Disgruntled voters finally got what they wanted, but it wasn’t from the results of the midterm election. Instead, it was a “bunch of has-beens” who answered the call, as James A. Baker III himself jokingly referred to the Iraq Study Group that he co-chaired.
The blue-ribbon panel offered more than 79 recommendations for salvaging Iraq last week. It showed us a civilized way to find common ground. The five members from each political party “checked their partisanship at the door,” as one of them, the venerable Democratic lawyer and presidential confidant Vernon E. Jordan, put it. The result was a surprisingly specific set of proposals that the group unanimously endorsed.
“We’ve made these various recommendations on a consensus basis,” a Republican on the panel, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, said at the news conference unveiling the report. “If a large segment of our country gets behind that on a consensus basis . . . it’s very likely we can move forward and make some progress.”
The voters’ decision last month to remove the GOP from power on Capitol Hill is being described by many political analysts as a clear dictate for a new Iraq policy. But the underlying message of the midterm election was an ominous one for Republicans and Democrats alike. Voters are sickened by the sandlot partisanship that leaves pressing issues like Iraq unresolved once the dust settles.
The Iraq commission gave official Washington far more than a blueprint for improving the chances of ending a war with at least a fig leaf of dignity. The panel should also serve as a model for how to end the political civil war within our own country.
Former Sen. Alan K. Simpson added his trademark humor to the group’s somber news conference, but in doing so he made a serious point about political discourse that goes well beyond Iraq policy. “The sad part to me is that you see people in this who are 100-percenters in America,” the Wyoming Republican said. “A 100-percenter is a person you don’t want to be around. They have gas, ulcers, heartburn and B.O. And they seethe. They’re not seekers.”
Leon E. Panetta, who was one of President Bill Clinton’s White House chiefs of staff, noted that solving the Iraq problem had been “reduced to a 30-second sound bite that runs the gamut from victory or stay the course to cut and run.” The study group, he said, tried “to set aside those code words and those divisions and try to look at the realities that are there.”
What a concept: Reality-based governing. Imagine how many of the nation’s problems could be solved if elected officials and their warring tribes of grass-roots supporters could set aside their angry code words and bitter divisions in an effort to clearly see reality.
But to do so, both sides must quit demonizing one another and seek a common purpose in the way that Simpson described the Iraq Study Group’s thinking — as “just sincere enough to believe” that all people “with a D behind their name did not become a guard at Lenin’s tomb and all the people with an R behind their name did not crawl out of a cave in the mountains, and that maybe we can do something.”
Another lesson to be gleaned from the commission’s work is that the most promising way to move U.S. troops out of harm’s way is to hit the pause button on the blame game and focus on the future. There will be time for a searing look at the Bush administration’s mistakes in judgment, which are noted, at least implicitly, throughout the group’s report, titled “The Way Forward.”
There might even be a chance to air the grievances of those who believe the administration perpetrated a fraud on Congress in making its initial case for the war. But it is difficult to see how spending any time on such matters now will save a single soldier’s life.
If the situation in Iraq is “grave and deteriorating,” as the report asserts, the urgency for consensus is clear. If the baseline is already “grave,” then further deterioration looks really awful. And further carping about what President Bush, Vice President
For the president, it would seem time to set aside his pride, along with the partisan code words, and win some bipartisan backing for a workable policy. The political advantage to him would be to start sharing the blame with his political foes for what happens next — because otherwise he’ll be shouldering it himself.
And who knows, if they work as a team for what’s best for the country, instead of for their parties, Bush and the Democrats might actually make progress in the Middle East and get to share the credit while laying the groundwork for more problem solving.
If that rosy scenario emerges, Americans will owe a huge thanks to Baker’s has-beens.
Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for MSNBC, CNBC and “The Early Show” on CBS. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.