Indefensible expedience

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From its beginning on March 19, 2003, the war in Iraq has cast a wide shadow over Democratic presidential politics. First, the war played a pivotal role in the Democratic primaries. Now it has united two senators on the Democratic ticket, presumptive presidential nominee John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards. Both share the lonely, politically hypocritical experience of voting to authorize the war in October 2002 and then one year later voting against funding the 160,000 U.S. troops who are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unlike the 1991 Gulf War resolution, which was supported by only 10 of the Senate's 55 Democrats, including then-Sen. Al Gore, who later became the party's 1992 vice presidential candidate, the October 2002 war-authorization vote in the Senate attracted the support of 29 of the chamber's 50 Democrats. These supporters included several senators who had clear presidential aspirations at the time. They were Mr. Kerry, Joe Biden and Tom Daschle (all of whom opposed the 1991 war resolution); Mr. Edwards, the freshman senator from North Carolina; and Joe Lieberman, who, like Mr. Gore, voted for the 1991 resolution. (Interestingly, Florida's Bob Graham, who voted for the 1991 war, opposed the 2002 resolution.)

Much to the surprise and discomfort of the ostensibly pro-war Democrats who eventually sought their party's nomination, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean raced to the front of the pack by exploiting the deeply ingrained anti-war feelings of the party's base. In October 2003, the Senate was considering an $87 billion supplemental appropriation bill to finance military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Zogby polls conducted within a week of the vote revealed that Messrs. Kerry and Edwards trailed Mr. Dean in Iowa by 12 and 14 points, respectively, and in New Hampshire by 23 and 34 points.

Clearly, the use-of-force votes cast by Messrs. Kerry and Edwards in 2002 were not playing well on the hustings. In a desperate effort to resuscitate his campaign, Mr. Edwards announced on Oct. 14 last year that he would be opposing the supplemental. Having only weeks earlier declared that opposing the funding measure would be "irresponsible" and tantamount to "cutting and running," Mr. Kerry later completely abdicated any leadership role. In an Oct. 16 Johnny-come-lately message on his Web site, Mr. Kerry announced that he too would be opposing the $87 billion measure, which passed a day later by an 87-12 margin.

Reviewing how Senate Democrats voted on the military-funding bill is instructive. Among the 29 Democrats who had supported the war-authorization resolution in October 2002, 22 voted for the 2003 funding bill. Three of the 29 were no longer in the Senate. That left four, who opposed funding the operations they had earlier authorized. One of them was the increasingly cranky Tom Harkin. Another was Ernest Hollings, a retiring eccentric. The final two, Messrs. Kerry and Edwards, comprise the Democratic presidential ticket.

In the wake of the Kerry-Edwards double flip-flop, it is worth noting how the 21 Democrats who opposed the 2002 war-authorization resolution voted on the bill to continue funding the U.S. troops six months after they liberated Baghdad. Six of them opposed it. Paul Wellstone had died. Tellingly, however, 14 Democrats who voted against the use of force in October 2002 voted a year later to fund the troops who were occupying Iraq and continuing the fight in Afghanistan. Including many of the Senate's most liberal members, these support-the-troops Democrats are Daniel Inouye, Daniel Akaka, Richard Durbin, Barbara Mikulski, Carl Levin, Debbie Stabenow, Mark Dayton, Jon Corzine, Jeff Bingaman, Kent Conrad, Ron Wyden, Jack Reed, Patty Murray and Russell Feingold.

With two-thirds of the Senate Democrats who had voted against the war now voting to support the occupying troops, was it too much to ask Messrs. Kerry and Edwards, both of whom had enthusiastically endorsed the use of force in 2002, to continue funding the military operations, which they had every reason to believe would be ongoing a mere six months after Saddam Hussein fell? Apparently, yes. For political expedience, they abandoned the troops, and next week the Democratic Party will reward them by nominating them as their presidential standard-bearers.