I debated whether or not to say anything about this here. Criticizing Democrats is not something I want to get into a habit of doing here, nor do I wish for this to become my own personal soapbox. This is a community blog. So, I offer a disclaimer, in addition to the standard caveat, that this is my own opinion. I say these things not because I like Chuck Hagel or hate Ben Nelson. I will never vote for Hagel, and I do not regret my vote for Nelson. But I feel a duty when I see a member of my party - and the only elected Democrat in state or federal office in Nebraska - betraying what I feel the principles of the party stand for, that I must stand up and say so.
Being a “good Democrat” means certain things to certain people. Indeed, it means different things to many in this group. We have varying degrees of partisanship, but are generally all committed to the idea that Democrats have the right ideas. Which is why it pains me when a fellow Democrat gets things so remarkably and consistently wrong.
I dutifully voted for Ben Nelson for United States Senate this past year, motivated by a desire to see a Democratic Senate, and by the intolerable notion of a Senator Pete Ricketts. Fortunately, Nelson won, and the Democrats took the Senate. That Nelson won by such a large margin is too his credit, and speaks well to his record. It also provides him with an opportunity to take leadership in the United States Senate, and abandon an overly cautious approach. Nelson can afford to be a progressive - but, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that he wants to be one.
The line quoted in the title comes from Nelson’s Republican colleague in the Senate, Chuck Hagel. Hagel, voting in favor of the resolution he co-sponsored with Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Joe Biden (D-DE), gave a stirring speech to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
There is no strategy. This is a ping-pong game with American lives.
These young men and women that we put in Anbar province, in Iraq, in Baghdad are not beans. They’re real lives. And we better be damn sure we know what we’re doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder. We better be as sure as you can be.
And I want every one of you, every one of us, 100 senators to look in that camera, and you tell your people back home what you think. Don’t hide anymore; none of us.
To other Republicans, Hagel said this:
“This is a very real, responsible, addressing of the most divisive issue in this country since Vietnam. Sure, it’s tough. Absolutely. And, I think, all 100 senators ought to be on the line on this. What do you believe? What are you willing to support? What do you think? Why were you elected? If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes.“
We can debate the merits of the resolution all we want - whether it will actually accomplish anything is doubtful. But this is the minimum standard: stand in opposition to the President’s plan to escalate the war in Iraq. If you object to that language, if you think that a non-binding resolution is going to be too harsh, then it tells me exactly where you stand. And, unfortunately, Ben Nelson believes that this resolution is too harsh on the President.
I can give Nelson a minimal amount of credit for co-sponsoring a resolution expressing disapproval with the President’s plan. But he fails to understand the fundamental point of this debate. To express clear and unequivocal opposition to the administration’s policy, and to get us out of Iraq, as soon as humanly possible! Allowing the administration to set the tone of the debate, allowing the other side to set the language and terms of the debate, guarantees failure. If you demonstrate and announce that calling a spade a spade is too harsh then you demonstrate to the American people that you don’t have the stomach for this debate. You don’t want to go any further than telling the President you have “reservations” with his policy. But you don’t want to hurt his feelings? This President? This administration? The ones who have called opponents of the war everything from Nazi appeasers to traitors to outright terrorists? The ones who have been wrong every step of the way?
Senator Nelson has demonstrated his intention here, to water down opposition to this disastrous policy by using the most tame and “inoffensive” language possible. But the policy is offensive, and timid opposition does us no good.
It’s not simply about the escalation, though, even if it were, Nelson’s proposal may be the most toothless of all. It’s about getting our troops home. And if Nelson is unwilling to offer anything more than this for the debate at hand, he cannot offer very much at all in the debate to come. And that’s a shame. I pray that I am wrong here, and that the Senator will take action in the future. But experience tells me otherwise.
Chuck Hagel expressed total satisfaction with Nelson’s proposal - a true rarity considering their personal relationship. You can argue that Nelson is just playing games with semantics - and he would come across as the worst form of politician. But, you can also argue that Nelson’s alternative proposal reflects his true belief that a more bipartisan resolution gaining support from a more diverse group of Senators will ultimately better constrain Bush’s agenda and better reflect the dissatisfaction of the American people in both political parties.
By that thinking - and it’s probably a whole lot more persuasive than the anti-Nelson reasoning - Ben Nelson comes across as just the man we elected him to be in the last election.
We may not owe Nelson the benefit of the doubt, but we certainly have no place immediately assuming the worst of his intentions. I disagree with the entire premise of this post.
This is an emotional issue, and if my cynicism is reflected a bit too starkly in this post, it’s because I have been disappointed so many times before by my party on this issue. Maybe it’s unfair to blame Nelson, but if there was anything more toothless than a non-binding resolution, it’s a non-binding resolution that pulls punches.
This is a long-term fight to bring our troops home, and by lowering expectations so severely at the beginning, we are only serving to prolong our presence in Iraq. Nelson is, at best, providing political cover to a few Republicans who still support the war, but don’t want to lose their jobs. His statement upon presenting this resolution made it clear that he thought the bipartisan resolution presented by Biden and Hagel was a little too harsh (they did tone down the language slightly, to “increase” rather than “escalation,” but the message remained intact).
