The Framers Got It Right: Congress is the Decider
In this new article by George Lakoff and Glenn Smith, the Rockridge Institute issues a call to action in response to Congress's passage of the Iraq supplemental spending bill.
Critics of Congress's passage this week of the Iraq supplemental spending bill lament a lack of political courage. But Congress would find it easier to act courageously if the public understood the constitutional stakes. And that public understanding requires correct and persistent framing by Congress itself. What needs to have been framed — indeed what still needs to be framed — is Congress's constitutional responsibility and power to set the course on military missions like Iraq.
Here is what two of the country's most distinguished scholars on Constitutional powers testified to Congress on January 30, 2007:
"Congress possesses substantial constitutional authority to regulate ongoing
military operations and even to bring them to an end."
— David J. Barron, Harvard Law School
"The legislative judgment to take the country to war carries with it a duty
throughout the conflict to decide that military force remains in the national
interest. ... Congress is responsible for monitoring what it has set in motion.
In the midst of war, there are no grounds for believing that the President's
authority is superior to the collective judgment of its elected
representatives. Congress has both the constitutional authority and the
responsibility to retain control and recalibrate national policy whenever
necessary."
— Louis Fisher, Constitutional Specialist, Library of Congress (PDF)
Here's what this means:
The Framers of the Constitution framed the current debate over Iraq: Congress sets the overall strategy, and retains control over troop levels, redeployment dates, etc. The president's job is to carry out the strategic mission set by Congress.
The United States Constitution designates Congress as The Decider: they decide on overall military strategy. That is their constitutional duty. The president is the commander in chief of the military — and only the military. He is not commander over Congress, nor is he commander over the people of the United States. As such, the president's duty is to carry out the strategic mission given to him by Congress.
But Congress has abdicated its duty.
Congressional leaders have neglected to remind the nation what the Constitution says. They have allowed the president to reframe the Constitution, usurping their power for himself. The Framers framed it right. The Congress irresponsibly let the president reframe the Constitution.
The issue is more than the vital details of Iraq spending, withdrawal, timetables, and the safety of our troops. The issue is whether Congress will continue to allow the president to exercise dictatorial powers. Or whether Congress will insist on the framing of the Framers.
Framing has been vital. Opponents of the president's Iraq policies should have framed the issue immediately when Democratic leaders took control in January 2007. The message should have been: Congress defines the strategic mission; the president's job is to carry it out. He is refusing to carry out his mission.
Congress allowed the president to take over its job to decide the strategic mission and to put Congress in the role of merely providing funding. This allowed the president to cast Congress in the role of "refusing to fund the troops," "endangering the safety of our troops," "playing chicken with the lives of our troops," "hamstringing our troops," and so on. It allowed President Bush to portray Congress as responsible for the safety of our troops, whereas the real responsibility lay with him. By allowing the president to reframe the Constitution and take away their powers, Congress made itself fatally vulnerable. Most of the Democrats wound up adopting the president's framing of them as responsible for the safety of the troops.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid excused the vote by saying that the Democrats did not have a veto-proof Congress. But they did not need one. They could have chosen to exercise their authority by refusing to pass a spending bill without redeployment timetables.
House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey said it was the best deal Congress could make because "the White House is in a cloud somewhere in terms of understanding the realities of Iraq." This is tantamount to saying that Congress has no choice but to accede to an irrational demand of the President.
Representative Louise Slaughter defended her vote this way:
"As such, we had a choice. We could send Mr. Bush the same bill, or allow
something to pass that wouldn't be vetoed. And we elected to let something
pass - to let Republicans, if they so choose, fund their own war.
Considering that 90% of the Out of Iraq Caucus was with us in this decision,
there must have been at least some reason for it. In fact, there are two in my
opinion. With this White House, and with this Republican minority, it is safe
to say that a standoff with the Administration would have meant that our
troops would be left in harm's way, only now with even less funding to back
them up. I don't think that would have been right to do - to make them do even
more with even less. The President doesn't seem to care how much our troops
suffer. All evidence indicates that he will make them fight if they have
needed funding or not.
Secondly, a standoff would have allowed the President to keep using our
soldiers as pawns, accusing Democrats of abandoning them while it is
really his war that has left them to fend for themselves."
In other words, allowing themselves to be framed in a subordinate position, many who originally voted to impose timetables retreated, thinking that they were forced to accept the president's framing of them. And being progressives — with the fundamental values of empathy and responsibility — they were doubly trapped. Their empathy for the troops — and their inability to take on their Constitutional role — forced even many Out of Iraq Caucus members to vote against their own position.
