Sunday, February 12, 2006

AMERICANS, OFTEN cynical about their political institutions and often for good reason, had cause last week to feel pretty good about their national legislature. On some tough policy challenges, Congress debated with seriousness, patriotism and some measure of bipartisanship. Senators came up with a compromise on the USA Patriot Act that, while not entirely satisfying to most, preserved the police powers the government says it needs while extending a bit more protection to civil liberties. They turned back an early effort to quash an asbestos relief bill that would replace a dysfunctional court process with a system designed to give sufferers of asbestos-related disease a real chance at relief. And senators and House members alike began exploring ways to evaluate President Bush's extralegal program of domestic surveillance and preserve the useful parts of it in a defensible legal framework.

So you might think this was what Vice President Cheney had in mind when he told a Republican crowd on Thursday night, in reference to the surveillance program, that "a debate is now underway. At the very least, this debate has clarified where all of us stand on the issue."

Unfortunately, though, Mr. Cheney wasn't celebrating the reasoned process that Congress belatedly has embarked on. Instead he was engaging in the administration's tired practice of trying to choke off debate by suggesting that anyone who disagrees with President Bush basically doesn't want to fight the war on terrorism. Some Democrats have their own brand of irresponsible rhetoric when it comes to criticizing the president's policies. But the administration has patented the practice of taking a complicated policy issue and turning it into a club for the coming campaign: "And with an important election coming up, people need to know just how we view the most critical questions of national security, and how we propose to defend the nation that all of us, Republicans and Democrats, love and are privileged to serve," Mr. Cheney told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "As always, the president has made his thinking absolutely clear to the citizens of this land: If there are people inside our country talking with al Qaeda, we want to know about it, because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again."

This might be a fair gibe if Mr. Cheney's political opponents were against knowing who's talking with al Qaeda. But they're not. Both the Democrats whom the vice president caricatures, and the Republicans who he does not acknowledge also have doubts about the program, support responsible surveillance policies. They are looking for ways to allow surveillance to take place within the boundaries of the Constitution -- which ultimately would strengthen the defense and law enforcement value of any overheard conversations. They may not succeed, and the bipartisan good sense in evidence this week may not last. But we hope they won't be deterred by the vice president's mischaracterization of what's happening.