There’s no compromise position here, Kyle. It’s “Yes,” or “No.” A watered-down rebuke of the President does nothing - except provide a few vulnerable Republicans political cover. It kills me to see the incredibly conservative Hagel be the most outspoken opponent of this policy, while Nelson uses parsed phrases and watered-down words. This is not a disappointment. This is not something on which we simply disagree. This is a policy that will not work.
If words are all we have, those words must be strong, and they must be heard loudly. We don’t need politicians right now, we need leaders.
Ben Nelson’s Statement on the Floor of the U.S. Senate (01/22/07):
The goal of this resolution is to broaden the resolution’s appeal. It’s important to send a strong message to the White House and Iraq. And the more support the resolution receives in the Senate, the stronger our message will be……
In the end, we all have a responsibility to lead. We are accountable to our constituents – the American people – as is the President. When we see a policy development that we feel is not in the best interests of the United States and the US military, we must speak out, we must act, we must communicate with the President that we disagree with his plan.
Simply put, that is what we are trying to do – to express our concern, our opposition, or disagreement with deploying troops in the heart of a civil war in Iraq. The goal is maximum bipartisan support to send the strongest message possible from the Senate about our concern about this plan to the President, to the American people and to Iraq. Thank you.
If I’m too skeptical, or too harsh on Nelson here, I recognize that his approach is different than mine. But far more than a semantic difference, the language used by Nelson tells me a lot about his attitude here. He still believes the President cares what Congress thinks. That he will recognize disagreement as opposition, and seek other options. “Disagreement” got us here. A lot of people “disagreed” with the President’s approach in 2002 - like Senator Hagel - but voted for war anyway. Many of those same people now say that they didn’t vote for war. They voted for a negotiation tactic. That was disagreement.
I don’t believe that it’s simply a semantic quibble. You can disagree with something and still allow it to go forward. And disagreement alone is not opposition. I have no interest in allowing the enablers of this policy to hide behind words so they can lie to their constituents and say they did something. To be absolutely clear, if Hagel’s resolution is all we have, it will be a failure. By extension, if Nelson’s is all we have, it will be a failure.
Unfortunately, it’s becoming abundantly clear that is all the Senate is willing to do. I recognize that this is a long-term fight, and we’ve made significant progress in getting all of the Democratic caucus (besides Lieberman) to recognize that this war is a failure. The trouble is, almost none of the Republicans notice that. You can count them on one hand.
My anger is not simply with Nelson, and I think you understand that, Kyle. My anger is with a party and a Congress that long ago should have called for an end to this war - and still as of yet does not have the stomach to do so.
I have to agree with Dave here. I think that this non-binding resolution will accomplish relatively little, other than putting opinions of congressmen on the record.
Bush and Cheney have already said that they will ignore this resolution. If the Democratic party wants to do something about this war, and not just use it as campaign rhetoric, then they need to grow a backbone. Nelson, however bipartisan, and many other democrats, have had no courage when it counted. That’s how we got so far into the war in the first place.
Yes, much of the blame for the war is on the Bush administration, but every Democratic senator and congressmen who had reservations and did nothing are to blame as well. That includes Ben Nelson. He wants to soften the wording? Why? To spare some feelings and ‘broaden the appeal’? The approval ratings show that the appeal couldn’t get much broader for the public. Hagel was right. They are just trying to get out of any real action to secure their jobs.
Dave - you may have missed this in all of the vitriol spewing from Hagel’s mouth last week, but during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the Biden Hagel resolution (”Bagel” for short) they agreed without a vote to remove the word “escalation” from their resolution. So if you’re arguing against Ben Nelson’s resolution based on semantics, I guess you should no longer consider Hagel’s resolution worthy. Hagel’s resolution is also non-binding in case you or your readers didn’t know.
And that’s what the fundamental differnece betweeen our two senators is isn’t it? Hagel browbeats and inuslts his colleagues as cowardly “shoe salesmen” because they wont make “tough choices” to support a resolution that will utlimately do nothing. Nelson, relaizing that Congress’ power is limited and can only be enhanced with the strongest vote possible (with the most votes that is), sets out to find a way to send that strong message.
What good is a non-binding resolution that pokes the president in the eye and gets 50 votes and fails? Wouldn’t a resolution that disagrees with the president and gets 55-65 votes be better?
I guess if you expected Nelson to become a reflexive Democratic robot in his second term you will be disappointed. If you voted for him because you thought he would do what he beleives is right, you should rejoice.
Well, the two have merged into one watered-down meaningless resolution. It occurs to me that I gave the impression that I thought the Biden-Hagel Resolution was something. It was not. But I did feel it was a start, and the opening shot in a larger debate. It’s a sad state of affairs in our Congress that a non-binding resolution is the best we can come up with. And though it heartens me to see near-universal support for these measures from the Democratic majority, I also am sickened that - even now - that is all they are willing to do.
The strong message will not come from this resolution, but rather what comes next. Make no mistake about it: this is about bringing the troops home. The Senators are doing a certain amount of ego-stroking right now over how “bipartisan” they are, but the end result is a nonbinding resolution that doesn’t have much of an effect outside of public opinion - which is already far ahead of the Congress to begin with.
I will be severely disappointed in any Democratic Senator who votes against either Sen. Feingold or Sen. Obama’s proposals to bring the troops home. I strongly suspect that Ben Nelson will be in that camp. That’s where my frustration lies.