John Fund‘s latest column at National Review Online probes the political predicament for Democrats created by the Obama administration’s muddled approach to Syria.
Chris Matthews of MSNBC, who served on Capitol Hill for years as a top Democratic aide, put the party’s dilemma in stark terms on Wednesday: “I think the Democrats are going to be forced to sacrifice men and women who really, really don’t want to vote for this. They’re going to have to vote for it to save the president’s hide. That’s a bad position to put your party in.”
One reason it’s especially awkward is that on the substance, the White House isn’t doing well. President Obama tried to shift responsibility for Syria away from himself when he said in Sweden on Wednesday that when it came to chemical weapons, “I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line.” Leaving aside that the chemical-weapons treaty the president referred to (which Syria has not signed) has no provision authorizing the use of force against violators, the president didn’t explain why he wanted to attack Syria even though the world community he described as being the offended party was refusing to join in with him.
Then there was Secretary of State John Kerry, fresh from his humiliation by President Obama’s undercutting his call for urgent action against Syria last week. Kerry appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday and proceeded to muddy every rhetorical pond he stepped in. He left even Democratic senators puzzled when he insisted that Obama was “not asking America to go to war,” an assertion that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff declined to endorse.
Kerry followed that up by saying that, “in the event Syria imploded” or “there was a threat of a chemical-weapons cache falling into the hands” of radicals, he could foresee the use of U.S. troops on the ground in Syria. He quickly had to walk those comments back by saying he would accept language in the authorization that barred the deployment of troops: “I want to shut that door as tight as we can.” Yet again, John Kerry was for the possible use of troops before he was against it.
All of this prompted derisive comments even from liberals. Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post told MSNBC that “the only message we’re sending to the world is one of confusion.” Peter Beinart, former editor of The New Republic, found his way to concede that Kerry’s testimony was “somewhat incoherent.”
Nonetheless, leading Democrats are falling into line.
