Today is Day One in George W. Bush's official war against Iraq (he's been conducting an unofficial war against Iraq for months). Today is also Day One in his campaign to make Hillary Clinton the next president of the United States.
Talk about the unintended consequences of war! The only question in my mind is whether she will take him on in 2004 or succeed him in 2008. It depends on how fast the emperor's Middle East fiefdom begins to unravel.
Given our overwhelming military superiority, I expect the initial U.S. victory to be quick and clean (as clean as any military action ever is). For the sake of our troops, I certainly hope that is the case. Most of them are simply too young and naïve to understand that they are mere pawns of the politicians and power brokers; certainly their "education" in government schools never led them to comprehend anything more complex than sound-bite patriotism. I wish them no harm, just as I wish the Iraqi people no harm.
There are problems that can't be solved with any amount of military hardware, however, and those problems will surface as soon as the American flag flies from Saddam's palace in Baghdad. Shi'ites versus Sunnis, for example, and Turks versus Kurds. The question of how the U.S. can control the oil fields and oil production in Iraq without openly seeming to have control – call that a problem in political engineering. Above all, given how our military bases in Saudi Arabia served as recruitment posters for Osama bin Laden, imagine the much greater impact of an American occupation of Iraq.
Imagine, also, the potential impact of terrorist counterattacks on the world economy. Japan is in a deflationary mode; Europe is mired in welfarist quicksand; and U.S. consumers are getting worried at long last about their lack of savings to protect them from the economic boogeyman. If terrorists strike at a number of airplanes and cruise ships and tankers, there goes the tourist industry – the largest industry in the world – and the transportation industries, and with them the world economy.
Such terrorist counterattacks are not a necessary condition for American disaster. The cost of the Iraqi war and occupation is more than enough in itself. American support for Bush's war is lukewarm at best. (The prevailing theme seems to be that the president is determined to have his war, so let's get it over with.) When it becomes apparent that the neocons are serious about perpetual war, and our troops don't come home for the family's July 4 picnic, the public's mood will turn quite sour, quite fast. And that's where Hillary Rodham Clinton comes out of the shadows. Hillary's route to the White House will be through Baghdad.
A Nation Divided
Republicans and conservatives are enjoying their hubris right now. Let them enjoy it while they can. It's based on a presidential election where a genuinely awful Democratic candidate won the popular vote, and a congressional election so close that a switch of 50,000 votes in key states would have made the Democrats the victors. Those elections will not go down in the history books as Operation Enduring Mandate. The tiniest shift in public opinion can bring the Democrats back to power, and the shift resulting from an Iraqi quagmire isn't likely to be tiny.
The question is, which Democrat will lead the charge? Aye, there's the rub. The Democratic Party isn't exactly a hotbed of talent right now. Dubya's hope for salvation lies in the parlous state of the Democratic leadership.
The one exception is Hillary. She's talented, all right, as in: "Stalin was a talented Russian." In good times her undisguised drive for power makes her unacceptable to a majority of Americans. In bad times that could change – look at the other ruthless tyrants we've elected in bad times, with their promises to give us a new deal.
Enter a Quinnipiac University nationwide poll, taken in February and March of this year. This respected polling operation matched George W. Bush against an unnamed Democrat, as well as potential Democratic candidates against each other and Bush.
Bush vs. Unnamed Democrat
By a 48-44 percent margin, American voters said they would vote for the as-yet-unnamed Democratic candidate for president over GOP incumbent Bush. Despite a 53-39 percent personal approval rating, Bush was the victim of concerns about war and the economy.
Only 9 percent of American voters are "very satisfied" with the way things are going in the nation today. That's a pretty small hard core. While 31 percent listed war with Iraq as the nation's most important problem, nearly as many – 27 percent – listed the economy and unemployment. Given the billions of dollars Bush has been spending to make the war issue paramount, he hasn't been that successful in this PR campaign.
"The political winds are hard to read this early in the game," says Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, "but we do know that war and a bad economy are not good for anyone – especially sitting presidents."
Democrats vs. Each Other
There's no doubt that Hillary is the leading choice of Democrats nationwide. Here's how she stacked up against her potential primary competitors in the Quinnipiac poll:
- New York Sen. Hillary Clinton: 37 percent.
- Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt: 13 percent.
- Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman: 12 percent.
- Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry: 8 percent.
- North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and Florida Sen. Bob Graham: 4 percent each.
- Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich: 3 percent each.
- Rev. Al Sharpton: 2 percent.
Without Clinton in the race, most of her support goes to Lieberman, placing him at the head of the pack.
Bush vs. Named Democrats
It quickly becomes obvious that a lot of voters like the idea of "a Democrat" but aren't that enthusiastic about the current crop of Democrats. Here are Quinnipiac's results when the Democratic candidate is named:
- Bush over Lieberman 49–43 percent.
- Bush over Kerry 50–42 percent.
- Bush over Gephardt 51–42 percent.
- Bush over Clinton 52–41 percent.
- Bush over Edwards 50–39 percent.
- Bush over Dean 53–36 percent.
- Bush over Sharpton 61–23 percent.
I can see the e-mails a comin': How can you say Hillary will be elected president in 2004 or 2008, when Bush is beating all the Democrats and she's not doing as well against him as Lieberman, Kerry, or Gephardt?
Very simple. To the first objection: Yes, Bush beat them all, but this was before his Iraqi odyssey even began, and before the s— (make that: sand) hits the fan, so to speak.
And in answer to the second objection: The Democratic candidate first has to be nominated before he or she faces Bush, and we know that Democratic primary voters are more liberal than voters in general, just as Republican primary voters are more conservative. Look at how Hillary cleans up against the other Democrats.
My expectation is that Hillary, an astute politician who is married to another astute politician, is being so quiet right now because she really doesn't want to run in 2004. It's too much, too soon for a first-term Senator. Let someone else take the fall and then she can run – and win – in 2008. But she could change her timetable at the last moment if things unravel quickly in Iraq.
And maybe Bush and his Neocon Shadow Cabinet can pull it off, giving us a real quick in-and-out war, a Real Man's War, if you will – call it a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'm kind of war. I don't think so. The neocons don't want a quick exit, and every war has its unintended consequences. This time around, yet another President Clinton is likely to be one of those unintended consequences.
March 19, 2003