Now, one might read the Constitution a bit differently, perhaps maintaining that the Congress is only co-equal with the president. But that still does not put the president in a superior position and Congress in the position of merely a funding funnel for the mission he determines. Even under this interpretation, Congress has abdicated its Constitutional duty.
If you mistakenly believe that framing is mere PR or spin, recall that there is a reason why we speak of the "Framers" of the Constitution. All of our concepts come in the form of frames. Our deepest values and most enduring truths were "framed" by our "Framers." To protect those values and those truths requires the right framing. And to remind the public of those values and truths requires repeating over and over how the Framers framed our form of government, and why it matters today. Framing is a matter of life and death — and the survival of our democracy.
Many public critics of the Iraq occupation have accused the Democrats of cowardice, of weakness, of "caving in" — even of "betraying" the American people who voted for withdrawal from Iraq. But that is too easy a judgment. The result was determined in January 2007 when they allowed the president to reframe the Constitution.
The good news is that the present spending authorization is for "only" until September. We have until then to get the Framers' framing right. By "we," we don't mean just those in Congress, or those on the blogs. We mean the progressive grassroots throughout the country. We all need to act, and we can!
But before discussing actions, it is important to recognize other framing mistakes that need to be avoided.
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Using the term "war." Literally, a war is a battle between two armies over territorial control. It is over when one army defeats the other. That happened in May, 2003, with the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime and when President Bush stood on that battleship under the "Mission Accomplished" banner. At that point an "occupation" began — an "occupation" of a country engaged in ethnic and religious conflict. Bush is technically no longer a war president; he is an occupation president. "War" has given the president a chance to claim extraordinary powers. There are other terms to use: occupation, military engagement, military operation, and so on. If Senator Jim Webb can use the term "occupation," as he did in his campaign, so can every other elected official.
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"The power of the purse." Controlling appropriation is a constitutional duty. Referring to this duty with such a dismissive term promotes the idea that the president sets the mission and the job of Congress is just a cashier.
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"Providing a check on presidential power." This sounds like Congress is just getting in the way, keeping the president from exercising his legitimate authority.
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"Micromanaging the war," "overriding the commanders in the field." Congressional leaders should never let the president get away with such claims. Congress sets the overall policy agenda. The job of the commander-in-chief is to carry out that agenda, making sure that the commanders in the field are serving the Congressional mission. Say this over and over.
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Permitting the Betrayal Myth: America, as a moral country with a strong military, should defeat all enemies. If America does lose a war, it is a result of too little support at home. In other words, but for betrayal, our good intentions and military might would win all conflicts. If the U.S. loses, the opponents of the military operation at home are to blame for "not supporting our troops," and for "undermining their morale."
Progressives must point out that it is the president, with an enabling Congress, who commenced a foolhardy adventure with no clear exit strategy or way to "win." That same president has refused to properly prepare or adequately equip soldiers — and now he is blaming Congress. When Congress passed a supplemental spending bill with reasonable timetables attached, he refused it. The betrayer is the president. Say it over and over: The president has betrayed our troops and the nation.
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Allowing the question to be asked whether "Congress has a constitutional duty to fully fund troops during wartime." It is Congress that determines what "wartime" is.
That is its Constitutional duty. The president does not have the Constitutional authority to declare whether we are at war. Only Congress has that authority, and it can only exercise it for at most two years at a time.
The president wants the country to believe that he is the soldier's protector and Congress is the villain. This is a cynical, revisionist narrative. The storyline that must be maintained casts Congress as the helper of heroic troops, the president as the false-hero or villain who sent them into harm's way inadequately armed and unprotected on a mission based upon lies. It is Bush who, with his veto, stood in the way of providing the troops with the funding they need. Progressives have missed this framing opportunity.
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The continued abdication of the proper Constitutional role for Congress comes from the fear of blame for military casualties. Opponents of the Iraq occupation are concerned, and rightly so, that the Bush administration will frame killed or wounded soldiers as victims of Democratic mismanagement or partisan politicking. It is a fair guess that Democratic consultants are fretting that, if the Democratic Congress takes control of setting the mission in Iraq, Bush will lift the blackout on news coverage of returning injured and dead U.S. soldiers, using them as props in allegations that the casualties are the fault of "politicians." Progressives must publicly confront the president about this as they reclaim their Constitutional power, derailing any attempt to shift responsibility.
Those are the pitfalls to be avoided. Now it is time to plan a course of unified grassroots action.
