| In the meantime, the big item left on the neocon agenda is a major attack on Iran. It's the third leg of the Axis of Evil; Iraq and North Korea have been addressed. Any Obama - or McCain, for that matter - plans to reshape foreign policy in the Mideast will be exploded by the air attack on Iran.
We are at a fork in the road now.
Congress can effectively declares that this Administration is now in a caretaker role and reject any new initiatives on the simple principle that we can wait until January instead. The President has the lowest approval rating in the history of polling; four out of five voters believe his Presidency has shifted the country to the "wrong track." Congress can stop listening to excited talk about where he wants to drive the car and just take away the keys.
Or Congress - especially you, Senator Obama - can make the political calculation that a fight with the administration is a distraction that could make you look bad, or at the very least distract from the issues you want to run on. If we were talking about a pragmatic administration that would make perfect sense. But we are not. The Bush Administration is the most ideological and extreme of my lifetime. If you leave it running things unchecked while the campaign proceeds, it will work feverishly to fundamentally reshape American policy in ways you cannot undo.
In June 1968 Earl Warren retired from the Supreme Court. The Republican minority decided that LBJ would be consigned to a caretaker role and not allowed to name the new Chief Justice. The voters did not punish the Party or its nominee for that action.
In July 2008 the Senate will decide whether to entrust the rewrite of national security rules to the Administration that called the "bin Laden determined to attack US" briefing a "CYA memo" and outed Valerie Plame, or to wait seven months and let a new President with a new mandate provide leadership.
The Iran war planners will be watching to see how much leeway they have. |
