Walking a fine line

Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) risk alienating veterans or anti-war Democrats when they address the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) national convention next week.

Obama and Clinton will be joined at the convention in Kansas City, Mo., the VFW’s largest, by such past, present and potential adversaries as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) and President Bush.

{mosads}While McCain and Bush almost undoubtedly will receive a hero’s welcome from the veterans — the former because he is one of them, the latter because he is a wartime commander in chief — Obama and Clinton will have a fine line to walk.

“I think [the attendees will] hear them out, be polite [but] they’ll be skeptical of what they’re saying,” Vets for Freedom spokesman Adariel Domenech said.

The Democratic presidential candidates face a tricky balancing act in addressing a group that supports Bush and the Iraq troop surge, particularly having just voted against the Iraq war supplemental as they continue to jockey for favor with the party’s anti-war wing.

VFW national commander Gary Kurpius earlier this month returned from a trip to Iraq, extolling the merits of the surge and advocating for more time and patience for the mission.

“We don’t want to have another Vietnam where we walk away,” VFW executive director Bob Wallace told The Hill.

Wallace added: “Saddam Hussein was a crazy man. The whole world thought he had chemical weapons.”

Those statements clearly are at odds with the majority of the Democratic Party, not to mention to the two leading candidates trying to secure its presidential nomination.

Wallace said he thinks the audience, which he expects to include just fewer than 6,000 people, will receive the candidates from both sides “respectfully.”

“They’re coming to our house, so I wouldn’t expect anyone not to respect them,” Wallace said.

He added that while his and Kurpius’s opinions represent the “overwhelming majority” of the VFW’s members, there are probably some who disagree.

Wallace said all of the candidates, including McCain, have made comments on the war and other foreign policy issues that leave veterans unsettled.

“All of the candidates have said things that some of us are shaking our heads at,” Wallace said.

Wallace said the veterans take issue with Obama’s and Clinton’s recent votes against the war supplemental, but also disagreed with McCain’s criticism of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

One McCain official said his campaign is focused only on the senator’s reception, and they expect it to be a warm one.
“As for Obama and Clinton, it’ll be interesting to see the reception they receive, especially with all the flip-flopping on the war,” the official said.

“I would think that given Walter Reed, Sens. Obama and Clinton will not be at a loss for words,” analyst Charlie Cook said, noting that Democrats “have been very careful to avoid anything that could be construed as criticism of the troops.”

Veteran care may be just the ticket Clinton and Obama need if they want to avoid alienating the 2.4 million VFW members as well as the vocal, primary-voting anti-war Democrats.

A spokeswoman for the anti-war group Code Pink, Dana Balicki, said the group would be watching the speech for any signs of pandering or capitulating on their issues, particularly when it comes to Iraq and Iran.

“We always have a little hope that we’ll be surprised,” Balicki said, adding that she is afraid Clinton and Obama “will do what they’ve been guilty of, which is to walk so fine a line, you don’t walk any line at all.”

Both campaigns, however, indicated Tuesday that the senators would not shy away from the elephant in the room.

“Obama was against this war before it began and has a plan to get our troops out as quickly and responsibly as possible,”
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in an e-mail. “Veterans we’ve spoken with agree with Obama that the way we can best support our troops is by getting them out of the middle of a civil war in Iraq.”

And Clinton’s spokesman, Phil Singer, said: “Senator Clinton has a long and extensive record of supporting the troops but believes we’ve reached a critical point on Iraq and that we need to increase the pressure on the White House to change its policy.”

Bush, Wallace said, will receive a stellar reception as commander in chief as those before him have, including former President Bill Clinton.

The “real question,” Wallace said, is Thompson, the unannounced candidate making what could be his first big speech on foreign affairs.

Wallace said Thompson will not be able to address such a large group of veterans and “talk about ‘Law & Order’ … he’s going to have to have some substance.”

Representatives for Thompson did not return calls seeking comment.

Politically speaking, Kansas City will be the group’s largest convention, having grown from a plan launched in 1999 to open VFW posts in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to presidential candidates.

The group decided to expand, resulting in this year’s convention, for which it decided in March to invite the “top tier” of candidates from both sides of the aisle, which the group decided from public polling at the time.

McCain, Clinton and Obama all readily accepted. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) had scheduling conflicts, Wallace said, so the group approached Thompson about three weeks ago.

The VFW’s political arm has not endorsed a candidate for president since backing former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) in 1996. Wallace said it will not endorse a candidate for president in this election.