ACTION: Write to your Congresspersons and Senators and ask them to frame their Constitutional role as the Framers did. We suggest that you raise the following issues:
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The Constitution provides Congress with the power to define the military agenda, including troop re-deployment and the establishment of timetables.
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The role of the president is to carry out the agenda defined by Congress.
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Congress must continuously assert its Constitutional power and responsibility.
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Congress must not give in to the betrayal myth. The president was offered funding with timetables but he turned it down — he is the betrayer.
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Congress must frame the matter as an issue of Constitutional authority
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Congress must place the safety of the troops directly in the hands of the commander-in-chief, whose job is to carry out the agenda given by Congress, which includes protecting the safety of our troops.
Don't just write to your Congressperson. Write to the editors of your local newspapers. Flood the email boxes of the television and radio news shows, as well as national magazines. Send this call for action to your email lists. And write to progressive activist organizations like MoveOn, Democracy for America, and so on, to ask their memberships to support this action.
And don't do it just once. Repetition is the key to success. Keep it up until the next funding vote in September.
Research Assistant Christina M. Smith contributed to this report.
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War funding confusion
Evan, I think I need a little help on this funding thing.
Yes, congress should have been framing the debate from the day the Democrats took control. Yes, the constitution says what it says. Yes, the Congress, under the Republicans, passed several bills giving away to the Presidfent powers that should belong to congress.
Given all this, a funding bill was passed by Congress. It contained timelines and was vetoed.
Now my question is this, Why was another bill ever allowed out of committee? After the President vetoed the first spending bill, why didn't the congress simply say to the President and to the nation, "We passed a spending bill for Iraq and the President vetoed it. End of story. We have now moved on to other important business."
I fear that when anything more substantive than rhetoric is needed the Congress cannot be counted on.
Pelosi
Pelosi gave away many favors to Republicans and some Democrats in the form of money for pet projects in exchange for their votes to pass the bill with benchmarks. Then she seems to have let them keep what she offerred, and gave up on the benchmarks, much too soon in my opinion. Then she went to Europe.
I agree that the bill should have gone back to congress and stayed there. If the support of 70% of Americans against the war is not enough to stiffen Pelosi's spine, what will be?
Don't End the War - Win It
I'm very disappointed by the recent Congressional vote to allow additional funding for the Iraq war, as are many of my progressive allies. However, in some ways I am even more upset by the larger story that has been told through these votes. Though I agree with the premise of Lakoff & Smith in that recent activity has allowed the seemingly defeated President to once again have the upper hand through framing of the situation. However, the truly important story that is being told is not so much about whether the President or the Congress gets to be "the decider", but about whether the Progressives - much maligned in the last few years for being cowardly, "flip flopping", cut & runners - can win a war.
We are at war. President Bush may have declared "Mission Accomplished". But then again, he also said "weapons of mass destruction". He's a liar. Let's get that out of the way. We may in some ways be more accurate in viewing the current situation in Iraq as more of an occupation than a war, though with the death toll steadily increasing as Baghdad once again becomes a center of military activity, this is becoming harder to justify. But the emotional truth for most Americans is that we ARE at war, and if we're not personally affected, then we know that there is something huge happening, that people are dying, and that we have suffered financial losses and casualties domestically (in the World Trade Center attacks), and abroad, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and some of us even know that Iraqi civilians are suffering far worse. It's hard to disagree with a General who is facing a bloody summer and says We're doing heavy fighting...There's a war on out there." ( http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070527/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_memorial_day)
The current popular point of view for most progressives regarding Iraq is (and has been) that we should not have invaded Iraq and that this war was a mistake based on lies. Though that may be (okay, is definitely) true, this doesn't change the fact of our present situation - we are at war, and nobody wants to lose a war. After the 2006 elections showed that people were fed up with the war in Iraq, it seemed the Democrats must be on an upward swing, and Bush's downfall was inevitable. I still believe that's true, but right now the lack of a powerful common vision that progressives can unite behind is making it easy for the right to portray those in the anti-war movement as "pessimists who are determined to lose". The problem, as oft stated, is that the "war on terror" is a metaphor - and you can't win a metaphor. Or can you?
