The Soap Box

It should have occurred to everyone the moment the story broke: The Bush Administration’s domestic spying scandal is not a constitutional crisis, or a case of an unchecked executive; it’s about security, stupid. The National SECURITY Agency. It seems Karl Rove may already have successfully spun the story right into a royal flush for the GOP.

We now know that a majority of Americans agree that spying on Americans who might have some connection to Al Qaeda - even though it likely violates the Fourth Amendment - is the right thing to do. (Really, we should pretty much take it for granted that a majority of Americans will agree with any poll that includes the words “Al Qaeda.”) When the nation first learned that the NSA had been listening in on their phone conversations, it sounded like the resurrection of Richard Nixon; once the administration finally weighed in, we all learned that the program just makes America more secure against “the terrorists.”

Karl Rove doesn’t frequently push for a policy position which turns out to be a political loser, and so it appears that, not only will there be no impeachment hearings, but the Democrats very well may lose this issue entirely long before the 2006 elections. Rove is banking on the fact that developing an effective counter-strategy to the now perennial GOP security argument will continue to be the bane of the Democratic Party in the post-September 11th world. However, unlike 2002 and 2004, this time we’re also in the post-Iraq and post-Katrina world.

The Constitution itself should be a sufficient counter-argument to framing this scandal in security terms. Ben Franklin does all of the heavy lifting for you: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” (How wonderful would it now be had this quote of his been repeated endlessly in the media just a few weeks ago on his 300th birthday?) But in order to be successful, the groundwork for a constitutional strategy in this case should have been laid before the GOP weighed in on the issue, and certainly before a majority of the public sided with them, because constitutional arguments rarely trump security in public opinion, even with Franklin’s help. Americans rarely support the Bill of Rights because they generally believe that it’s designed to provide protections only to those who really need it, i.e. the guilty, à la I don’t call Al Qaeda, so why not let the Bush administration listen in on the phone conversations of people who do?

The Democrats still have one very powerful weapon that could be brought to bear successfully against the GOP’s security argument in this scandal, and against every other security argument this administration makes from now until 2008. American’s value security, the Constitution (to some extent) . . . and trust. The President has violated that trust repeatedly and egregiously by leading us into a war in Iraq to prevent the spread of what we now conclusively know were imaginary WMD, and then again by failing to keep the people of the Gulf Coast safe in the face of a major natural distaster. In 2002, the GOP reran footage of the President on a heap of rubble at Ground Zero; in 2006, the Democrats must rerun footage of the President pretending to protect the people of the Gulf Coast.

The issue of trust is particularly paramount in the domestic spying scandal because the program is secret and the President himself has said it must remain that way. The administration’s case essentially boils down to: This is necessary to secure our nation against our enemies. I can’t tell you or even the other branches of government exactly what we’re doing, so you’ll just have to trust us. The security half of the argument may be true (even if it isn’t true, it’s politically impossible to oppose), but the trust half of the argument could be a big, big loser for the administration. Why should we trust you to be able to identify who really is connected to Al Qaeda and to leave the innocent alone? Why should we trust you to keep us safe from Al Qaeda at all?! And hey, WHERE’S OSAMA?!!

How to exploit this weakness? First, Iraq and Katrina should be the most oft-repeated words in the media. Every Democrat who ever stands in front of a microphone must repeat the message that this President has squandered the American people’s trust (specifically referencing Iraq’s WMD and Hurricane Katrina, the same way the GOP can’t stop saying September 11th), and so should not be allowed to exercise an unchecked power of domestic surveillance. Second, Democrats need to do a better job of emphasizing the six month window which the administration has to turn things around in Iraq. Democrats like Lieberman and Biden need to stop offering optomistic cheerleading for the President and start holding his feet to the fire. If Tim Russert asks you whether Iraq is going to turn out okay, the answer is, “Well, Tim, I don’t know. It’s not looking real good right now, but there is a six month window for the President to get this right. He got us into this; let’s see if he gets us out of it.” Not only did the President take the nation to war based on a mistake (at best), but we’re also in grave danger of losing that war because of the administration’s incompetent execution. That needs to be the focus.

With the administration looking weak on security, the issue of unconstitutional domestic spying can successfully be reframed as the high crime it truly is. The President will be radioactive in the November elections, the GOP’s security advantage will disappear (possibly ushering in huge Democratic electoral victories), and moderate Republicans up for re-election will be forced to supprt investigations into whether the President broke the law in order to avoid being tossed out by their constituents.

An opposition party does not need to have better ideas for keeping the country safe. That is the job of the party in power; they hold all of the tools. Half of the challenge of convincing the nation that the opposition party is better suited to lead is merely pointing out the incompotence the party in power, why they should no longer be trusted. From there, the second half of the challenge takes care of itself.