DEMOCRATIC House members unveiled their version of the Contract with America yesterday - a plan for governance should their party win control of the House of Representatives in November.
The agenda items of their "New Direction for America" include stem-cell research, promoting energy-efficient technology, raising the minimum wage, making college tuition tax deductible, preventing the privatization of Social Security and restoring budget discipline (which is code for raising taxes on whoever they think is "rich").
These are all popular and poll-tested proposals, as was the case with the Contract items devised by Newt Gingrich in 1994.
But there is not one word, not a word, in the plan about the War on Terror or the war in Iraq.
Back in 1994, with the Cold War over and America halving the size of its armed forces, the Contract with America managed to carve out a plank on foreign-policy and military matters - because Gingrich and his fellows understood they needed to say something on these vital matters, even if they didn't seem quite so vital at the time.
In 2006, with 150,000 Americans under arms in the Mideast, and Iraq topping the list of American concerns in every poll, the Democrats could not come up with a single thing to say about it or America's role in the world generally.
This is a fascinating development. For the past year or so, the conventional wisdom has been that Republicans are going to pay a steep price in November for our inability thus far to prevail in Iraq. And with less than half the population supporting the war now and 60 percent or more disapproving of the way it's being conducted, even the most passionate backers of the effort to pacify and democratize Iraq have conceded its unpopularity |