The one thing, in some ways the only thing, that the right still has going for it is that it is committed to winning a war. But with "Mission Accomplished", and no clear end in sight, does anyone even know what winning a war would look like? Does it mean we've decimated populations? Does it mean we're profiting off the riches of the conquered nations natural resources? This seems to be the unspoken understanding, though I doubt that most people, even those who say they want to win the war, actually want to see this happen (though I may be overestimating people). I think when most people think "we want to win", it's the metaphor of the hero that comes to mind. We want to be a heroic and strong nation. We don't people to see us as a nation that lost a war, or even a nation that kinda won a war and then had a really long occupation and after a lot of political turmoil, left it in a shambles to figure out its fate for itself. Can you win a war that's just a metaphor? The Cold War seems to be an example of a non-war that was "won" in a non-traditional way. So what would it take to win the war on terror, from the standpoint of progressive values of empathy and responsibility?
Though I want this war to end quickly, the current proposals and timetables don't strike me as particularly empathetic or responsible. Though I may be victim to biased media and not enough fact, the proposals by Congress so far have seemed - well, better than war without end - but hardly inspiring. While I can't claim to have an answer to what it would mean to truly win the war, from a progressive point of view. My sense is that it begins with what Jim Wallis said he shared with the President years ago when they had a chance to meet. "Unless we drain the swamp of injustice in which these mosquitoes of terrorism breed, we'll never overcome terrorism."
Terrorists did not bomb the World Trade Center, and kill themselves, because they hate freedom. While I can't pretend to understand what the precise motives of the individuals involved in the those attacks, it seems clear that our current actions are creating levels of hatred that will only encourage future generations to take similarly drastic actions. The progressive frame for winning the war on terror must come from our most courageous visions. Regardless of whether we think, or ever thought, that the war we now find ourselves in was justified or not, it is still our responsibility. True courage dictates that we not just end the war but win it, that we find a way to take this horrendous situation and do everything we can to help put Iraq on the path toward peace, and create (and follow) new and stronger standards for global social justice that will drain the swamps where our future enemies may breed.
What progressive values are you emphasizing?
Betsy,
Your last sentence on “true courage” seems to beg the question how is that progressive?
The three core values of a progressive are “empathy, responsibility & strength;” empathy for EVERYONE involved, responsibility for myself and society, and the strength to act in caring and responsible ways.”
Help me understand how your post and especially your last sentence is progressive? It seems more conservative than progressive to me.
Does anyone else have this impression?
Although
Betsy said:
My sense is that it begins with what Jim Wallis said he shared with the President years ago when they had a chance to meet. "Unless we drain the swamp of injustice in which these mosquitoes of terrorism breed, we'll never overcome terrorism."
The whole tone of Betsy's post completely and utterly contradicts the meaning of those words. Betsy, you seem to think that there is a military solution to that which Jim Wallis and MANY others have stated there isn't. "Draining the swamps" does not mean raining death and destruction upon a nation and people that were not involved in attacking our nation and people. It means establishing social justice, finding peaceful resolutions to conflicts, and leveling the playing field so everyone has a chance. The sooner we do THAT, the more irrelevant Al-Quaeda becomes. there is one thing Bush has said that is correct; we need to win the hearts and minds of the people. And we cannot do that by blowing them up.
As for timetables, well...the Iraqis do have to stand up for themselves eventually. I think they're ready, but they're just scared to have us let go. I'm reasonably certain that they'll be fine, though. After all, they do live in the cradle of civilization.
courage and reframing what it means to win
Thanks for your input. To respond to your objection, what i'm proposing is a reframing of the very concept of "winning" a war. I am not in any way suggesting that we rain down death and destruction - quite the opposite. I'm suggesting that we seek to solve the root causes of violence, including economic inequity, ignorance of other people's plight, and false separation of people through religious and national ideologies, and see THIS as a way to win war. Wouldn't creating peace be a great way to win a war?
As for the previous question, as to whether courage is a progressive value, I can only say that it damn well better be. Empathy, responsibility and strength without courage are not possible. The idea that courage and honor belong only to conservatives and warmakers and not to progressives and peacemakers is a toxic lie that does an injustice to the greatest progressive rolemodels, like Gandhi and MLK, and gives an undue advantage to cowardly politicians who somehow portray themselves as courageous defenders while they hide behind desks and make decisions that destroy lives.
Very odd
The first time I read your previous post, it said something completely different to me than it did this time. I re-read it before reading your current post and the aggressiveness I saw in it the first time was not there. I think that only goes to show what the visceral reaction to any "war" frame is. We all know what war is, what war entails, and that the way to win is to destroy the other side and make them suffer until they surrender. Which is completely against any nurturing instincts we have. But even after analyzing your post and understanding what you mean by reframing "winning the war", I still have to disagree with using "war".
