The Boxer amendment: smart politics

T.A. Barnhart

The left-wing blogosphere, of which I am but a tiny (but stunningly brilliant) member, has been in a fine tis-was over the Cornryn and Boxer amendments, both of which condemned the MoveOn.org ad. In their indignant outrage over what Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake calls "the McCarthy-esque language of Barbara Boxer’s amendment", the morally pure leftie bloggers ignore one basic, vital fact: The Boxer amendment was politically savvy, the kind of election-oriented smarts the Dems too often fail to practice.

The first thing to make clear is that the two amendments bore only the most superficial relationship to one other. The Cornryn amendment began with a lengthy and cloying description of the career of Gen Petraeus, who appears to be the finest soldier to serve this nation since Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf. The amendment concluded thus;

Whereas a recent attack through a full-page advertisement in the New York Times by the liberal activist group, Moveon.org, impugns the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all the members of the United States Armed Forces: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate--

(1) to reaffirm its support for all the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, including General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force--Iraq;

(2) to strongly condemn any effort to attack the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all the members of the United States Armed Forces; and

(3) to specifically repudiate the unwarranted personal attack on General Petraeus by the liberal activist group Moveon.org.

The Cornryn amendment glories Petraeus, implies falsely that MoveOn attacked every member of the Armed Forces, and attacks MoveOn specifically. Compare this with the Boxer amendment, which follows in full:

(a) FINDINGS.--The Senate makes the following findings:

(1) The men and women of the United States Armed Forces and our veterans deserve to be supported, honored, and defended when their patriotism is attacked;

(2) In 2002, a Senator from Georgia who is a Vietnam veteran, triple amputee, and the recipient of a Silver Star and Bronze Star, had his courage and patriotism attacked in an advertisement in which he was visually linked to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein;

(3) This attack was aptly described by a Senator and Vietnam veteran as "reprehensible";

(4) In 2004, a Senator from Massachusetts who is a Vietnam veteran and the recipient of a Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, and three Purple Hearts, was personally attacked and accused of dishonoring his country;

(5) This attack was aptly described by a Senator and Vietnam veteran as "dishonest and dishonorable."

(6) On September 10, 2007, an advertisement in The New York Times was an unwarranted personal attack on General Petraeus, who is honorably leading our Armed Forces in Iraq and carrying out the mission assigned to him by the President of the United States; and

(7) Such personal attacks on those with distinguished military service to our nation have become all too frequent.

(b) SENSE OF SENATE.--It is the sense of the Senate--

(1) to reaffirm its strong support for all of the men and women of the United States Armed Forces; and

(2) to strongly condemn all attacks on the honor, integrity, and patriotism of any individual who is serving or has served honorably in the United States Armed Forces, by any person or organization.

First, and years too late, the service of Max Cleland, John Kerry and other dissenting members of the Armed Forces is honored. Virtually no Republican ever stood to defend the heinous attacks on Cleland; only John McCain made even a slight effort to defend Kerry from the lies of the Swift Boaters. But of course, when their own guy is attacked, suddenly the Rs decide the crime demands the immediate action of the nation's highest legislative body.

(Anyone else smell the foul lingering aroma of the Shiavo debacle?)

So why not just vote against Cornryn and leave it at that? Why bother to offer an alternate amendment that also defended Petraeus, a military man who allowed himself to become a political pawn in Bush's desperate effort to save his failed war? Why not be take the bloggers' advice and simply not show up to vote? Let the GOP look exactly what they are: political grandstanders?

Because some of the Dems are finally wising up to how the game works. Every time they've tried to take the high road and keep out of these nasty little blame games the wingnuts pull, guys like Rove use that as an opportunity to beat them like a Mafia pistolwhipping. The Cornryn amendment was a booby trap of the worst kind, and to do nothing — or worse, to vote against it — would be to provide the righties with tons of ammo against every Democrat in the country.

