Strange Defeat

James Vega has a provocative post up about how Democrats can do better next time they face a high-profile political confrontation with a military man. I have to say, though, that I think it's important to reject the premise that the Petraeus/Crocker hearings were some kind of political setback for Democrats. Here's the sequence of events as I recall them:

• [in the murky past]: War in Iraq becomes unpopular.
• [November 2006] Republicans lose tons of congressional seats.
• [December 2006] Baker-Hamilton commission attempts to frame a proposal for gradual withdrawal in a way that would be politically possible for Bush to embrace.
• [January 2007] Bush rejects Baker-Hamilton out of hand, says unpopular war will continue indefinitely and be escalated via unpopular surge.
• [Spring 2007] Nervous Republicans back Bush in legislative showdown, but are afraid to endorse his proposal for endless war, say instead that nothing should be decided until Petraeus reports in September.
• [June 2007] War is unpopular.
• [July 2007] War is unpopular.
• [August 2007] war is unpopular.
• [Early September 2007] Petraeus and Crocker testify that despite the surge's failure to accomplish its stated goals, progress is being made, and the surge should continue for six more months.
• [Mid-September 2007] War is still unpopular.

Basically, a whole lot of nothing has been happening . . . the war keeps being unpopular and the Republicans keep being intransigent.

Comments

The Democrats' only constituency are the beltway pundits, who are shaped by the right-wing noise machine. All their decisions are based on fear of:

1. Being attacked by right-wingers.
2. Losing campaign contributions.

I've asked this elsewhere, but after Petraeus [sp] revealed himself to be a partisan hack mere weeks before the 2004 election, how is it that he is not shunned, but built up?

Posted by Gore/Edwards 08 | September 18, 2007 7:48 PM

The Dems can't stop a Bushie juggernaut. didn't help that the MSM fell for a few medals.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Posted by chrisfl | September 18, 2007 7:55 PM

Well, what you have here is a classic asymmetric battlefield. Democrats win by forcing concessions on the war; Republicans win by not losing.

And, politically speaking, it's risky to pick up a bunch of seats on an issue, fail to get anything meaningful done (despite the popular wind at your back), and then whistle back to your district congratulating yourself.

Posted by southpaw | September 18, 2007 7:57 PM

southpaw-

Your theory seems to suggest that voters are too stupid to understand that sometimes people lose on the right side of an issue, and that they will be stupid enough to support the people who fight on the wrong side of the issue in the aftermath of such a loss.

I haven't seen any evidence of this, it smacks of laundered GOP campaign trash, by way of Broder/Politico types into conventional wisdom, without having ever passed through the stage of being confirmed as mpirically true info.

Posted by matt | September 18, 2007 8:05 PM

I have to say, though, that I think it's important to reject the premise that the Petraeus/Crocker hearings were some kind of political setback for Democrats.

I don't get Matthew's point. Do the Democrats want to end the war or not? If so, then it was a setback for the Democrats, because it didn't help the Democrats end the war. No?

Posted by Al | September 18, 2007 8:29 PM

I don't think it's that complicated. Cross examination is a skill. It's hard to do and it takes a lot of practice. Senators don't know how to do it. Sure, the uniform and the bluff good looks help, but anyone who's good at making presentations in front of a tough audience can run rings around a panel of senators any day. And the time constraints on the senators, plus the fact that half of them are ringers who are their to help the witness out, means that the senators start out with one hand tied behind their backs.

Posted by Bloix | September 18, 2007 8:33 PM

There we have Al, the magic slug. Hi, Sluggy Al. Slime on down the way.

Posted by Jennifer | September 18, 2007 8:48 PM

The conventional wisdom is that while the Democrats did not lose the battle of public opinion, they were unable to break the backs of the Republican caucus and get them to turn against Bush. The Bush/Petraeus dog & pony show was not for the benefit of the public. It was for the benefit of the Republican Congressmen. And in that sense, the Bush/Petraeus PR blitz managed to succeed in keeping the Republican caucus in line.

Now, whether this would have happened anyway is a matter of opinion, but that's what the narrative seems to be.

Posted by Tyro | September 18, 2007 8:49 PM

If by "provcative" you mean incoherently stupid then, YES, Mr. vega has something that remotely resembles a point. Beyond that he is a typical moron who makes a racket sans facts, sense or reality. For those too busy to read the actual, infantile tripe of Mr. Vega here is the Readers Digest version:
WAR IS BAD. USA BAD. MILITARY BAD. I SUPPORT TROOPS, WAR BAD. WAR (SHOCKINGLY) NOT POPULAR. WAR BAD. SUPPORT TROOP. ME SMART. WAR BAD. WAR HURT, DONE.
An idiot amongst the idiots here is prolly no prob, but you assholes are the stupid among the dumb. Proud yet?

