Everybody Loves a Cave-In

The House and Senate each rolled over this evening and gave the Prez pretty much everything he wanted in a war funding bill. Oh, sure, there are some pesky benchmarks that he has to pretend to accept, but they come with their very own get out of jail free card--he's welcome to ignore them if he feels like it. Three guesses whether he will or not.

David Espo of the Associated Press bought into Harry Reid's claims that Dems were doing the best they could in fighting against the recalcitrant Prez, describing the House and Senate's voting as "grudgingly." Yeah, the Senate squeaked by with a vote of just 80-14, a ratio of just 5.5 to 1. That sounds pretty grudging to me, too. The House, at least, was only about 2 to 1.
The big argument for why this isn't a bad bill and an embarrassment for the Dems is that the whole thing has to play out again in September. General Petreaus is expected to provide a status report on the situation in Iraq at that point, and if things don't seem to be going well, the Dems might just pull the rug out from everybody. Or maybe it'll go more like Russ Feingold predicts:

You know what's going to happen in September? They'll bring General Petraeus back and he'll say, Just give me until the end of year. I think things are turning around. And then we'll be out of session, come back in late January, February, and the fact is a thousand more troops will lose their lives in a situation that doesn't make any sense and it is hurting our military, hurting our country. This should not wait til September.

One thing the September gambit has going for it is that if the war becomes even more of a liability for Republicans than it is right now, we might see some Republicans put some distance between themselves and the Prez for their own self-preservation and electoral survival. But I'm not sure the Dems gain anything by laying low and waiting for their rivals across the aisle to come around. That continues to cast them as followers rather than leaders. Instead, they should stake out the position that they know is right (and the fact that they already sent Bush one bill to veto before appeasing him today shows that they do indeed know) and wait for the Repubs to join them. I may be going out on a limb with this, but that's what leaders would do.

On the bright side, and perhaps the indication that a few people have a healthy respect for the politics of the situation, three of the four Democratic senators running for president--Clinton, Obama, and Dodd--voted against the bill (Biden voted for it). Over in the House, Kucinich voted against it, too. Barring any unexpected changes in the status quo over there, this shows what the overpowering foreign-policy issue will be as we head into the election.