" . . . was first elected to the United States Senate in 1972 at the age of twenty-nine and is recognized as one of the nation’s most powerful and influential voices on foreign relations, terrorism, drug policy, and crime prevention."
"As the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee . . ."
Given those credentials, what he says about the President and the Administration's policies says a lot about how Democrats view, or at least how they want to be publicly seen, on various issues. On the show, host Bob Schieffer asked Biden, "Some Democrats are saying that every Democrat has to say that this war was a mistake. Do you think it was a mistake? If they're going to run for president." Biden's response, according to the transcript, was:
"No. No, I don't think every Democrat has to say it was a mistake. It was right to give the president the authority we gave him. It was wrong to assume that he was going to know how to handle it. Look, there's nobody out there, including the president now, that talks about having conducted this war properly."
And that is really the problem with the Democrat's position. Saying it was correct to authorize the President to take action on Iraq, without even a comment about how the voting was influenced by pre-war intelligence that was bad and/or purposely filtered for a pro-War slant, demonstrates that Biden, a leading Democrat, seems afraid to take a real stand.
With hindsight and knowledge of the accuracy of the pre-war intelligence, Congressional authorization would most likely have failed to pass, or at least would have been much more watered down in its final form. And the American public, when fed continuous mental images of mushroom clouds on US soil by Cheney and Rice, among others, would not have initially supported the war in the way they did.
Until leading Democrats offer an aggressive alternative vision and until they are willing to take the heat for that position -- for example, being labeled soft on terrorism or told that they are running from the enemy -- they can only hope to take back the House, Senate, or the Presidency by default or luck. With such a weak position on the War, the Democratic Party is prime to be beaten again by the Republicans promoting social issues, such as gay marriage and flag burning, that have kept many voters from voting Democratic.
It's tough to put all the blame for the current state of the US on the Administration and Republicans. Why? Because two of the most important institutions, the opposition political party and the mainstream media, seem incapable or afraid of doing their job.
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