Why Rhetoric Matters

While David Obey in the New York Times claims that there is no deal on a war funding bill, other press reports are going with the AP's contention that a final bill will have no withdrawal timeline. CNN is talking about "benchmarks with consequences" but that's probably just spin. Since many Democrats would vote against a bill without a timeline, the leadership is trying to figure out if they should separate the minimum wage and spending programs out to give those progressive antiwar Representatives a chance to vote for them (um, DO that, please.)

I think that what this proves is that rhetoric matters. Democrats in Congress failed by talking so poorly about the war funding battle. The reason that polls show that Congress is holding back the funds is that Pelosi and Reid and Hoyer did a horrible job of combating that spin. It was clear to anyone who knows basic civics that the President was denying the funds, and there were plenty of lines of attack to make that point. People like Jim Webb and John Edwards were saying it, but the message was not unified.

We'll see how this plays out, but if this war continues, it will be because the Democrats lost the war of words.

UPDATE: Of course, when people like David Ignatius are seen as master rhetoriticians, it's no wonder that nobody in Washington can argue their way out of a paper bag. The "new way forward" in Iraq appears to be everything in the old way forward and instant contradictions like "no politicial reconciliation, but support top-down political reconciliation."