I agree that solving the root causes of violence is what needs to be done. Just as solving the root causes of drug use is a way to curb that. But look what happened when THAT was framed as the "war on drugs". How happy are Colombian farmers with having destruction rained down upon their fields because we declared "war" on drugs? Those farmers were dealing with their poverty the best way they knew how and we completely destroyed them. The only thing war brings is destruction. Nothing constructive comes out of it. Well, except when we figure out how to use some of the new technologies in other ways. And even then, it may not always be a good thing, after all, we still have no idea what to do with the waste from nuclear reactors....but I digress. If you want to deal with poverty and ignorance (I'll leave out hate, because most hate is bred from ignorance) that's wonderful. But if you call it the "war on ignorance" you'll inevitably get something blown up. If you call it the "war on poverty", rich people will end up headless....Ok, maybe that wouldn't be so bad...but who decides what "rich" is? (Joking, in case it didn't come across...where are my emoticons when I need them?) Framing anything as "war" just seems to me to be a recipe for disaster.
We Already Won the War with Iraq
Didn't you see that "Mission Accomplished" banner? We defeated the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein rather handsomely. Since then we have been engaged in an occupation of a foreign country. Unfortunately for us, that country is now engaged in a civil war. We can not win Iraq's civil war for them. That is something they must figure out for themselves.
The sooner we figure that out and end our occupation, the better off everyone will be.
Mission Creep
Hi Betsy,
The Iraq War is a classic example of what military theorists call "mission creep," when the objectives of a mission keep getting nudged farther and farther away. In its most simple (albeit ironic) terms, mission creep is "refusing to take Yes for an answer."
When the war was proposed and authorized, the stated objective was to topple the Saddam Hussein regime and thus ensure that he could not funnel WMDs to terrorists. We accomplished that objective four years ago, in May 2003. What has followed was classic mission creep. We didn't find WMDs, or proof that Saddam Hussein had been planning to supply them to Al Qaeda. The wild stories about Iraq having a special forces contingent of 800 operators ready to strike inside the U.S. were just that: wild stories. In short, had we brought our troops home in May-July 2003, all that could have been claimed is that they'd toppled a third-rate dictator ... hardly the kind of story likely to breed a new generation of American heroes.
So, the stated objective began changing. Yes, Saddam Hussein was gone, but the U.S. had to stay there until a functional new Iraqi government was in place (the "Pottery Barn Rule"). Yes, there's an Iraqi govermnent but the U.S. had to stay until they ratify a constitution. Yes, there's now a constitution, but the U.S. had to stay to put down the insurgency ... to stop sectarian violence ... to curb Iranian ambitions for a client state in Baghdad ... to prevent a regional sectarian war....
I said "stated objective" in the prior two paragraphs because I don't think toppling Saddam Hussein, or any of the objectives offered since, was the primary mission from the outset. History will show that the primary mission was one the American people would never have supported: the privatization of Iraq's oil production, as a first step toward privitazing oil production throughout the region.
In the past six months, Bush Administration officials have several times mentioned the Maliki government's need to prove its capacity to govern by passing the new oil-sharing law. That sounds benign - ensuring that the oil-rich Kurds and Shi'a share the wealth with the oil-poor Sunni - until you read the details. The proposed bill would divide the "national income" from oil production according to population: 40% to the Kurds, 40% to the Shi'a, 20% to the Sunni. However, "national income" would be only one-quarter of the income from the production; the rest would go to British and U.S. corporations who would hold forty-year development and production leases on Iraqi oil fields.
In short, the new oil-sharing law would establish a 75-10-10-5 plan, with 75% going to the lease-holding corporation, 10% to the Kurds, 10% to the Shi'a, and 5% to the Sunni. This plan, essentially a return to the mercantile colonialism that existed until the Arab independence movements nationalized oil resources in the 1960s, has been touted as the model for oil privatization plans throughout the region.
The Bush Administration has made plain to the Maliki government that the passage of this bill is a necessary precondition for the draw down of U.S. combat troops. The U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq to seize control of the oil resources, and will not leave - at least not under this president - until we have that control.
Ironically, the person most responsible for our continued presence in Iraq might be Peter Galbraith, a former diplomat (and ABC News contributor) whose personal history of working with the Iraqi Kurds led to his representing them in their early efforts with the Coalition Provisional Authroity (the occupation government). The CPA under Paul Bremer had intended to privatize Iraq's oil resources, along with her electric grid and other utilities, as part of the U.S.-led "transition."
