Barring an unforseen twist, the Democratic primary is over, and Mr. Dean has clinched it. So, here is a bit of constructive advice for those who are responsible for his foreign policy profile.
The current president has assembled a respectable foreign-policy team, and he himself has developed a considerable expertise. Nonetheless, had Saddam been still at large, it would have been relatively easy to articulate the notion that the administration is mismanaging the situation and needs to be replaced with people who are more competent. This is now harder to do, and should Osama be captured (dead or alive) between now and November, it will become even more difficult. Yet, this is precisely what needs to be done.
Therefore, the Dean campaign has to drop the anti-war stance as a centerpiece of its foreign policy platform. In the Spring, it made perfect sense to build a primary campaign around this message because the administration handled its public relations poorly and failed to convince the country that the war was necessary. But now the war is over, and it is time to move on.
Consequently, Mr. Dean has to articulate a constructive vision of what he stands for. In particular, he has to communicate that he is passionate about exporting democracy to Iraq and then he has to criticize the administration for doing so poorly.
Take, for example, the issue of Iraq's territorial integrity. Should we keep that country as a single entity and risk religious and ethnic strive that might undermine our effort in creating a stable democracy, or should we partition the country into smaller but more homogeneous states?
Or consider the issue of who should control Iraq's oil. Should we allow a Russian-style oligarchy to emerge and risk the subsequent corruption of Iraq's new democracy, or should we insist that Iraq manage its oil reserves the way Norway does and so make Iraq's politics relatively clean?
One final thing. The current administration will be tempted to use the trial of Saddam Husain as a public relations event during the Fall campaign. They will have an electoral incentive to emphasize Saddam's brutality, which was real, in order to deflect public attention from the fact that he did not have weapons of mass destruction. As a countermeasure, Mr. Dean should already start insisting that Saddam be questioned about his weapons program.
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