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Home Front: Politix
The Petraeus hearings prove Democrats need to change the subject.
2007-09-13
Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal

. . . It was expected that the Petraeus-Crocker hearings would be two days of high drama. They were not. Gen. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker were questioned about Iraq by Democrats on three full committees, including five candidates for the presidency, and the hearings were flat. Could it be the air is going out of Iraq as a hot political issue?

If true, it is good news. Good news, first of all, for this country, whose people may have grown tired of the war but are more so with the war's corrosive domestic politics.

Good news, too, for the Democrats. The Democrats in Congress need to put some space between themselves and the Web-footed antiwar movement. MoveOn.org's "General Betray Us" ad in the New York Times made it difficult for any Democrat to breathe fire at Gen. Petraeus. MoveOn.org pre-used all that political capital. A malady endemic to the Web is that much of the Netroots is essentially narcissistic. That ad proved it's more about them than about elected Democrats. The politicians had better figure this out. A marriage of two narcissists often proves difficult. . . .
Posted by:Mike

#4  At a certain point the good guys will get out and the careerist will crawl to the top

And maybe Wesley Clark comes back as SecDef - gods help us.
Posted by: lotp   2007-09-13 19:52  

#3  ..including five candidates for the presidency

None of whom, for a second grasped the concept that leadership is fundamentally dependent upon mutual respect. There is no way that any of them will be able to 'lead' the military. They'll order. However, the military is not Skynet. It's composed of men and women who's presence is an act of 'the consent of the governed'. Expect retention and recruitment to drop. At a certain point the good guys will get out and the careerist will crawl to the top [or as the old adage went - in the cesspool the big chunks float to the top]. They will be oblivious to it all since they have no grasp the military culture other then the stereotypes projected by their scuzzy friends in Hollyweird.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2007-09-13 19:32  

#2  After Senator Biden's 7 minutes he may find that there are neighborhoods more local than Iraq in which he would feel uncomfortable traveling through.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2007-09-13 17:18  

#1  It was expected that the Petraeus-Crocker hearings would be two days of high drama

By whom? I think most people expected Barnum and Baily. Maybe he meant "high drama" as in high wires.
Posted by: Unutle McGurque8861   2007-09-13 11:23  

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