Sen. Biden gets wish granted with Iraq-only debate

Sen. Joseph Biden’s (D-Del.) call for a Democratic debate “focused solely on ending the war in Iraq” was answered this week, but he might be the only person who attends.

Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies’ Center on Politics and Foreign Relations invited the Democratic presidential field to participate in a 90-minute debate on June 6 where Iraq will be the only discussion topic.

{mosads}At press time, only one candidate aside from Biden had answered questions from The Hill about whether they planned to attend.

Sen. Christopher Dodd’s (D-Conn.) campaign said the senator would not be attending because of a scheduling conflict, though the campaign declined to specify what that conflict is.

“But yes, in our view, the American public deserves a substantive debate of the nation’s most pressing issues; this certainly falls into that category,” a campaign spokeswoman said.

Biden accepted the invitation yesterday, less than a week after he asked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the news networks to devote at least one of the six DNC sanctioned debates to the war.

“Sen. Biden believes that Iraq is the single most important issue facing our country today and that the American people want to understand the options for ending this war,” Biden’s campaign said in a letter accepting the invitation. “They deserve to hear from all of the candidates in a much more substantive way about how they intend to bring our troops home and protect our interests in Iraq and in the region.”

In recent months, other candidates and their staffs have echoed Biden’s call for such a debate.

In February, a spokesman for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) campaign told the Las Vegas Review-Journal the senator “wouldn’t miss a debate on Iraq.”

And last month, a spokesman for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said “it’s sometimes not easy to compress how to fix Iraq into a 60-second answer.”

Robert Guttman, director of the center, said he got the idea from watching the first Democratic debate in South Carolina.
Guttman said he would like to have a “free-flowing” debate, one without lecterns and bells that sound after 30 seconds.

“The issue of the war in Iraq is too serious to be discussed in short sound bites,” Guttman said in his invitation. “Our debate on Iraq will let the American people see and hear where the candidates stand on the war and their plans and strategies for what they would do once they are in the White House.”

Guttman told The Hill he is playing with a number of different formats and ideas, among them inviting public figures that opted not to run like Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), ex-Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (D) and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack (D) to participate on the panel alongside Iraq War experts.

He added that he has approached former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) to help moderate.

Guttman said he has been in conversations with schedulers, foreign policy advisers and campaign managers, encouraging their candidates to attend, as well as the various networks.

He offered two dates for the debate, June 5 and 6, and Biden accepted for the 6th.

Though the DNC announced last week the six debates it would sanction, DNC spokeswoman Stacie Paxton said the committee was not discouraging candidates from attending any other forums or debates.

Biden had asked DNC Chairman Howard Dean and the networks to ensure one of the six debates would focus only on Iraq.
“From the beginning of the process we have been in ongoing talks with our network partners on how to best address the important issues facing the country and those discussions certainly include Iraq,” Paxton said.