A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

There exists a possible coalition in the Senate that would stand ready to help Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid fundamentally change the nature of American policy regarding Iraq. This coalition would act along with Reid if only the Majority Leader would let it. But Reid has decided to make himself vulnerable to the very critiques that are used against President Bush. In response to offers of compromise, the Senate Majority Leader obstinately declares "My way, or the highway":

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid offered no apologies yesterday for his decision to reject compromise efforts to alter President Bush's Iraq strategy that had the support of a growing number of Republicans.

"We did the very best we could," the senator from Nevada said in response to criticism that he had cut off debate on Wednesday just as a bipartisan consensus on milder Iraq proposals was emerging. "I strongly believe we should have a bipartisan foreign policy." But he added: "We need to do something to change the course of the war."

Although Reid's strategy won him praise from antiwar advocates who are demanding that Congress do nothing less than force an end to the conflict, it has painted him as being as much of a hard-liner for ending the war as the president is in arguing that it is too soon to bring the troops home.

The Democratic leader's unyielding stance has frustrated many lawmakers, who had hoped the Iraq debate would avoid the partisan pitfalls that have stymied so much legislation in recent years in the narrowly divided Senate. He angered many Republicans when he called a rare, all-night debate on the war Tuesday that lasted 24 hours, until Wednesday morning when the GOP refused to give up its filibuster of a Democratic troop-withdrawal measure.

But Reid's leadership team has placed a bet that -- after a month-long recess at home with voters in August, followed by a Sept. 15 assessment of the war's progress from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq -- Senate Republicans will feel the pressure to give up and endorse stringent Democratic withdrawal timelines.

As many as 70 senators have publicly expressed concerns about Bush's handling of the Iraq war. But few Republican war critics are ready to take the drastic steps that Reid and other antiwar Democrats are advocating, in particular requiring the military to meet firm withdrawal dates.

For all of the praise and hosannas that greeted the issuance of the Iraq Study Group report, it is clear now that much of official Washington's embrace of the report was fake and hollow:

Sens. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) have proposed adopting the Iraqi Study Group's recommendations that, among other things, call for redeploying U.S. troops to training Iraqis and to counterterrorism. The proposal has attracted Republican and Democratic co-sponsors. "It might have had a chance if given enough time," said Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), a onetime war supporter who broke with Bush this month by signing onto the legislation.

The Salazar-Alexander plan is an example of the sort of bridge measure that could lure Republicans to break from Bush -- a process some Democrats have noted is probably going to be a gradual process. "They need something to jump onto first," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a presidential candidate.

Obviously, Reid has a constituency to answer to and that constituency demands an immediate end to the war. But it cannot be denied that much of the reason why we are hearing increased demands for unconditional (and yes, precipitous) withdrawal have to do with the fact that such demands are reinforced by the statements of Congressional leaders like Harry Reid. Yes, politicians must keep an ear to the ground and be mindful of what the populace is saying. At the same time, however, politicians have a responsibility to lead. Leading, oftentimes, means educating, and Reid would have done well to educate regarding the need to avoid a precipitous withdrawal. He might have seen the opening that defecting Republicans offered him, latched on to the ISG report and used it as an alternative policy to the one being promulgated by the White House--an alternative policy that was crafted, one might add, by a bipartisan group.

Instead, Reid chooses to make the perfect the enemy of the good. In doing so, of course, he goes against the traditions of Senate leadership during wartime:

Many veteran senators lament the bitter polarization that the war has engendered between the parties. "I've seen many majority leaders in the past, on both sides of the aisle, sit down with their counterparts and say, 'Hey, here's what we've got to do for the good of the country,' " said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "We've worked out Bosnia; we worked out Kosovo; we worked out the first Gulf war. In the years that I've been here, we were able to sit down, Republican and Democrat, and work for the good of the country. Obviously, that system has broken down. It's just a fact."

Sen. Trent Lott (Miss.), the No. 2 GOP leader, said the week's negative effects could linger. "There's never any effort around here to try and come together," Lott said. "Comity and courtesy affect substance."

Democrats insist that none of this matters, that Reid will get what he wants and that he knows what he is doing. But it now appears that the Senate All-Night Party didn't go all that well and that in fact, it has become quite the inviting target of ridicule. And on matters great and small, it appears that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is getting the best of Harry Reid.

You know, it's entirely possible that trend will continue. Just a thought.