Me-Too Democrats?

[FishForLunch]

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Foreign Policy: Under the cover of anti-Bush rhetoric, the opposition is moving toward the president's view of the world. Now the question is: "Who really means it?"

The Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party might be starting to wonder if it's been snookered. The anti-war left settled for Sen. John Kerry instead of its true love, Howard Dean. Now Kerry has turned around and picked a running mate who helped lead the charge to invade Iraq.

Sen. John Edwards probably wouldn't put it quite that way. And he has done his share of flip-flopping. Like Kerry, he voted for the use of force but later voted against the $87 billion allocation to continue the war effort. Yet when the question of authorizing the war was before the Senate in 2002, he was saying things such as this:

"Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime represents a clear threat to the United States, to our allies, to our interests around the world, and to the values of freedom and democracy we hold dear."

And this:

"The United States must lead an international effort to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein . . . If, however, the United Nations Security Council is prevented from supporting this effort, then we must act with as many allies as possible to ensure that Iraq meets its obligations to existing Security Council resolutions."

Democratic rhetoric has evolved, to say the least, since Edwards and other one-time Iraq hawks were making the case for regime change in words that could have come from the lips of Dick Cheney. The current party line, which Edwards no doubt endorses, is that the Iraq War was either a good or bad idea (pick one), but that the Bush administration has done everything wrong in executing it.

But while the Democratic Party continues to hurl verbal grenades at President Bush, it is moving remarkably close to him on matters of substance. A recent draft of the party's platform, for instance, rails against Bush (who it claims "walked away from more than 100 years of American leadership in the world") but largely agrees with what he's trying to do, at least in foreign policy.

Looking back on Iraq, it bucks the party's majority rank-and-file opinion and refuses to declare the war a mistake. Looking ahead, it's stay-the-course all the way: "We cannot allow a failed state in Iraq that inevitably would become a haven for terrorists and a destabilizing force in the Middle East."

The draft platform calls for more international involvement in Iraq, but Bush is making the same pitch every chance he gets. It also pledges, with due respect to the need for allies, never to "wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake."

The platform also seconds the Bush view that the U.S. is in "a war against a global terrorist movement committed to our destruction" — no more talk of terrorism being mainly a police problem.

Party platforms are not enforceable promises, but they do show the face that the party and its nominee want to present to the voters. This platform implies that the Democrats now see their antiwar wing as an embarrassment. They're starting to sound again as Edwards did in 2002, and that's a good thing as far as it goes.

But this party and its standard-bearers have done their share of waffling. What remains to be seen is whether they're hawks for as long as it takes to win, or whether this is just another phase.