Of course, it didn't help that MoveOn decided to run such a nasty ad before Petraeus even showed up on Capital Hill. Yes, his report was written by the White House; yes, he was going to read his script faithfully, good soldier that he is. But the man hadn't had his day in court, so to speak; MoveOn struck pre-emptively to paint him with the most scurrilous word to be used against any member of any military: betrayal.

They might as well have shown a picture of Benedict Arnold next to Petraeus in the ad. This ad was not their brightest move. MoveOn is a great organization, one of the most important agencies of democracy and grassroots activism in the country; they do not, however, walk on water. And this ad fully demonstrated their feet of stone. Did MoveOn think the right would just make squawking noises about the ad and leave it at that? Were they surprised to be subjected to two Senate votes? I'm thinking, no, but the outcome of that "notoriety" was not all bad. Here's the beginning of the email sent to MoveOn members following the vote:

Dear MoveOn member,

Yesterday, an amazing thing happened. After the Senate's shameful vote, and after President Bush called MoveOn "disgusting,"1 our email started to fill up with messages like this one:

I'm currently in Iraq. I do not agree with this war, and if I did support this war, it would not matter. You have the RIGHT to speak the truth. We KNOW that you support us. Thank you for speaking out for being our voice. We do not have a voice. We are overshooted by those who say that we soldiers do not support organizations like MoveOn. WE DO.

YOU ARE OUR voice.

And then came the donations. By midnight, over 12,000 people had donated $500,000 — more than we've raised any day this year — for our new ad calling out the Republicans who blocked adequate rest for troops headed back to Iraq.

The message from MoveOn members was loud and clear: Don't back down. Take the fight back to the issues that matter.

Half-a-million in one day. Wow. I gotta get in on this: "Hey, that colonel on the news the other night, he's so incompetent he's gotta be a traitor!" That should net me at least fifty thou after the Senate gets done with me.

But once the GOP decided this was one of the very rare opportunities they've had lately to return to the glory days of Rovian lies and reality-creation, the Dems had two choices. Sadly, a bunch of them made the wrong choice; some through habit (Baucus, MT), fear of the bad Republicans making them look like wimps again (Baucus, MT) or inexperience with the shit machine that was being cranked up (Tester, MT). Barbara Boxer, the Senate's finest woman and the one who I wish was Majority Leader, was not about to fall for the tricks — nor was she going to sit back and let the wingnuts' tactics work unchallenged.

But how do you avoid being shown supporting those who called a U.S. Army general a traitor while standing up for free speech and not kowtowing to the fearmongers of the right? So far, not many people have figured that one out. Democrats have a special knack for getting these kind of conundrums exactly wrong. John Kerry was clueless in 2004, as had been the Gore campaign (of course, there is little of importance on which Terry McAuliffe is not clueless), Dukakis in 1988, and all the Democratic Congressional leaders in the lost years following 1980.

But Sen Boxer is a sharp cookie. She's also one of the Senate's leading liberals; this amendment coming from her was not only surprising, it made the strategy even more effective. Democrats needed to insulate themselves from the trap the Rs were setting for them, not try to avoid it. And Boxer's amendment did just that.

The fifty Senators who voted for the Boxer amendment — that included independent Bernie Sanders, lone Republican Arlen Specter and, surprisingly, quasi-Republican Joe Lieberman — did not merely say that the attack on Petraeus was wrong, they also condemned the attacks on Max Cleland and John Kerry. The literal meaning of the Boxer amendment was not that MoveOn (who were not mentioned by name) was wrong but that attacking the patriotism of any member or former member of the armed forces for political purposes is wrong. And while cleary that's what the Republican campaign attacks on Cleland and Kerry were, so was the MoveOn ad. They were trying to frame the coming event in the Senate, which was not a search for truth — no one paying the least bit of attention to the whole thing could have been that naive — but a battle to set the political stage for how the debate on the war would proceed. MoveOn wanted to undermine Gen Petraeus's appearance before the Senate for political ends. And 50 U.S. Senators said, No.

