Do Democrats Need Their Own Gingrich?

Some congressional Democrats are hoping to bolster the party's national security credentials. Last month, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the House minority whip, brought together a group of senior House Democrats to unveil a document entitled " Ensuring America's Strength and Security: A Democratic National Security Strategy for the 21st Century ."

"Unfortunately, many voters, even voters who agree with Democrats on key domestic issues such as education, health care, retirement security, other issues, have questioned whether our party is willing to use the full range of our national power to strengthen America's security and protect our people," Hoyer said at a news conference to unveil the document a few weeks ago. "Our opponents, of course, have preyed upon this perception and indeed fostered it. But we are here today to emphatically reject this perception as not only wrong but as completely contrary to the Democratic Party's proud tradition of leadership in the world affairs over the last century."

The document includes a lot of tough sounding rhetoric about capturing and killing terrorists and reaffirming the commitment to use military force do so, when necessary. But it also calls for increasing military troops and modernizing the military.

Rep. Jane Harman, a moderate Democrat from California, who is a member of that group, has started a new political action committee, SecureUS, to help her party craft a strong, clear message on national security.

"The failure of Democrats to articulate a compelling message and policy position on national security issues spelled doom for our party during the last election cycle," Harman said.

But some on the left are suspicious of Hoyer and Harman -- both of whom voted to authorize the war in Iraq -- and are talking about their efforts in the sort of hot rhetoric typically reserved for the other party..

"The fact is, Harman's efforts will likely be nothing but another veiled attempt by the insulated Democratic 'strategic class' in Washington to continue perpetuating the worst right-wing lies about progressives on foreign policy," wrote David Sirota, a former Capitol Hill staffer who writes a blog popular among the left. "You know the lies: progressives are unpatriotic because they opposed blindly invading Iraq on the basis of what we knew were clearly fabrications; because progressives advocate for a more multilateral, cooperative foreign policy, they are weak; And because progressives want our military to actually focus on the real enemies in the War on Terror (ie. al Qaeda and the 9/11 bombers rather than Iraq and Saddam Hussein), they are not tough."

Jim Hightower, a liberal activist and writer, accused the party's leadership of cowering on Iraq, asking "where are the congressional Democrats? AWOL, that's where -- cowering in indecision and fear. Rather than standing up to the ideological extremism of the Bushites and giving the public a rallying point for anti-war action, the Beltway Democrats are just sitting there, quiet and motionless. They say they fear that opposition to Bush might make them appear to be 'weak on war.'"

As former Clinton White House adviser Bruce Reed, now an official at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, wrote in Salon, Democrats "can't indict our way back to the majority. The jury we have to convince is the American people."

On "Meet the Press" last week, NBC's Tim Russert asked Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to lay out a positive agenda, beyond just criticizing Republicans.

When asked whether the United States should withdraw from Iraq, Emanuel struggled for an answer, first telling Russert that that was "the wrong question" before reverting to boilerplate criticisms about how the "rubber-stamp Congress" sent "troops in there without Kevlar vests, without Humvees."

Then he uttered something about how the U.S. should have a "standard" in Iraq over the next two years, at which point "we'll evaluate where we are." Asked if Democrats who voted to authorize the war made a mistake, Emanuel said, "Given the information that we were given the[n], they made their decision. What has been a mistake is to let this type of administration basically run a policy of incompetence when it comes to Iraq."

Then he quickly tried to move the conversation in another direction, focusing on a platform that included universal college education, universal health care, cutting the budget deficit and reducing dependence on foreign energy.

There are Democrats who argue that their party is a better place because it allows the sort of dissent, free-thinking and big-tent activism that is so often squashed in the Republican Party. The party doesn't need to walk lock step on Iraq or any other issue, this arguments goes.

And it is a fine argument ... for a debating society. Ultimately, voters will want to know that the party has what it takes to protect the nation. And they'll expect solid, concrete answers and solutions.