Posted by vetter | September 18, 2007 9:28 PM

Judging from a comparison of Vega's actual piece with Vetter's description of it, Mr. Vetter's current custodians should make more effort to keep the inmates away from keyboards. As for the effect that the Dave and Dubya Show had on public opinion of the war, a CBS poll today confirms Yglesias' belief that it did absolutely nothing -- zero -- to increase its popularity: http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/sep07b-iraq.pdf .

Unfortunately, he's also correct about Republican intransigence also continuing. On that note, Sen. Warner has suddenly reneged today on his promise to back Webb's troop-rotation bill, which proably dooms its attempt to override the filibuster. Warner's given reason for doing so is -- so help me God -- that Bush's new decision to withdraw 3000 troops in December is "a very big thing", and he thinks Bush should be politically rewarded for it by retaining the long tour of duty for all the other troops: http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2007/09/gop_senator_warner_reconsidering_support_for_webb_troop_bill.php .

According to John Murtha yesterday, most Republican intransigence (though not Warner's) is motivated by the simple fact that they're afraid of losing their party primaries to more hawkish opponents -- which means that they'll also continue to support the war next March, and then suddenly start peeling away from their support for it when the general election campaign starts next summer. That, after all, is how the Great Game of Politics is always played.

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | September 18, 2007 9:48 PM

Matt: Dead. Solid. Perfect. Superb post. A good reminder that we don't have to overthink this issue.

Posted by DH in DC | September 18, 2007 9:53 PM

Lord sweet fancy naked Jesus i wish my name was "Bruce Moomaw." How sweet is that? You automatically get to be A) Gay, B) Stupid C)Gay and D) Dumb....So willing to quote MURTHA, that shamed sacko"Moomaw" balls/...How are you not enbarrassed? That jackroot is utterly and totally defined by his insanity. But I guess it's like the VRWC love of your Klanmaster Sen. Byrd...It's all abount da nuance, right? Like hamster at firedog posting them absolutey hysterical blackface pics of Lieberman. You liberal human fith need to get real////

Posted by Vetter | September 18, 2007 10:09 PM

Well actually Al is being reasonably sentient today. Must have taken his meds. And his point is actually a good one, though incomplete. I'd phrase it this way:

(1) If one assumes that the Democrats want to end the war, they "lost" in the sense that the status quo is continued war and nothing happened in the hearings to change the status quo. So no change = Democrats lose.

(2) Whatever one thinks about number one, the hearing were probably a win politically, in the opposite sense. i.e., the way the wind is blowing now, the Dems are looking good in 2008. It's the Republicans in this case who need the dynamic to change. So no change = Democrat win.

Now I know this ground has been covered before, even on this blog, about a week ago. But you wouldn't know it from reading this thread.

Posted by LarryM | September 18, 2007 10:23 PM

Nobody keeps it real like you, Vetter.

Seriously, what makes someone post something that stupid? Bizarre punctuation, vague homophobia, and I'm not sure what "da nuance" is all about. And you're asking if WE are "enbarrassed"? Dude, if you're going to try to make fun of people you have to (a) make sense and (b) not enbarrass yourself in the process.

And for the record, I can't think of a cooler name than "Bruce Moomaw" right now. Rock on, Bruce Moomaw.

Posted by Brandon Claycomb | September 18, 2007 10:28 PM

An idiot amongst the idiots here is prolly no prob, but you assholes are the stupid among the dumb.

Awesome.

Posted by Consumatopia | September 18, 2007 10:51 PM

I have to say, though, that I think it's important to reject the premise that the Petraeus/Crocker hearings were some kind of political setback for Democrats.

Matt is just so right about this. The hearings were a draw in terms of public opinion. Nor is it true that the media were somehow dazzled by medals and regalia. It just didn't happen. I watched much of the coverage on the cable networks each night, and I thought all sides were able to get in their shots and make their case, and that the usual talking heads were distinctly non-dazzled.
Joe Biden was especially terrific one night on MS-NBC, and made a very compelling case at length for just how irrelevant much of the Crocker and Petraeus testimony was to the main issues.

On the other hand there is a certain minority subset of Democratic pundits who seem to have a stick up their ass about men in uniform, and they are indeed dazzled by things military. They assumed that others were as dazzled as they were, and have been projecting their weird feelings of shame, insecurity and inadequacy all over the place. They seem convinced they are doomed to lose any face-down with a military man, even before the questioning begins.

