Presidential Hopes Tied to Iraq Vote
By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut jokes about filing a lawsuit against the late Andy Warhol after getting so little airtime during a recent Democratic debate.
"He promised everyone 15 minutes," Dodd said, "and I didn't get mine."
A popular five-term senator at home, Dodd remains an asterisk in the 2008 presidential polls. Determined to change that, the 62-year-old made a splashy grab for the spotlight last week on the biggest issue of the campaign: Iraq. Once rather hawkish on the war, Dodd attached his name to a bill that would cut off funding for combat operations on March 31. Then he urged his fellow Democratic presidential candidates to follow suit.
To make sure they -- and the voters who will have the first say in the Democratic nominating contest -- got the message, Dodd aired television advertisements in Iowa and New Hampshire, calling the funding deadline the "only responsible measure in Congress that would take away the president's blank check and set a timetable to bring our troops home." Without naming names, he added, "Unfortunately, my colleagues running for president have not joined me."
When the Senate voted Wednesday on the deadline, its 29 supporters included Dodd and the three Democratic presidential contenders who serve with him: Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), Barack Obama (Ill.), and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.). The Dodd campaign responded with a satisfied news release.
"We're pleased that so many of Senator Dodd's colleagues, including Senators Clinton and Obama, have answered his call," spokeswoman Christy Setzer said.
For Dodd, the vote represented the kind of rare opening a candidate stuck on the bottom rung can't afford to pass up. "Certainly if you're in the second or third tier, it requires you to be opportunistic," said Democratic strategist Geoff Garin, who is not affiliated with a 2008 candidate. "The challenge, obviously, is to be noticed."
On the other hand, Garin added, "In Dodd's case, the fact that all the other candidates went along with it, sort of minimized the amount of daylight he was hoping to create for himself."
Dodd's goal was to establish himself at the left end of the war spectrum, where most Democratic primary voters reside. When Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, a hero of the antiwar left, proposed the deadline as part of a debate over war spending, Dodd jumped at the chance to become a co-sponsor, viewing it as a succinct way to show where he stood.
"People want clarity. It's important to them," Dodd said. When voters look at the Democratic candidates, he said, "there's an assumption that everyone's in a certain place on Iraq. They're not."
Wednesday's vote was purely for show, but it could resonate. All four Democratic senators seeking the nomination are on record supporting a withdrawal strategy that remains controversial, even within their own party. Two Democrats regarded as experts on military matters, Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl M. Levin (Mich.) and Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), voted against the Feingold-Dodd proposal, along with 17 other Democrats. "It sends the wrong message to the troops," Levin said.
Clinton, Obama and Biden all played down the vote by stressing its symbolic nature -- it was an amendment to an unrelated water bill, and procedural at that -- a response that helped underscore Dodd's newfound fervency. Obama noted that he still preferred his own proposal, a more flexible March 31, withdrawal goal. Clinton told reporters she was not sure she would back a funding deadline in the future -- and then hours later offered her unequivocal endorsement.
The contortions may have fallen shy of one of the signature moments of Sen. John F. Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, a fateful flip-flop also related to Iraq spending, but Dodd said the distinction still matters. "I voted for it before I voted against it" became one of the memorable lines of his losing 2004 presidential campaign.
"Being for it, being not quite for it -- that's when people get into some difficulty," Dodd observed of the fracas. "Because that's when the clarity is missing."
Dodd is hardly a darling of the antiwar left. On April 10, the progressive group MoveOn.org held a "virtual town hall" on Iraq, featuring remarks from seven Democratic presidential candidates beamed to more than 1,000 gatherings of MoveOn supporters. Dodd advocated the funding deadline and said, "I believe that we ought to begin redeploying our troops this evening."
He ranked last in a subsequent poll of participants.
Eli Pariser, MoveOn's executive director, acknowledged that Dodd "certainly has a strong position against the war." But he said the significant development last week was the unanimity among the four Democratic candidates for a funding deadline.
"Some of them are kind of more comfortable with the vote than others, but that's a big step forwards," Pariser said.
Both the Republican and Democratic fields this year are crowded with experienced politicians with long public records and no shortage of ambitious ideas for fighting terrorism, ending poverty and fixing health care. The list includes former governors, veteran House members, and two Senate committee chairmen, Dodd (Banking) and Biden (Foreign Affairs), whose combined service in the chamber totals 61 years.
Dodd was urged by some of his colleagues to seek the 2004 nomination, but took a pass. But when he surveyed the more grave 2008 environment, he saw an opening for a candidate like himself: experienced and tough, but with an easygoing, conciliatory style.
So far, there aren't too many takers. Dodd is languishing at the bottom of the most polls, although his advisers are optimistic that a breakthrough is both imminent and inevitable. "Democratic voters are just exhausted by the timidity, the dodges and the poll-tested weasel words," said senior Dodd strategist Jim Jordan.
Like Clinton and Biden, Dodd voted to authorize the war in 2002. He opposed setting a withdrawal date when the issue came before the Senate in June 2006. About a month ago, he said, his thinking on the war shifted abruptly.
"You look at all the formulations, and I came to the conclusion that the only hope that the Iraqis would decide for themselves to reconcile their differences, was to say, 'This is the year. This is it. We're moving on,' " Dodd said. "I think they've decided we're not going anywhere so they don't have to worry about it."
Such are the perils of a second-tier candidacy. Even the riskiest maneuvers and the most serious proposals draw relatively little notice.
During last month's Democratic debate in South Carolina, moderator Brian Williams of NBC News observed that none of the candidates had offered tough solutions on climate change. Dodd, who supports a carbon tax to reduce foreign oil dependency, fumed off camera as Biden touted a tamer proposal to expand ethanol capacity at gas stations.
"I felt like I was back in parochial school, yelling 'Sir! Sir! Over here!' " Dodd said afterward.
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