Perceived strength

Glenn Greenwald reads the positive headlines in the paper today, and raises a simple but important point:

Political parties that are "strong," and which are perceived as strong, are ones that "defy" orders and mount "great challenges" against weak and unpopular Presidents by standing on principle -- not ones that bow and capitulate and surrender and lose. Again, leave aside any hope that Democrats will actually be sufficiently motivated by the crucial constitutional principles at stake here. Just basic political self-interest, and basic human dignity, ought to mean that this singular act of defiance will lead to others.

Democrats need to learn, as Republicans have, that the media, in its own simplistic way, is addicted to portraying parties and agencies and branches of government as if they exist in a perpetual state of battle. And no amount of whining about how silly this is will ever change that. Ergo, adaptation. On the small matter of the war in Iraq, Democrats and Republicans argue, then they vote, then the war continues. Along the way, the headlines read "Democrats and Republicans clash over war" and then "Congress fails to end the war". Not "Republicans block end to war", not "conservative Democrats side with GOP to keep troops in Iraq", nothing, in other words, that portrays the disagreement with any accuracy. That sucks, but it's a dynamic within the media that neither party can really change. They can't be counted on to do the Democrats' work for them, so the Democrats have to do it themselves.

Last August, when Democrats caved on FISA for the first time, there wasn't even a filibuster for them to hide behind. They caved. The media knew it. They were well within their rights to report it as such. This time (at least for now) they didn't cave, the Republicans are ineffectively trying to portray it as a national security crisis, and the Democrats have waken up stronger today than they were yesterday. Whether they were acting out of a fear of repeating the August debacle, or, as per this post, out of a passionate belief that the country would be better served by their own agenda than by the Republicans', I can't say. But, as Glenn's post infers, when they do cave, one has to assume that they don't think the policies they stand for are worth the work. If they say they want to end the war, but then don't make a full effort to do so, one can only assume that Democrats don't really think that the war is worth ending. Maybe that's actually what they believe, but then they should just stop pretending otherwise. The politics, are after all, on their side.