I think they should just shut the fuck up and stop whining. If they feel they are deficient as men or Americans because they never served in the military, then they should just join the god damned military. But if they don't think that, then they should have some self-respect, stop acting like babies and quit the premature blubbering about how they can't get no respect from the evil media.

I don't think it's that complicated. Cross examination is a skill. It's hard to do and it takes a lot of practice. Senators don't know how to do it.

Precisely right. The best approach is just to do your homework. Get your facts straight; get your numbers straight, and then go after the testimony on the substance. None of those medals matter if the witness is constantly stammering to get out mental and verbal knots tied from the weaknesses in the substance of his testimony. If the Democratic performance fell short in any way, it was not because the camera loves a soldier. It was because they were inadequately prepared to challenge Petraeus and Crocker on the substance.

The public has, it is true, a generally favorable impression of the military. But that doesn't mean that the attitude toward the military is uniformly favorable. For example, the military love of euphemism and obfuscatory jargon is legendary, and is a running public joke. So use that common sense public perception against hem.

I stopped reading Vega's piece after I got to the A Few Good Men reference, mainly just because that film is an embarrassing, weakly written and wretchedly acted piece of Hollywood junk that I would prefer not to think about, but also because it is so emblematic of the inferiority complex I was talking about earlier.

Posted by Dan Kervick | September 18, 2007 11:15 PM

Most of the establishment commentators are focused on the modern art of political fraudulence. Their appraisal of the Petraeus show was that of a PERFORMANCE, not that of a report on events in the real world. Similarly, they view Bush mainly as a showman, a kind of Carnival barker whose success is measured by how many rubes he can attract to the Iraq fiasco tent.

The outcome of the Iraq war will be determined by dollars and blood. Nothing the BushCo clown troop have to say will have the least effect, and the sooner the usual commentators learn to ignore the clowns, the sooner the BushCo circus will leave town.

Posted by HH | September 18, 2007 11:46 PM

Yglesias gets points for the all-too-rare blogospheric Marc Bloch reference with this post.

Posted by Ben Cronin | September 19, 2007 12:10 AM

Matt is correct that the Petraeus/Crocker dog and pony show was a wash as far as the Democrats were concerned.

However, he fails to note the next question: so what? What happens next?

The war is still going on, the Democrats are doing nothing on the presumption - which Matt seems to share here - that doing nothing will mean a Republican defeat a year from now.

Meanwhile, people get killed and the taxpayers get drained some more and the war profiteers continue to get rich - while the Democrats snooze and whine a little from time to time about how bad the war is.

And everybody is applauding this "brilliant strategy" while ignoring the elephant in the room: Iran.

As Josh Bolton said last year (apparently believing that it would happen last year), "The Dems will lose over Iran."

He's still right. Only it will be in 2008 that the Democrats lose - because by then the US will in a "hot war" - not an occupation, not a "war of liberation", but a "hot war".

And Bush and the Republicans will get that "war boost", while the Democrats, paying off their debts to Israel, will be "supporting the troops" whole-heartedly by voting for more money (think: instead of $10-12 billion a month, $20-30 billion a month), voting for a draft to raise more troops, and voting MORE military aid to Israel (because Israel got hit with one or two Iranian missiles that did next to no damage...)

Meanwhile, the morons here will STILL be saying, "What could we do? We didn't have the votes!"

It's lame now. It will be even more lame this time next year.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | September 19, 2007 12:29 AM

Do the Democrats want to end the war or not? If so, then it was a setback for the Democrats, because it didn't help the Democrats end the war.

By the same brilliant logic, the Patriots' victory over the Chargers was a setback for the Democrats.

Posted by Steve | September 19, 2007 7:04 AM

matt -

you've seen no evidence that the voters are stupid? really?

Posted by southpaw | September 19, 2007 9:10 AM

It's bad for the Democrats because... because it's bad for the Democrats!

The war is bad for the Democrats!

Republican tax cuts are bad for the Democrats!

The Social Security battle was bad for the Democrats!

The Civil Rights movement was bad for the Democrats!

The Great Society, the New Deal and FDR's presidency were bad for the Democrats!

Posted by Adam Nagourney | September 19, 2007 9:37 AM

Please tell me Vetter is a put-on. I can usually tell, because there is some vestigal humor mixed in with the hate and stupidity of most fake wingers. Vetter seems to be lacking in any humor.

Posted by Njorl | September 19, 2007 10:08 AM

Who wins by continued war? People who like war.
Who loses? The rest of us.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 19, 2007 10:24 AM