Which means 46 Republican Senators (Russ Feingold voted against both amendments) voted that attacking the military service and patriotism of Max Cleland and John Kerry was something they were cool with. Rather than spend energy attacking the Democrats who voted that that was indeed wrong, the left wing bloggers should be taking that one to the bank. Get the message out that 45 Republican Senators — and of course that means Gordon Smith, cowardly opportunistic party hack that he is — approve of political attacks on a man who gave three of his limbs in Vietnam. A relentless Fox-style repetition of that message might finally get across to Americans who are fed up with the daily slaughter of our troops in a senseless war that the people pushing the war just don't give a damn about patriotism or service — just their political power and ideology.

I hope the likes of Jane Hamsher take up this refrain, but I also hope they pay attention to what is gained by Democrats like Barack Obama who voted for the Boxer amendment. The Republicans cannot attack him for refusing to defend an "heroic" Army general; Sen Obama did indeed vote to condemn the attack on Petraeus "Oh, and I also voted to condemn attacks on any American serviceman or woman — all such attacks are wrong, and that's what I said with my vote." (Not Obama's, words, just my donation to his speechwriter's stash of really good stuff.) No, nothing can stop the right wing noise machine from making up whatever nasty shit they want, but this is one bit of ammo the GOP nominee cannot drag out in a Presidential debate.

At the same time, Obama, by leaving the building almost immediately after his vote on Boxer, has no record — and by "no" I mean neither Nay or Yay, which are the poison pills — to be used against him regarding Cornryn. He had already condemned the attack on Petraeus; did he really have to repeat himself? Especially when the Cornryn amendment included language implying that the MoveOn ad was an attack on the grunts — a total lie. Obama played no part in that. Had he voted No on Cornryn, he would have given them a Kerryesque "I voted for it before I voted against it" moment, of the kind that proved so harmful in 2004.

And further, Obama's vote "against" MoveOn is muted to the point of irrelevance. He voted to condemn a specific type of speech — attacking a soldier's patriotism for political purposes. And given the respect he readily acknowledges for those with the willingness to live out their beliefs by serving in the military, I think Obama meant that vote. He no doubt cherishes MoveOn's role in democracy and will probably try to make nice with Eli and the rest at some point, but the ad represents the kind of politics he has spent his political career opposing. His vote on Boxer was perfectly consistent with his brand of non-adversarial politics.

There was no good approach to these votes. Russ Feingold can vote any damn way he wants because he's not running for president and has a safe seat in the Senate. That's the same reason outliers like Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul can run for president and not worry about losing their seats in Congress. Barack Obama doesn't have that luxury, nor do many other Dems. It's taken years of corruption in the White House and Congress, not to mention a horrific war and Katrina, to bring a mere four-to-six Republican Senators into danger. Democrats can become endangered in a matter of months, thanks to the way the conservative owned-and-operated mainstream media functions. There may be a lot of political scheming going on in things like the Boxer amendment, but the alternative is to go down in flames and let the foxes retake control of the henhouse.

For years now, liberals and progressives have been bemoaning the inability of Democrats to match the political skills of people like Atwater and Rove. We don't want to use their main tactics — propaganda, lies, fear, etc — we just want to be as smart, as resourceful, as aware of both opportunity and danger. And on the day that Barbara Boxer was all that, she and those for whom her amendment worked so well are attacked by the same people who would be pillorying her down the road when a standalone Cornryn vote was used to eviscerate Democrats. We could ask Harry Reid to treat the Senate as callously as Tom Delay did the House and not let the Republicans bring forward these kinds of political stunts, but that kind of control of what is meant to be our greatest deliberative body should be repellant to any lover of democracy. So we have to live with what that means: hacks like Cornryn can use the Senate to try to score political points by pretending to defend Gen Petraeus.

I am just glad some Democrats with the foresight, smarts and guts were able to one-up the wingnuts on this. It makes a nice change from being their doormat.

By T.A. Barnhart Sept. 25, 2007