Washington – The Democratic message took many forms in many places, from calls for troop withdrawals to demands for a tougher stance with the Iraqi government to insistence on the replacement of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
But on Tuesday, it all added up to one thing: a no-confidence vote on President Bush’s Iraq policies.
The Democratic victory does not mark the end of the war in Iraq, but it marks the end of America’s patience with it.
Bush, whose stay-the-course mantra became a rallying cry for Democratic challengers, will now have to choose a new course.
Bush has long argued that the Iraq war was aimed at ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction, building democracy in the Middle East and defeating terrorists on their own turf.
There proved to be no weapons of mass destruction. There was no collaboration between Saddam Hussein’s government and al-Qaeda. And America is struggling to plant democracy in a country riven by sectarian divisions.
Yet Bush always expressed confidence that average Americans would see the war as he did – as a show of U.S. resolve.
By the start of the 2006 election cycle, there were clear indications that people were losing confidence in Bush’s leadership.
Many Republican strategists sought to focus the election instead on local concerns, asking voters to back their familiar and often respected senators and congressmen, while raising doubts about unknown Democratic challengers.
But at the start of the campaign season, Bush made the decision to put himself at the forefront, apparently believing he could convince a majority of Americans that Iraq was now the central front in the war on terror – and that the lessons of Sept. 11, 2001, were guiding his policies.
“The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq, so America will not leave until victory is achieved,” Bush declared on Sept. 2, in an unusually forceful radio address.
The address set the tone for the Republican campaign to come, but it also made some assertions that came back to haunt the GOP: Bush trumpeted a new initiative to secure Baghdad, stating that “the initial results are encouraging.”
But the initiative ultimately failed to take hold.
Bush also declared that “only a small number of Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence.”
And yet, in the weeks that followed, numerous observers described a country perilously close to civil war.
Now, voters have given Bush their verdict on his policies. But Democrats offered no single path of their own, so Tuesday’s votes should be seen only as a mandate for change – for some sort of a new way forward.
Michael Gerson, the former White House aide who wrote some of Bush’s most memorable speeches defining the war on terror, said Bush should not abandon the war in Iraq, but he must redefine the war in a way that satisfies a public desire for change.
