Politics of war look familiar

President Bush is cheered by the troops in Baghdad, but many Americans still think the war in Iraq was a mistake.

Sen. Hillary Clinton is booed by a gathering of liberals in Washington, D.C., when she says it would be a mistake to set a date for troop withdrawal.

Sen. John Kerry is applauded when he tells those same liberals that he was misled into supporting the war and that continuing it is a mistake.

And Congress engages in a heavily partisan debate on the future of the war.

Iraq is creating fresh fault lines that could rattle both political parties in at least the next two elections. Will it create third-party challenges À la George Wallace during the Vietnam War in 1968? Already, a serious intra-party challenge has arisen in Connecticut, where veteran Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman faces a primary challenge from anti-war candidate and businessman Ned Lamont. Just six years ago, Lieberman was his party’s vice presidential nominee.

So far this is not 1968, with the massive marches on the street or the takeovers of buildings on college campuses. The differences are obvious and not so obvious.

In ‘68, the military draft meant that many more American families were directly touched by the war than with today’s volunteer force.

Politically, the battle over the war is still primarily inside the established political structure, as evidenced by the evolving position of Kerry, the Democrats’ 2004 presidential candidate; and of the raspberries directed at Clinton at the Campaign for America’s Future annual conference.

But part of the difference is technological. Anti-war sentiment is stirring most fervently among the liberal bloggers who are storming the information superhighway, not the streets. And so far, they are focusing on changing the Democratic Party, not changing the system.

Republicans are far less divided on the war than they are on illegal immigration. Bush seemed buoyant upon his return from a morale-boosting trip to Baghdad. But the war remains a daunting challenge and the defining issue of his presidency. Only 36 percent of respondents in a new USA Today-Gallup Poll approved of how he is handling Iraq. Over half – 51 percent – said it was a mistake to send troops. One of Bush’s biggest challenges in upcoming elections will be to rally Republicans nervous about the war, conflicted on how to handle 12 million undocumented immigrants, and mad at him for federal spending and deficits.

In the long term, Clinton’s position is not dissimilar. She is clearly the favorite in the Democrats’ 2008 presidential sweepstakes, but a Hillary backlash – much of it because of her position on the war – is also rising.

Even before she came to the Campaign for America’s Future conference, liberal bloggers had been scolding her for supporting an anti-abortion Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania and for holding a fundraiser with conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Privately, advisers to other potential ‘08 candidates were even suggesting Clinton might not run.

On the popular MyDD blog site, Matt Stoller wrote that Clinton is “not where the country is” on Iraq and any number of issues.

“It’s not really her fault,” Stoller wrote. “She lives in a bubble. Anyone in her position would have to do so, or risk going insane. But it is what it is, and it means she has exceptionally bad judgment.”

The booing of Hillary Clinton raises an interesting political symbolism question: Was it a Bill Clinton moment or a Hubert Humphrey moment?

Her husband defined himself as a different kind of Democrat – a centrist, not the bleeding-heart liberal stereotype of the 1980s – by his willingness to confront powerful coalitions in his own party. The most famous of these episodes came when then-candidate Bill Clinton criticized a rap artist for divisive racial lyrics at a Jesse Jackson-sponsored event in the 1992 campaign, thereby defining himself by one enemy.

Whether purposely or not, did Hillary help to solidify centrist supporters with the show of hostility from the left?

Or was it a foreshadowing of the kind of struggles Humphrey had over Vietnam during the 1968 campaign? After war-weary Lyndon Johnson decided not to seek re-election, the Happy Warrior was flanked left by a series of anti-war candidates. The split over Vietnam inside the Democratic Party spilled into violence at the Chicago convention, helped legitimize Wallace’s third-party challenge in conservative Democrats’ minds, and led to Nixon’s squeaker victory in a splintered electorate.

As with Humphrey, Democrats with presidential ambitions are lining up to Clinton’s left on the war. Among them are Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and the Democrats’ 2004 ticket of Kerry and ex-Sen. John Edwards.