JAMES TARANTO: CAN IT GET ANY WORSE? YES IT CAN (THE CLOUDED KRISTOL BALL)
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As Congress returns and prepares to take up President Obama’s request for an authorization to use military force in Syria, William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, tries to reassure queasy Republicans that “yes” is not only the right vote but the expedient one:
A Yes vote is in fact the easy vote. It’s actually close to risk-free. After all, it’s President Obama who is seeking the authorization to use force and who will order and preside over the use of force. It’s fundamentally his policy. Lots of Democrats voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war. When that war ran into trouble, it was President Bush and Republicans who paid the price. If the Syria effort goes badly, the public will blame President Obama, who dithered for two years, and who seems inclined to a halfhearted execution of any military campaign. If it goes well, Republicans can take credit for pushing him to act decisively, and for casting a tough vote supporting him when he asked for authorization to act. . . .
It’s true that a Yes vote will be temporarily unpopular with the base. To support Obama now may seem to invite primary opposition from challengers who would be more in tune with popular sentiment to stay out of the Syrian civil war. For a few weeks after the vote, Republicans will hear such rumblings. But at the end of the day, Republican primary voters are a pretty hawkish bunch. It’s hard to believe they’re going to end up removing otherwise conservative representatives or senators in favor of challengers who run on a platform whose key plank is that Republicans should have voted to let an Iran-supported, terror-backing dictator with American blood on his hands off the hook after he’s used chemical weapons.
This seems to us a very bad misreading of the political environment.
For the proposition that a “yes” vote won’t hurt lawmakers with the voters, Kristol offers no evidence save for his own disbelief. But in politics as in other walks of life, events often occur that seem in advance “hard to believe.” Until approximately five years ago, we found it hard to believe America would ever elect a president as left-wing as Barack Obama. Given his record in office, we also found it hard to believe that he would be re-elected (so, it appears, did Kristol). The latter one we didn’t believe until the night we learned it had happened.
There is ample evidence, both anecdotal and statistical, to counter Kristol’s disbelief. Sen. John McCain, the resolution’s highest-profile Republican supporter, “faced vocal opponents of military action during a town hall in Arizona Thursday,” CNN reports. Other lawmakers of both parties have encountered similar levels of opposition. Rep. Andy Harris, the congressman from Maryland’s only Republican district, tweeted Friday: “Constituent responses to Syria issue: CON-1065 PRO-22.” That’s just under 98% opposition–a margin comparable to those by which the Assads “win” Syrian “elections.”
To be sure, while polls show overwhelming opposition too, it isn’t that overwhelming. But that suggests support is tepid while opposition is intense. A CNN poll out today finds 39% support for the resolution and 59% opposition. (In framing the question, CNN accepts the administration’s representation of the prospective strike’s limits: “The resolution only authorizes military action for 60 to 90 days and it bars the use of U.S. troops in a combat role in Syria.”)
Asked whether the U.S. should strike Syria if the resolution passes, the numbers go up only slightly: 43% support, 55% opposition. As to the claim that Republicans are “a fairly hawkish bunch,” here are the partisan breakdowns for the two questions:
Should Congress pass the resolution?
Democrats 56% yes, 43% no
Republicans 36% yes, 63% no
Independents 29% yes, 67% no
Do you favor striking if the resolution passes?
Democrats 51% yes, 47% no
Republicans 47% yes, 51% no
Independents 36% yes, 61% no
These numbers offer some support for the characterization of Republicans as relatively hawkish, but only to this extent: Whereas at least 11% of Republicans believe that a resolution they oppose should be backed up by action, at least 5% of Democrats believe that a resolution they support should not.
Opposing the resolution are not only majorities of Republicans and independents but also of men and women; liberals, moderates, conservatives; urban, suburban and rural dwellers; and respondents from every geographic region, every income range and every age range. The only group to support the resolution other than Democrats was “non-whites,” 51% to 49%. On the second question–should the U.S. strike Syria if the resolution passes–the drop-off was even greater among nonwhites: 42% to 56%.
We’d say Kristol’s reading of the Republican electorate reflects a failure to take account of recent events. He is 60 years old, which means he came of political age in 1971 with the ratification of the 26th Amendment. For most of Kristol’s adult life, it was a commonplace that Republicans were, on the whole, considerably more hawkish than Democrats–although there were occasional indications to the contrary, such as GOP unease with the 1999 Kosovo intervention and George W. Bush’s 2000 renunciation of “nation buildling.”
