in the scedule to debate whether or not you should authorise to give the President the power to go to war, because very shortly you will be voting on whether to give the President the power to GO TO WAR! -sorry-
If mom Joad sold her last hairpiece to talk to the Senator about their plight, and her son didn’t really mean to kill that man that’s great. Meet up with her. We can handle that. If you even once went to Mrs. Washington Post’s house to partty hardy, then don’t bitch about not having debate time. Why? Because you will soon be giving the President the power to go to WAR.
Also, if you actually wish for me to think that you would authorize this of the President when you have not debated it to the fullest possible extent, you do not deserved to be in office.
Now I’m going to bed.
tw: great – Yeah, just.
Wo,
threw my tenses and participles around a bit.
But gosh I was upset.
If there is anytime I could accept some slipshod, hurry up we need to get a move on thinking, it is 2002 – one year after 9/11 I expect my government to be kickin ass and takin names, not delaying votes to see which way the wind is blowing.
“I asked directly if we could delay this so we could depoliticize it. I said: ‘Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?’ He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: ‘We just have to do this now.’ “
Wow… I didn’t know that the President could call for votes, and force Congress (especially when led by the opposing party) to do things whenever he wanted to. I guess that seperation of powers thing is only talked about when it helps you.
But he smiled at me!
I recall that all through the Spring and Summer of 2002 the Dems were saying that going into Iraq should be put to a vote in Congress, and then the Administration called their bluff and they got all huffy that they were being put on the spot only for political reasons.
I guess the Dems are counting on amnesia as well as stupidity.
Could work, tho, with the (stupid, amnesiac) media supporting them
We didn’t need Daschle to tell us that those who voted to support this ill-advised disaster in Iraq did so for fear they’d have their patriotism qusetioned. That was as obvious as the holes in the White House reasoning.
We know Saddam has WMDs, but we aren’t telling the UN inspectors where they are and we’re not going to give them time to find them either.
A pox on both our American political houses.
Let’s take one BIG lesson from this mess. When your President is trying to take your nation to war: That’s EXACTLY THE RIGHT TIME to question your President. To see Congress, the media and americans cowed into something so stupid was the saddest day in our 225 year history.
Oh, Jesus.
Yes. Intelligence is like magic!
I love to read some of the more witty banter around here, but I have to admit that when I read comments from the likes of actus, Robert, Geek, et al., I have to sit back and wonder what freaking planet they live on.
You do have to give them credit though, they are nothing, if not consistent and persistent.
I was going to call them articulate, but was afraid that Oliver “Ho Ho’s are not only for breakfast” Willis might deem me to be racist.
– Headlines you won’t see in the NYT: part #9754…
– “Biden: Iraq going really well. Bush plan on track”
– At this point we can sit back and enjoy the monumental mental meltdown this should cause the already badly “fragged” Demon-craps….
– I can hear all the lefties trying to twist this one. Probably something like…”We didn’t say Bush had actually lost the war. We said he was losing it. We didn’t say he doesn’t have a plan. We said he needs to update his plan to include giving information to the freedom fighters so they can step in after we pull our troops out too soon and help them establish a new Islamofascist state. Joe is just talking about the week he was there. Otherwise its a quagmire. Oh…. and I couldn’t make the booksigning because I had the flu….trully….well I did….erm….I only said I THOUGHT it was the spleen….Ok…. so you guys didn’t THINK it was the spleen…gaawwwd”
To the left, terror is remote but the loss of political power is terrifyingly close.
– NYT correction, #182,316
– Yesterdays headline on the Iraqi QUAGMIRE should have read:
“Lieberman: Iraq war still ongoing. Bush needs to update plan”
– Sorry for the clearness and voracity of the original headline to all our elitist readership.