Testimony is platform for ’08 rivals

The political calculations of presidential hopefuls and Republicans in tough reelection races will be on full display at Tuesday’s Senate hearings featuring the top U.S. officials in Iraq.

{mosads}At the nationally televised hearings, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and the top American envoy there, Ryan Crocker, are expected to echo nuanced testimony they gave at a contentious House hearing on Monday, citing signs of military progress amid deep political instability in the region. The testimony on the status of the war is unlikely to break the legislative stalemate on Capitol Hill, but is certain to provide fodder for opponents and supporters of the candidates whose statements and questions at the hearings will be closely scrutinized.

The four Senate Democrats seeking the presidency are weighing how aggressively to attack the general’s testimony at the hearings while differentiating themselves from their Democratic opponents.

On the six-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Democratic candidates will have to consider whether to risk criticism from the right by questioning the credibility of Petraeus and siding with the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org, which says the general is “cooking the books” for President Bush. Or they’ll have to consider whether to levy only measured criticism of the testimony and risk further infuriating a base already angry that Democrats are not standing firm enough against Bush’s handling of the unpopular war.

“They’ll need to ask tough questions and look like leaders without antagonizing the general,” a professor of government at Dartmouth College, Linda Fowler, said. “It is not a foregone conclusion that [the hearings are] a plus for either party’s senators.”

The three vulnerable Republicans will walk a similar tightrope at the hearings. Support for the war remains strong among Republican faithful but has hit rock-bottom among the general public. All summer long, vulnerable GOP senators have been pleading for their constituents to wait until this week’s hearings before casting judgment on whether to bring troops home. At the hearings, the vulnerable Republicans will have to be skeptical of the testimony without being overly critical, analysts say.

Sen. John Ensign (Nev.), who heads the campaign arm for Senate Republicans, said there is a political risk for any candidate appearing to put his or her political interests ahead of the nation’s.

“If you worry about everything that you say, whether it’s politically correct instead of just being right, in the end, I think it comes back to bite you,” Ensign said.

The first stop on Tuesday by Petraeus and Crocker is before the Foreign Relations Committee, where three Democratic presidential candidates sit — Chairman Joseph Biden of Delaware, Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Barack Obama of Illinois. Two of the most vulnerable Senate Republicans facing reelection in 2008, Norm Coleman of Minnesota and John Sununu of New Hampshire, also sit on the panel.

In the face of Petraeus’s bleak assessment of the political progress in the region, Biden is expected to renew his calls for a decentralized federal system dividing the country’s warring ethnic factions. Dodd’s campaign, meanwhile, issued a critical statement Monday, saying questions about the credibility of the testimony are “not surprising given that [the testimony] was brought to you by this White House.”

Obama, who has defended himself against accusations of being a foreign policy novice from his Democratic rivals, is expected to renew criticism of the war and subtly continue to differentiate himself from Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) by pointing to his opposition to the war from its start.

Obama’s questions at the hearing could presage what his campaign is dubbing a major Iraq speech he plans to deliver in Iowa on Wednesday.

“Changing the definition of success to stay the course with the wrong policy is the wrong course for our troops and our national security,” Obama said in a statement Monday.

The two officials will testify on Tuesday afternoon before the Armed Services Committee, where Clinton sits along with ranking Republican and presidential aspirant Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who also faces a tough reelection race next year.

McCain is likely to furiously defend both the surge’s progress and Petraeus’s assessment, and has already called on Clinton and other Democratic candidates to disavow the MoveOn ad in The New York Times, which called Gen. Petraeus “General Betray Us.” McCain, joined by other Republicans, said Democratic candidates should condemn the group “in the strongest terms possible.”

Clinton has yet to show her cards on how she plans to approach the hearing, but signaled at a Democratic debate on Sunday that she would be unmoved by the assessment of Petraeus and Crocker.

“There isn’t a solution, and this I’ve said for many years,” she said Sunday.

After the testimony, the Senate Republicans are certain to face increased pressure to break further from the president.

Coleman said Monday that he sees room for a bipartisan consensus on Iraq, and called on the president to “work with us” in forging a solution for the war.