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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Kenneth T. Walsh
Afghanistan is now President Obama's war, and the immediate question in Washington is whether his military escalation will succeed. But beyond that, it's very possible that Obama's controversial new plan may have the unintended effects of jeopardizing his domestic priorities and making coalition-building in
Historians such as Robert Dallek and Julian Zelizer point out that wars tend to disrupt and often shatter presidential agendas at home. It happened to Woodrow Wilson in World War I and to Harry Truman in Korea. Perhaps most relevant, it happened to Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam during the 1960s.
The events in recent weeks have bolstered this argument, as Obama's announcement on Afghanistan crowded out his much-ballyhooed "jobs forum" at the
One big challenge will be for Obama to keep core Democratic supporters in line behind funding the escalation, which is expected to cost at least
In addition, strategists of both parties say liberal patience may wear out on other tough issues, including the imminent votes on healthcare legislation. Some strategists predict that liberals won't be able to swallow the kind of compromises that Obama will be asking them to make across the board, such as backing away from a full-fledged government role in providing health insurance, offering concessions to centrists in limiting climate change, setting a new immigration policy, and making tough decisions to stanch the flow of red ink. So they will draw lines in the sand to keep faith with their liberal constituents back home.
Already, there are ominous rumbles on the left. Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, chairman of the
There is an ironclad rule in politics: Americans assess wars mostly in terms of U.S. casualties. The higher the rate of death and injury, the less patience Americans have with foreign military engagements. And Afghanistan promises to be a very long and costly engagement. More than 900 Americans have died there so far, and public support for Obama's handling of the conflict has been sliding.
"I won't say this is Obama's war because it's not," says Ed Gillespie, former chairman of the
But Obama prefers the role of healer, conciliator, and innovator to commander in chief. He never wanted to be a wartime president, and his core supporters in the
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