Galbraith explained that this plan would violate international law, which requires an occupying government to act as a trustee for the occupied country, and prohibits the occupier from selling off assets or resources that were owned by the government of the occupied country. And while the U.S. is not a signatory to or member of the International Criminal Court and thus U.S. officials could not be criminally liable, those privatization contracts would still be illegal under the International Uniform Commercial Code, and thus could be voided through the International Court of Justice (the "World Court," which handles commercial and civil cases).
Amazingly, no one in the Bush Administration had considered this legal fact prior to the invasion!
Because the U.S. is a signatory to the IUCC, and a founding member of the ICJ, and U.S. corporations rely on the IUCC and ICJ to resolve the many routine commercial disputes that arise in international business, the Coalition Provisional Authority could not simply ignore the law. The CPA could not privatize Iraqi assets, thus we had to create a puppet Iraqi government to do it for us.
And thus began, and thus continues, the "mission creep." The Bush plan is to offer up to the American people new rationales, new justifications, new dire predictions of horrific consequences - ad infinitum - until an Iraqi government passes the oil bill ... signing over to U.S. and British corporations a 75% interest in Iraq's most precious natural resource.
So ... do you still want to "win" this war, Betsy?
Crissie
Diary on DailyKos
I have posted a diary on DailyKos about this piece. You can find it here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/28/144942/076
need snappy framing phrases!
- OK, so I should be inventing these myself, but
- what I miss most in this article are some suggestions for framing phrases that have pizzazz -- that will stick in people's minds and fly out of their mouths!
"The role of the president is to carry out the agenda defined by Congress."
That's about as exciting as: "Ingredients: Water, sodium bicarbonate, silica, ....."
Let's let the imaginations run here and get together some more firey phrases!
Michael Rodemer
We, the people, want out of Iraq!
Congress is the Decider
I like the headline that serves as the title of the article, here:
- Congress is the Decider.
Why don't we start there?
It's like Congress is the Board, and President is the CEO who reports to the Board. But the Board sets strategy, and the CEO executes that strategy. Didn't W originally run on a platform to "run the country like a business"? Here's the business frame that should govern.
- The President works for The People.
Congress should have just sent the same bill that Bush vetoed right back to him, with a scold attached remonstrating him for insubordination.
provide online action tools?
I think it would be great if Rockridge offered online action tools (like CapWiz or something) to enable more responses to more targets more easily by more people.
There are an increasing number of orgs out there that are fine-tuning their use of these tools, and they might be able to provide experience-based advice to help get these things set up and strategically configured, especially if these actions can tie-in with their own issue agendas.
If Rockridge is going to get into the Constituent Action business (which I think is indeed a good idea), it should get to the state of the art with available tools.
Call to action, but then enable the action as much as possible with efficiency tools. Especially (but not exclusively) in the case of emails, there is a "volume discount" at work that is matched against other email received. If other email campaigns are using these tools, they will get higher volume simply by lowering statistical barriers to participation.
The policy "formulation" is great. Now how about working on the "implementation". :-)
Political Move?
This may have been suggested already, but it might be possible that the lack of push to withdraw funding may have very well been a calculated political move intended to increase democratic chances for success in 2008. That is, if the Democratic Party accepts the Bush veto, then they can run on a Presidential platform next year of ending the Iraq war. The war then becomes "Bush's War", as Senator Clinton said in the debates the other night. As long as the war is his, and thus the Republican Party's war, and the American people are dissatisfied with it, the Democratic party can rely on that dissatisfaction to get a Democratic President into the White House.
However, if they cut off funding now, with so long to go until the next election, there is a chance that the political fallout will hurt the Democratic party in 2008 because the presidential candidate won't have the Iraq platform to stand upon. Although there are a great many other issues facing this country, arguably none are quite as polarizing as this war. Could it therefore be that the Democratic party made a good faith effort to stop the war, and then intend to rely on the next presidential nominee to make good on the promise?
Regards,
Adam Franklin
New! To be clear...
I posted this, but George Lakoff and Glenn Smith wrote it, with help from Christina Smith.
Regarding your question, lrasmusn, about why Congressional leaders did not simply respond to Bush's veto by stating that they would not provide another funding bill, I think that it goes back to their acceptance of Bush's framing of responsibility. Bush was able to assert that the responsibility of the Congress was to provide the funding that the troops need to accomplish the mission set by the Commander in Chief. Members of Congress did not challenge Bush's inaccurate framing of the roles of the Congress and the president. Once that framing became established, some members of Congress who favor withdrawal from Iraq likely felt that they had no choice but to provide the funding requested.
Thanks for the question.
Evan