Friday, January 26, 2007

The credibility of Chuck Hagel

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A front-page article in the The Washington Post today on the prospects of a presidential run by Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska gets right to the point:

  • "His Republican colleagues regard him warily."
  • "The White House barely speaks to him."
  • "He is reviled by his party's conservative base."
Those are, in my view, three unassailable reasons to like him. If they don't like him, he must be doing something right. And that something, of course, is opposing the Iraq War with as much conviction and passion, if not more, than anyone else in Washington, with the possible exception of Jack Murtha. Even John Edwards, the Democratic contender to whom I am most partial and now an admirably eloquent opponent of the war in his own right, doesn't quite match Hagel's intensity, and nor do the two other Democratic frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, nor even the more dovish opponents of the war throughout the party.

This has a lot to do with Hagel's credibility on military matters generally. As a decorated Vietnam vet, he knows whereof he speaks, and this puts him well ahead of the Democratic frontrunners. One needn't be a vet to have credibility on military matters, nor to oppose the Iraq War, but it helps. Isn't that why many of us turned to John Kerry in '04? Isn't that why many of us supported Murtha when he came out in favor of redeployment long before others did? In a time of war, there's something to be said for being led by someone who's actually been to war, who understands how the military works, who knows intimately, painfully what it means for men and women to be sent into combat. Bush, Cheney, and most of the rest of the civilian architects of the war lack that experience and understanding and hence lack the credibility to guide the country through the inevitably challenging vicissitudes of war, and particularly of this war.

And, too, Hagel strikes a balance between excessive hawkishness and excessive dovishness. Which is to say, he is neither for all war nor against all war, neither always for military action nor always against military action. This is a key component of his credibility. Those who are always against war are against the Iraq War because it is a war, not because it is a bad war. For them, there are no good wars and bad wars, there are just wars. And wars, by definition, are bad. But this is a reductionism that cannot admit of variation, of degrees of goodness and badness. It is, in short, relativism. And so when those who are always against war come out against the Iraq War, they cannot be taken seriously, or at least not with the seriousness that a Hagel can be taken -- or a Gore, or an Edwards, or a Kerry, or a Murtha. (This is one of the reasons why John McCain had so much credibility until he began to look and sound more and more like a partisan ideologue.) To put it another way, if Hagel is opposed to the Iraq War and wants it ended, there's must be something seriously wrong with it.

So what if Hagel runs? Given that Iraq is likely to be the major issue in '08, would Democrats support him over one of their own? Would independents? Would Republicans? Those are moot questions, given that Hagel stands little chance of winning the Republican nomination, but this is one case where my partisanship -- and those of you know me know well which of the two main U.S. political parties I support -- wavers. I understand, as Steve Benen reminded us the other day, that "Hagel is conservative on just about everything except the war," but, given the primacy of the war, what this means is that, like Churchill, he is right about what matters most.

No, no, Hagel is no Churchill beyond this comparison and he is far too conservative for my liking, but, in the present context, there is no denying his credibility. He is as sane a voice as there is on the insanity of the Iraq War.

[Creature's Note: Michael's words, my cut-and-paste. Ignore all references to me below.]

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6 Comments:

  • I find myself surprisingly warm to Hagel although his overall record is troubling. He surely makes sense on the war.

    By Blogger Libby Spencer, at 1:48 PM  

  • I've been a fan of Chuck Hagel for quite some time. He's struck me as a very reasonable voice on the Iraq situation.

    I could support him in his run in 08, but I have a possible deal killer on the domestic front and that's his vote to kill minimum wage. I want to see more on his domestic stances, but I can definitely go with his stance on Iraq.

    Donna

    By Blogger Donna, at 2:57 PM  

  • Republicans better hope that Chuck Hagel runs for president. After GWB's impending sacrificial "surge", the election will be about the war and little else. There is exactly one Republican candidate who has been on the right side of this war since the beginning, and that is Hagel, and that makes him the only electable Republican in 2008.

    Chuck is prominently featured in my most recent YouTube effort "It's the war, stupid." and recent blog post of the same name.

    If you want to really appreciate how far Hagel was ahead of the curve on Iraq, check out this video of his speech at Kansas State University in February of 2003 (Landon Lecture Series - warning it is long some 50 minutes).

    Filmed a few weeks before we went into Iraq, Hagel warns about almost every single thing that has happened as a consequence over the last three years. Not hindsight, real foresight. It's scary how on-target he was - He sounds like a friggin' prophet now. It makes you want to cry to watch it. Nobody was listening to him. Not in the administration. Not the American people. Just a voice lost in the winds of war fever. I include myself among the deaf, as I was as gung-ho as every other yahoo at the time.

    By Blogger mw, at 3:24 PM  

  • Donna, I have the same problem with him. He's a little too pro-big business for me to be entirely comfortable with supporting him.

    MW - I was listening to him in 03 and tried my best to make the same case. Nobody was listening to me either.

    By Blogger Libby Spencer, at 5:25 PM  

  • Libby,

    I think I could support him over the rest of the GOP field, and if I thought the Democrats would keep the House and Senate (and increase their majority), I think I'd split my ticket if he was the GOP candidate.

    After the Bush Jr. years of one party rule, I'm really loathe to go that route again.

    Course, the GOP will probably end up with someone like Brownback or McCain, and my problem will be solved by a straight Democratic vote. LOL

    By Blogger Donna, at 6:02 PM  

  • You're right, lf, Hagel's opposition to the (very reasonable) minimum wage increase is a possible deal-breaker. And there are others. Before Iraq, no one thought of Hagel as one of us. The more we learn of his positions on domestic issues, I suspect, the more we'll dislike him.

    And the more I think about '08, the more I think we'll be facing a McCain-Brownback (or Romney) ticket.

    By Blogger Michael J.W. Stickings, at 5:10 PM  

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