"Democratic leaders haven't been able to come up with a message that doesn't echo Bush's war policy.-- WASHINGTON -- If Democratic Party leaders were listening to me, I'd give them some good old-fashioned advice: Run to the head of the parade so that you can lead it.
As remarkable as President Bush's slump in the polls has been for his handling of the war during these dog days of discontent, so is the failure of Democrats to benefit from the president's tumble in the polls.
In an early August Newsweek poll, for example, 61 percent of those surveyed disapproved of Bush's handling of the Iraq war and only 26 percent agreed with his wish to keep American troops there for "as long as it takes."
As Bush's approval ratings have diminished, the Democrats have not benefited. Just 42 percent of Americans approved of congressional Democrats, according to a June Washington Post-ABC News poll, a figure that was about 2 percentage points lower than Bush's.
And, going into the August congressional recess, polls were showing disapproval of Congress' performance to be higher than it has been since 1994, the year voters swept Democrats out of power on Capitol Hill. Unfortunately for Democratic incumbents, their approvals have not been significantly higher than those of their Republican counterparts.
The public sees the problem that Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) described Sunday on ABC's "This Week": America is getting "locked into a bogged-down problem" like Vietnam. "The longer we stay, the more problems we are going to have," said the decorated Vietnam veteran and a possible 2008 presidential candidate.
Yet, while the debate over the Iraq war has erupted between Republicans and Republicans, Democrats wrestle with an ambivalence that reminds me of Gore Vidal's description of the Vietnam War-era Congress: Unsure of whether to be hawks or doves, they sound like capons."-from Clarence Page's column in The Chicago Tribune today.
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