Are You Safer Than You Were Seven Years Ago?

John Edwards is attacking the Republican candidates on the war and on terrorism right now on The Situatiion Room in an extremely targeted way. After seeing this exchange, there is no doubt in my mind that he would crush any opposition in the general election. He comes off as smart and serious, and he does an excellent job laying the blame for the war at the feet of George Bush and the Republicans. And he's using a very simple method that has worked for Presidents in the past, framing the choice in a very accessible way:

Are you safer than you were seven years ago?

The most crucial part of the exchange was when Wolf outsourced the questioning (a familiar tactic) by playing clips of Edwards' would-be Republican rivals and asking him to comment. In the first instance, Rudy Giuliani was shown talking about how Democrats would roll back the Patriot Act and illegal warrantless wiretapping and military action in Iraq (heaven forbid!) and how we'd be more vulnerable to terrorist attack in that case. Here's Edwards' response:

Fearmongering. It's the same old fearmongering that they've been engaged in for years. Hey, what I would ask Americans is do you feel safer than you did when George Bush was elected in 2000? Do you feel safer today? Are you happy with what's happened in Iraq? Because what Giuliani, McCain, Romney, all of them, the best I can tell, are saying is, that we're going to stay on this same course. I mean, the question for the American people is, do they believe we can be smarter and still be aggressive about protecting this country. And I think they're going to answer that question in a resounding way come November 2008.

That's some expert rhetorical ju-jitsu there. It puts the onus right back on the Republicans to prove that they haven't made the country less safe as a result of the failure in Iraq. It's an impossible task for them to do. We all know that terrorist attacks globally are on the rise. We know that the focus on Iraq has come at the cost of Afghanistan, Somalia, and all sorts of other hotspots all over the world. We know that our homeland security is a joke - the ports, the chemical plants, the cargo screened in the airports, and on and on. So Edwards asks the question. And he does this in a direct way to the Republicans, not his fellow candidates. Edwards is fighting the real fight that we have right now, and his strong stand on Iraq, where he has called on Congress to keep sending the funding bill over and over again, is another way to put the focus where it belongs. Edwards, earlier in this exchange, said that George Bush is the only one denying funding to the troops. He completely gets the issue, and his simple question "Are you safer than you were 7 years ago?" will resonate in the country. The American people are on the same side.

Then Wolf tried to switch gears, reading a Mitt Romney joke about the $400 haircut. Edwards could have laughed this off, but coming out of this discussion on Iraq, he connected it in exactly the right way when asked to respond:

What I say is, Governor, we ought to be talking about what we are going to be doing about men and women who are dying in Iraq, not this kind of silliness. And if you believe what we ought to be doing in Iraq is to continue what George Bush is doing, you are completely at odds with the American people. That's true of Romney, that's true of Giuliani, it's true of Senator McCain. And Senator McCain I've known for years, I have a lot of personal respect for him, but he is dead wrong about what we ought to be doing in Iraq. And we ought to elevate the discussion about, when we're in a war, Wolf, when we have men and women dying, and we have $500 billion dollars being spent, that should be central to the next Presidential election, and hopefully we'll focus on issues like that.

This is as much an indictment of the question itself as it is an indictment of the unseriousness of conservative gasbags. Stop talking about American Idol when there's a war on! Stop reporting on Britney and Anna Nicole! Stop the stupidity that stands in for Presidential campaign coverage and start focusing on what matters! I'm watching a dog taking a drink of water on CNN right now. Stop it!

Connecting all the Republican candidates to the Bush policy in Iraq is exactly the right thing to do in a general election. Edwards has been doing this for a while, he was the one that started the "McCain doctrine" language. And he's the only one to have fundamentally challenged the phrase "global war on terror":

At last month's Democrat debate in South Carolina, moderator Brian Williams asked the eight candidates: "Show of hands question: Do you believe there is such a thing as a global war on terror?"

Senator Hillary Clinton's hand shot up. After hesitating noticeably, Senator Barack Obama joined her. Edwards did not, even though he has used the phrase himself and a policy paper on his Web site refers to "winning the war on terror." And now, in his first interview to explain his turnabout, Edwards tells TIME that he will no longer use what he views as "a Bush-created political phrase."

"This political language has created a frame that is not accurate and that Bush and his gang have used to justify anything they want to do," Edwards said in a phone interview from Everett, Wash. "It's been used to justify a whole series of things that are not justifiable, ranging from the war in Iraq, to torture, to violation of the civil liberties of Americans, to illegal spying on Americans. Anyone who speaks out against these things is treated as unpatriotic. I also think it suggests that there's a fixed enemy that we can defeat with just a military campaign. I just don't think that's true."

John Edwards is the only candidate that I've seen willing to challenge the assumptions that led us to this disastrous war. And he's asking exactly the right questions and framing the debate in an expert way.

UPDATE: In a great maneuver, Edwards sent a question to The Politico for their Republican debate:

"Has the Bush doctrine of a Global War on Terror backfired? Does the president's focus suggest a fixed enemy that can be defeated through a permanent military campaign or do you think we need a broader approach as many military leaders believe?"

If they accepted this, it'd be brilliant to see the fumferring as the candidates walk into Edwards' trap.