The Shrewdest Move?

Remember this time about two years ago? Kerry led Bush in many (premature) polls; many leftyblogs leaped around in their cages and flung poo jumped up and down and declared that Iraq made the race Kerry's to lose.

Well, they were right as far as that went.

Today, the usual suspects are hooting and hollering about the president's statement that the next president will be the one to withdraw troops from Iraq.

I think it's a brilliant move.

If journalism is the rough draft of history, then the first draft of the chapter on the Liberation of Iraq was written before March 17, 2003 - it tipped its hand when it declared a quagmire three days into the most successful, fastest military campaign in history - and, despite the ongoing insurgency, has been wrong ever since. Iraq isn't locked in civil war (complacency would be misplaced, and the provocations are immense and horrendous, but no - no civil war), and while like any counterinsurgency war the battle is one of patience, it is far from a quagmire. The media . And while the public may indeed be growing frustrated with a war which will soon have been going longer than WWII, I think the polls that claim the President is in dire straits are as jiggered as they appeared to have been during the '04 campaign.

So why would the President defer all withdrawal talk until after his presidency?

Because he's end-running the media, and playing straight to his base - and, more importantly, to the base that'll vote for his successor.

The Republican base doesn't show up in polls to anywhere near the extent of their opposition (a simple skim through the polls leading up to the '04 election shows this) - and they are as likely to want the war over as the most kool-aid-sotted Moore-on from Berkeley or Macalester . But they're also more likely to keep the mission in mind come election time - and to vote for the party that takes it seriously.

And as Kos and Moveon.org drive, more and more, the Democrat agenda, the choice will become ever starker by 2008. This move - besides being most likely militarily inevitable, and thus reasonable - gives the GOP candidate in '08 a course to stay.

They must think it's a winner. I'd tend to agree.