You Call That the Center?

Democrats 'Push Toward Middle'

Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray write in The Washington Post: "Democratic leaders in Congress have decided to shift course and pursue modest bipartisan measures to alter U.S. military strategy in Iraq, hoping to use incremental changes instead of aggressive legislation to break the grip Republicans have held over the direction of war policy."

Weisman and Murray describe the "new momentum behind initiatives that would force the White House to make modest changes to the military mission but not require a substantial drawdown of troops by a set date."

One proposal will "be a revised version of legislation that would ensure that troops returning from Iraq are granted a home leave at least as long as their last deployment before returning to the battlefield"; another "is a revised withdrawal measure that would probably include timelines to start troop drawdowns but would leave a final pullout date as a goal rather than a deadline.

"And an amendment by Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) to mandate a change of strategy in Iraq is gaining currency with Democratic leaders, according to leadership aides. The amendment would order missions to shift immediately from combat to counterterrorism, border security and the training of Iraqi security forces. It would not mandate troop withdrawals, but Collins said such withdrawals would be inevitable, because the remaining missions could be accomplished with 50,000 to 60,000 troops."

Noam N. Levey and Julian E. Barnes write in the Los Angeles Times that "even if these bipartisan compromises were to become law, they are unlikely to force the president to pull out troops for at least the next year, no faster than he appears to want."

How the White House Won

Stolberg and Myers explain how the White House found itself with the upper hand in Washington: "White House officials say that Mr. Bush is in a much better place now than he was in July, when leading Republican lawmakers like Senators Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana publicly broke with the president, calling for a change of course.

"At that time, top White House officials like Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, were openly nervous about the prospect of losing Republican support for the war. But in the nearly two months since then, Mr. Bush's communications team waged an aggressive -- and, many Republicans say, largely successful -- campaign to use the Congressional recess in August to take control of the debate on Iraq.

"Buoyed by reports of improving conditions on the ground, the White House scheduled a series of presidential speeches, including one in which Mr. Bush contended that a hasty retreat from Iraq would produce carnage of the sort seen in Southeast Asia after Americans pulled out of Vietnam.

"'That was an important moment because that showed that the president was not going to cede certain arguments and cede certain ground,' said Peter Wehner, a former policy adviser to Mr. Bush who left the White House in July, referring to the Vietnam speech. 'Vietnam was already out there as a narrative, and the president took it and said, "Well, there's actually another story." '"

As I wrote in my Aug. 23 column, Bush's position on Vietnam is a neoconservative fantasy shared by almost no one. But the overall campaign apparently worked.

The Election Effect

The White House's megaphone may finally be getting some competition, however, as the Democratic presidential candidates step up their attack on Bush's Iraq policies.

Jeff Zeleny and Michael R. Gordon write in the New York Times: "Senator Barack Obama yesterday presented his most extensive plan yet for winding down the war in Iraq, proposing to withdraw all combat brigades by the end of next year while leaving behind an unspecified smaller force to strike at terrorists, train Iraqi soldiers and protect American interests. . . .