Mike Barnicle
We live in an age where not only does everyone have an opinion but they now have the ability to register it on a blog, an e-mail, on talk radio or at a bus stop. We have become a nation of 300 million columnists.
And this might be one aspect of the Democrat’s Thursday night debate that the pros, the pols, the pundits, consultants and all those who sit ringside during the build-up to the primaries simply don’t pay enough attention to; it won’t be a smile, a pleasant demeanor, appealing personality or a drop-dead one-liner that will separate one candidate from another.
It will be simpler than that because this country aches to be led. Add the weight of the disaster that is Iraq, the deceits and incompetence of the Bush administration, the insane level of partisanship and the sense, held by many, that this president and too many in both parties simply do not hear the coast-to-coast cry for truth and direction and the ultimate winner will be the candidate who plants the flag and says “follow me because I have beliefs.”
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s time once again for our spring training preview of the various players warming up for the longest season of them all: the race for the White House, 2008.
This is a moment when some of the players are still trying to figure out which uniform to wear and what position suits them best: left field, right field, center, pitcher or catcher. It’s early but eagle-eyed scouts can sort of see who’ll be able to hit major league pitching and who won’t.
Let’s look at the roster.
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They stand and talk and pose all day, the men and women of the House of Representatives. They discuss the lethal confusion we call war in Iraq. They do this knowing all they have to lose is, perhaps, an election. They debate back and forth - Republican versus Democrat - on another day when more Americans and increasing numbers of Iraqi civilians will lose the most precious gift God gives us all: life itself.
By now, all these years and months after Congress acted with the spine of a folding chair to give the president whatever he wanted in the wake of September 11th - no matter how flimsy the evidence was - they finally decide to talk about something ordinary people across America have been talking about for months on end: the incompetence of a war fought...for what? For what reason? Our national security? Democracy? As if suddenly a chapter of the League of Women Voters will spring up in Baghdad? That Common Cause will open a branch in Fallujah?
The metaphor for this war is now the Humvee. It travels through constant peril, down strange roads, through hostile territory, all littered with the reality of IED’s that take life in the snap of a finger. The Humvee, powerful and quite mobile except that, in the metaphor, our troops, our brothers and sisters in uniform - our country - is in the back seat. The Iraqis are behind the wheel, not us. And the Humvee is being hit from both sides, by all sides as we sit there, targets having little control over our destination.
The war is literally life and death for thousands. And it’s about time the politicians stood and spoke to an issue that divides the land while casualties mount by the moment.
