WurfWhile

[Editor Note: I wrote this post a little while ago but didn’t have time to post it. It still seems sufficiently worthwhile to post - so here you go.]

Dan Conley, a former speechwriter for Virginia Governor Doug Wilder and then Mayor Daley, was/is shopping for communications jobs and Mark Warner was a possibility, so filter what he says with that caveat. That said, on Warner I agree with much of what he’s saying (and here) - and I take the lack of response I got on the Illinois for Warner Yahoo list about Warner’s recent Iraq comments as a really bad sign.

Here’s a critical chunk from Dan (explicatives edited with underscores so you get the point and I get to be family-friendly):

“You know the old saying that if you have nothing nice to say you should say nothing at all? When it comes to foreign policy, I have an amendment for Democrats — if you have nothing to say, say nothing at all. Or more succinctly, just shut the f____ up. Spare me the ‘I take responsibility for my vote’ comments. Listen, the American people send you to do a job that demands you take responsibility for EVERY vote. So don’t hide behind that bull____. And if you’re a fairly unknown Governor with no foreign policy experience, don’t think that being non-controversial and typically Democratic is going to put the country at ease. It’s just going to make you look like a typical Democrat.

If the war was right then and right now then we should stay. If the war was wrong then, it’s wrong now and we should get out as soon as possible. But if the war just seemed right then, either you were lied to and you’re mad as hell about it or you didn’t take your job seriously enough to examine the evidence, in which case you should resign in disgrace. And if you didn’t have to vote then and really have no clue what we should do now, don’t feel bad about that, because the American people are in the same boat.

You, Governor Warner, don’t have to have the answers, it’s not your job. You should be the voice of the pissed off outsider. Everyone in Washington has screwed this up and you should be the one demanding that we not only re-fight how we got into this war, but how we conducted it and how we’ll get out of it. If you refuse to take up this role, then I’m going to go shopping for another candidate — Democratic, Republican or Independent — with the balls to do it.

Why? Because whether this war is over in 2008 or not, there will be other wars. There will be calls to invade Iran or North Korea or Venezuela. There will be evidence and there will be tough decisions. And until every elected official is held accountable for what he or she got wrong the last time, who has confidence we’ll be on the right side of history the next time?”

Like Dan and Seymour Hersh (please read the New Yorker article link there too), who Dan mentions but doesn’t link to, I believe we’re in Iraq for a while - long enough for it to still be an issue in 2008. Taking off, so to speak, from Hersh’s analysis, I think there will be more talk about “costs” (in dollars and military tradeoffs) during the 2008 presidential campaign (bombing isn’t cheap in dollars - not to mention Iraqi lives). Depending on whether America still has significant, but even more insufficient, numbers of ground troops in Iraq, our continued casualties will also be a big issue.

In Dan’s other, related Warner post, he writes:

“Apparently Warner will run as a Hillary Clinton/Joe Biden/Evan Bayh Democrat on foreign policy and defense matters. That might be a reasonable strategy if Clinton, Biden and Bayh weren’t running. Now, foreign policy is just another way for Warner to blend into the scenery. He’s learned the wrong lesson from the Dean campaign … it wasn’t Dean’s war opposition that sunk him, it was his wild eyed temperament. By 2008, opposition to the Iraq War will be seen as a sign of sanity, not weakness.
….
But hey, if he’s running for VP, running on a Hillary platform is an aces way to get the number two slot. As for me, I’m sick of supporting guys angling for the Veep … so Warner better get his act together soon or I’ll be looking elsewhere.”

With exception taken on the Dean comment, I think Dan’s largely right here too, although I would add John Edwards to his Clinton/Biden/Bayh list. I find it hard to see what Warner could do to “get his act together soon” as far as Iraq goes. Who will join Senator Russ Feingold as a Democratic alternative to the ’stay the course’ Iraq crowd? Is there a Democrat that wants a real shot at winning? Increasingly I see prospects for at least one. Dan probably ought to give him a call - but I’m guessing most of the staff positions are already filled.