Feingold steps up

August 18, 2005

Just last night, Kevin Drum, following up on an excellent article from my friend Ari Berman, asked when a leading serious Dem would break from the pack, step up, and begin serious talk about a timed withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

Our current policy in Iraq is a disaster that’s virtually certain to fail — and Clinton, Biden, and Kerry know it. So why continue supporting it? The fact is that a timed withdrawal is probably good policy and good politics. On a substantive level it’s the policy most likely to work, and on a political level it’s the policy most likely to differentiate a future candidate from both the Bush administration and the gray hordes of the Democratic foreign policy establishment. It’s also popular. Although only a third of Americans favor immediate withdrawal, nearly two-thirds want to see us withdraw within the next year.

Still, advocating a timed withdrawal would take some guts. But being the first to seriously propose such a solution would also carry some rewards: the anti-war left would finally have someone to rally around and the Bush administration would finally have some serious competition. Is there anyone out there willing to do it?

Kevin has impeccable timing. As it turns out, there is someone.

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) called on the White House yesterday to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of next year and criticized fellow Democrats for being too “timid” in challenging the Bush administration’s war policy.

Feingold, who is among the Democrats considering a run for president in 2008, became the first senator to propose a specific deadline for pulling all 138,000 U.S. troops out of Iraq. His comments also laid bare the rising tension within his party about how to respond to President Bush on the war.

Now, watch the floodgates open.

Frankly, I’m a little surprised it’s taken this long. I mean no disrespect to the many House Dems who’ve made similar pronouncements, but Senate Dems — an overly cautious lot, to be sure — have been so reluctant to embrace a plan for a timed withdrawal, it’s made the very idea seem out of the mainstream. Not anymore.

Maybe it’s the poll numbers showing how mainstream the idea is, maybe it’s positioning for 2008, and maybe Feingold is just sick of biting his tongue, but this announcement is, without a doubt, a good thing. Feingold isn’t in the caucus leadership, but he is a serious, three-term senator with presidential ambitions and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His proposal will not be easily dismissed as a liberal rant.

His call for withdrawal will have reverberations. Party activists will, I suspect, welcome Feingold’s position, and encourage others to do the same. Which leads me to wonder — who’ll be the next high-profile Dem to announce his or her support for a timed withdrawal? Clark? Kerry? Edwards?

Sorry, but I doubt that anyone with serious 2008 ambition will call for withdrawal at this point. I know many progressives like Feingold, and I know he may be considering a run in 2008. I just don’t see him with much national traction.

  • The floodgate may be wide open, but there’s hardly a trickle coming through. And it doesn’t appear that more will come along soon. It just costs too much money to run for the Senate – they think they can’t afford to rock any boats or take any risks. They’re cowards, and they’re wrong, but that’s the way they are.

    Air America ran a Leno line this morning playing off the anniversary of the Wizard of Oz: Bush needs a brain, Cheney needs a heart, and the Senate Democrats need courage. Bingo!

  • Here’s the next set of events:
    1) Right Wing nutzoids (sorry, maybe that is redundant) will flood the echo chamber to slime Feingold as much as possible
    2) CCCP, er, MSM will pick up on that, reporting it as America’s voice
    3) Close to the mid-term elections, the Republicans will declare victory, and do exactly what Feingold is saying, and thereby claim that it was their idea all along.

    This is a re-telling of Homeland Security and the 9-11 Comission.

  • Feingold is the only Dem on the hill with cojones. The only one who goes with what’s right, rather than what’s the “correct” political PR spin on an issue (See Patriot Act Vote)

    While I will work for his p residential campaign and would love to see him up there on the ballot, the reality is that America could never vote for a twice-divorced Jew. It’s a sad reality.

  • Unless that twice-divorced Jew does Elvis ads again.

    I think a call for withdrawal is a mistake personally, especially if it comes from a senator who’s not known for his foreign relations or military committee seats.

    Feingold’s strength is his striving for a transparent government process and he should follow that strength and come up with some sort of ‘contract for America’ moment to further vault his name.

    Newt Gingrich’s quote in the Times today should be the rallying point:

    “Any effort to explain Iraq as ‘We are on track and making progress’ is nonsense,” Newt Gingrich, a Republican who is a former House speaker, said.

    This is Bush’s war, we should call him to answer real questions and put forth real plans. Unfortunately, his ‘a timetable for withdrawal plan sends the wrong message to the insurgents’ actually rings true for a lot of people because it’s easy to understand.

    Mr. President, What track? What progress? When can we expect troops to be out of harm’s way? What more are you asking of the military in Iraq?

    I especially like that last question, because right now they’re being asked to do things they weren’t trained or assigned to do (police and rebuild a country).

    Ask these questions again and again, especially while he’s on vacation.

  • A couple of points:

    Firstly, it will be extremely difficult for a sitting member of the U.S. Senate to win a Presidential election. Only two have won a Presidential election over the last century: Warren Harding and JFK. The ability of the opposition party to glom onto voting records and twist and turn them to their hearts’ content is almost impossible to overcome. John Kerry was the latest candidate to fall into this chasmn.

    Secondly, I believe that many are unwilling to call for troop withdrawal because they know that the right will use it against them. They’ll paint them as weak-kneed liberals intent on unleashing a torrent of new terrorists upon America. Even though it’s absolutely the right – I mean, the CORRECT – thing to do, the combination of the fear factor (among Americans) and the wimp factor (among politicians seeking higher political office) is a lethal cocktail.

    Sooner or later, someone’s just got to say, “Enough!”, and take a stand against this nonsense, political future be damned. The time has come, and if that person is Russ Feingold, then so be it. He may not win the Presidency, but he may be able to soften the ground enough for others to make a charge up the hill. That’s what we need right now.

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