It’s probably still the case, on the whole, that Republicans are more hawkish than Democrats. Our hypothesis, however, is that Republicans are considerably less hawkish than they used to be, and that is among the factors driving GOP opposition to a Syria resolution and strike.
Consider the events of the past few years from the standpoint of a Republican who, while generally hawkish, cares more about domestic matters (economic or social) than foreign policy. During the Bush administration, our hypothetical voter supported the intervention in Iraq and continued to do so even after Democrats and later independents turned away from it. What has been the result? If you believe, as we do, that the Iraq disappointment was a necessary condition for the election of Barack Obama, then Iraq–independent of any question of its strategic merits–turned out disastrously for an economic or social conservative.
To some extent the same argument even applies to a hawkish conservative whose primary interest is foreign policy. Do whatever strategic benefits the U.S. gained from liberating Iraq outweigh the costs of 4½ years (and counting) of determinedly feckless leadership? Suffice it to say it is far from clear the answer is yes.
All of which is to say that there are genuine prudential reasons why Republican voters have become far warier of overseas military intervention in general than they have been at any time in recent decades. As for Kristol’s suggestion that the public will hold the president, not lawmakers, accountable for a “yes” vote, he might want to ask John Kerry how that worked out in 2004.
Of course whether a vote in favor of the resolution is expedient as a matter of politics is a different question from whether its approval is wise as a matter of policy. Kristol is on less weak ground when he makes the latter argument, which he calls “the statesmanlike case for voting Yes.”
Yet that ground is still shaky. It is difficult for any nation, but especially for a democracy, to sustain a military effort if it loses public support. That counsels against beginning a military effort to which the public is already overwhelmingly opposed. And the fecklessness of the Obama administration has even some hawkish conservatives among the opinion elite opposing the resolution. Examples include Charles Krauthammer and Kristol’s own young colleague Stephen Hayes.
Last week, with some intellectual exertion, this columnist formulated an argument that approving the resolution was a less bad option than rejecting it. The administration’s recklessly erratic presentation of its case in the ensuing days has made remaining convinced of that argument too exhausting for us.
Kristol seems to be suffering from similar fatigue. Politico reports that he told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough this morning that Secretary of State Kerry’s recent comments have left Kristol “shaken in his support.” The reference was to Kerry’s resort to the Chinpokomon move, as reported by London’s Guardian:
Kerry said the Americans were planning an “unbelievably small” attack on Syria. “We will be able to hold Bashar al-Assad accountable without engaging in troops on the ground or any other prolonged kind of effort in a very limited, very targeted, short-term effort that degrades his capacity to deliver chemical weapons without assuming responsibility for Syria’s civil war. That is exactly what we are talking about doing–unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.”
When Kerry says “unbelievably small,” we don’t think atomic weapons are what he has in mind.
The administration’s Syria strategy is so adorable!
USA Today describes the administration’s strategy: “A second senior official, who has seen the most recent planning, offered this metaphor to describe such a strike: If Assad is eating Cheerios, we’re going to take away his spoon and give him a fork. Will that degrade his ability to eat Cheerios? Yes. Will it deter him? Maybe. But he’ll still be able to eat Cheerios.”
Well, the commander of the Marine Corps Reserves is a Gen. Mills. But perhaps it’s no coincidence that shortly after Barack Obama took office, the homonymic company discontinued Kaboom.
CBS News, meanwhile, has a disturbing report about one of Kristol’s statesmen, Sen. McCain. It seems that after that town-hall meeting, he told Phoenix’s KFYI-AM: “No one wants American boots on the ground. Nor will there be American boots on the ground because there would be an impeachment of the president if they did that.”
So McCain is issuing empty threats to a president whose hesitancy to put “boots on the ground” proved fatal in Benghazi–with the aim of making him even more hesitant. Some statesmanship that is.
This column favors military action against Syria if it is backed by a strategic purpose and resolute leadership. But Obama, Kerry and McCain all come across as desperate men who feel they have something to prove. That emotional state is a further reason to be cautious about entrusting them with lethal weapons.
Metaphor Alert
“If Obama smells something, it’s the whiff of smoke emanating from the paper tiger he’s leaning on.”–Jed Babbin, The American Spectator website, Sept. 9
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