With Friends Like These...

I don't think it's good for your Party's public standing on foreign policy when it's "wisest" counsel advises your Presidential candidate to be deliberately vague on Iraq.

This article, about the disconnect between public opinion and inside-the-Beltway Democratic opinion on withdrawal in Iraq, is required reading. When someone decides to get the courage of their convictions, they'll get not only my vote, but the votes of the majority of the country. Ditto to someone who decides to listen to his own heart rather than the Brookings Institution, or a dozen other like-minded "liberal hawk" think tanks.

Former Senator Gary Hart crystallizes my thoughts on this:

If democracy only works when there is open discussion of opposing ideas and policies, and if the opposition party, in this case the Democrats, has hand-cuffed, blind-folded, gagged, and hog-tied itself to a failed invasion and occupation in the Middle East, where will the expanding majority of Americans look for a representative, a spokesperson, a voice for their anger, frustration, and distrust at being misled?

The circumstances suggest it should be a Senate or House Democratic leader, a recognized authority on foreign policy constantly seen on the Sunday talk shows, certainly one of the many “leaders” lining up to seek the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 2008.

Strangely, no one in any of those categories comes to mind. Their voices are silent. Thus, both they and the party they claim or presume to represent look dumbstruck, awkward, pitiful, and timid. Where the single greatest issue of the day, and one of the most potent issues of our time, is concerned, there is no courageous opposition.

Read the whole thing. His answer to the search for someone to challenge the conventional wisdom is Cindy Sheehan. Citizens like her will have to take back the Party for themselves. This gang of bumblers isn't going to do it.