Falling Into the Security Trap

Bill Kristol thinks the president has played the Dems brilliantly this past week by forcing security to the top of the election agenda. Coming just days after the 9/11 anniversary, I have to agree:

"It [the 2006 election campaign] shouldn't be about national security."
--House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Sept. 14, 2006

Too bad. It will be. On September 6, 2006, President Bush set the trap. He spoke in the East Room of the White House on the war on terror. He announced that 14 terrorist leaders and operatives, who had been held and questioned by the Central Intelligence Agency outside the United States, were being transferred to Guantánamo. He outlined some of the information acquired from the interrogations of men like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and explained that this information had contributed to disrupting terrorist plots here and abroad. In light of the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision, the president asked Congress to pass legislation that would put this interrogation program, and trials before military tribunals for captured terrorists, on a surer legal footing.

On the morning of September 14, in Room 222 of the Russell Senate Office Building, the Democrats marched into the trap. The Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services committee unanimously turned their back on Bush's proposed legislation. They reported out of committee, by a vote of 15-9, alternative language.

The next day, the president sprung the trap. He strongly reiterated his judgment that the bill reported out of the Senate Armed Services committee failed to provide sufficient clarity to guide personnel involved in questioning detained terrorists, and exposed such personnel to possible legal liability. The president said he would follow the advice of CIA director Michael Hayden not to continue the interrogations in such a murky legal environment. As the president put it, "Congress has got a decision to make. Do you want the program to go forward or not? I strongly recommend that this program go forward in order for us to be able to protect America."

You can look at the congressional preference polls of late and you'll see a strong move back toward the GOP. With the retrospectives on 9/11 and the arguments over giving terrorists special rights, security is back at the head of the parade, and that won't be good for Dems.