Charting a course on changeable seas

Presidential and congressional debate over Iraq and the proper balance between diplomacy and the projection of American power has laid bare the difficulties faced by Democrats who want to lead their party and nation.

The sensibilities of Americans from the center to the far left force Democratic leaders to steer a course between Scylla and Charybdis — between what will be perceived by centrists as naïve, pacifist extremism and what will be seen by leftists as an unprincipled sell-out to the establishment and military-industrial complex.

It would be difficult to steer this course even if the political seas were not prone to constant change, with new currents, undertows and riptides appearing out of nowhere. Yesterday’s wisdom becomes today’s folly.

In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), herself a natural liberal, this week angered the Progressive Caucus by allowing a vote on the Iraq bill from Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and John Tanner (D-Tenn.) that the left thinks too mild and likely to give Republicans political cover.

For a while, it was the Republicans who suffered by seeming to be the obstructionists in the Iraq debate. But the tide turned, and now it is the Democrats who have more political need to pass legislation on the matter.

The vicissitudes of the presidential trail are even more stark, and change with even more frequency. When Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said in the South Carolina debate that he would meet Fidel Castro and America’s other enemies within a year of moving into the Oval Office, it was a neophyte’s response. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) pounced, rightly pointing out that such summits must be earned and cannot be allowed to present tyrants propaganda gifts.

But as the argument plodded on through several days, the scales did not fall from the eyes of the Democratic base, as Clinton’s campaign hoped, and it was eventually she rather than Obama who had to offer the olive branch. (It was first extended by her husband.)

But Obama also had to make sure there was no lingering impression that he is a foreign policy rube who will be putty in our adversaries’ hands. Hence his speech this week, in which he said he would, as president, either force the Pakistani government to root out al Qaeda terrorists from their bolt-holes or else send American forces into Pakistan to do the job.

Tough stuff. And Clinton, when asked about it, said she would do very much the same.

So in the space of less than two weeks, Obama found himself going from pacifist patsy to hawkish anti-terrorist, and Clinton found herself at first pouncing and then supporting.

The politics of national security are exquisitely difficult for Democrats. It is impossible for a candidate to get it right throughout the long course of a White House campaign. In politics (as in newspapers), perfection is sadly not an option.