THE CLINTON/PELOSI FAULT LINE
By: Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris
Politico, DC
Oct 25 2007
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Nancy Pelosi are the two most prominent
women in American politics today – powerfully united by intense disdain
for George Bush’s policies in Iraq and elsewhere around the world.
The Democratic antipathy toward Bush, however, disguises a variety of
tensions and cracks that could grow in the months ahead if Clinton
becomes her party’s nominee, and could become even more interesting
if there is another Clinton administration in January 2009.
Clinton’s and Pelosi’s differences of detail cumulatively add up
to something large – two distinct strands of thinking about where
threats to U.S. national security lie and how aggressive to be in
confronting them.
Liberal Democrats will have to get over it: Clinton is an authentic
hawk. Her support for the Iraq war resolution five years ago this
month, whether motivated by politics or principle or some of both,
was not an aberration. Nor is her tough talk against Iran.
Assuming she wraps up the Democratic nomination over the next couple
of months, she will almost certainly emphasize these interventionist
views.
The temptation for many commentators has been to dismiss Pelosi’s
ventures into foreign policy as blunderbuss moves by a new speaker
unseasoned on the world stage. She was hammered for her visit to
Syria earlier this year to talk peace. She was recently forced by her
own members to surrender on the "Armenian Genocide" resolution after
Turkey, a U.S. ally with a critical supply line to Iraq, re-called
its ambassador in protest.
But Democratic foreign policy experts in the think tanks along
Massachusetts Avenue will also have to get over it: Pelosi
is authentically representing the mainstream of her party when it
comes to America’s role in the world. She opposed the Iraq war with
vehemence from its conception. (And, unlike many of the denizens of
those think tanks, she has not had to explain or rationalize her old
views in light of the sorrowful events that followed
Is the Democratic Party big enough for a Clinton wing and a Pelosi
wing?
Maybe. One indication of Clinton’s surprising skills as a presidential
candidate comes by looking at a once-big problem now in her rearview
mirror. At the start of this year, it was assumed she would have to
forthrightly apologize for the 2002 Iraq vote or risk the wrath of
the anti-war left. In fact, she has resisted such a statement and
still managed to mobilize a considerable amount of anti-war support.
Her navigating of the apology issue has been of a piece with her
strategy on every turn. She has been relentless in preserving as
much political and substantive flexibility for herself as a general
election candidate and future president, in a campaign that she and
her advisers believe will hinge on perceptions of national security
strength much more than a backward-looking debate about who was more
right or wrong about Iraq in 2002 or even in 2007. Clinton’s team never
forgets the context in which voters will decide 12 months from now:
A hundred thousand or more troops still will be in Iraq, Iran will
remain a growing menace, Pakistan will be unsettled and Afghanistan
will be as unpredictable and periodically bloody as ever.
Two examples show her strategy at work: her refusal to vow there would
not be U.S. troops in Iraq in 2013 if she were elected president,
and her recent support for labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
a terrorist organization.
The Democratic left went bonkers on both. But there is no indication
yet this is a serious obstacle in the primary fight. And, despite the
criticism, the indications are that Clinton knew exactly what she was
doing. On Iran, for instance, the independent voters that Clinton’s
team is focused on do not share the widespread Democratic concern that
Bush is bracing for a new war. A Pew poll released in 2006 found that,
by 53 percent to 34 percent, respondents were more concerned that
the United States would wait too long, rather than act too quickly,
in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program.
But the balancing act within the party may become harder, not easier,
if Clinton becomes the nominee. As one of several presidential
candidates, Clinton can plausibly claim to be speaking only for
herself.
She does not have to speak for the Democrats as a whole – and she
does not face intense pressure to either embrace or repudiate the
statements of other Democratic leaders.
In a general election context, Clinton would face the enormous public
pressures of questions such as: Does she agree or disagree with
Pelosi’s efforts to propitiate Armenian-Americans in her district
with a genocide resolution, even if doing so alienates Turkey and
undermines the U.S. mission in Iraq? What does she think about
fellow Democrat John P. Murtha’s support for a war tax, at a time
when Clinton is trying to convince voters that Democrats will not
raise taxes on anyone but the rich? She would be hard-pressed to skate
around uproars such as the one Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) caused when
he suggested that U.S. troops in Iraq "get their heads blown off for
the president’s amusement."
For now, however, the Clinton/Pelosi fault line rumbles below the
surface. Foreign policy scholar Walter Russell Mead sees in the
Clinton/Pelosi tension two distinct motivations at work. "Pelosi is a
grass-roots politician who is interested in making policy out of the
views of the base," Mead explains. "Hillary Clinton is a national
politician who is interested in formulating good policy and then
selling that to the base."
David Paul Kuhn contributed to this story.