Are America’s Political Elites Becoming Dangerously Complacent? (UPDATED)

Bull Moose warns that America’s political elites have put their mind-set back to pre-911 and are ignoring the perils to the United States homeland and ominous rumblings from Iran.

However, there is increasing sentiment that we are no longer at war. Well, not exactly – clearly we are at war in Iraq. And according to some, the Bush Administration is conducting a relenting attack on our liberties. One Senate Democratic leader even crowed that the party had “killed” the Patriot Act.

But, what seems lost is the reality that Jihadists seek to attack within the borders of the United States. We are becoming a complacent nation – at least that is true of part of our opinion and political leaders. There is increasing talk that the threat from al-Qaeda was overblown and exaggerated. A large portion of the fault lies with the Bush Administration which decided that after 9/11 it would be business as usual at home. There would be no call to sacrifice except from our brave and heroic troops and their families. There was no serious effort to address the problem of energy independence or expansion of the military. Tax cuts were the supreme domestic imperative.

And of course, there was no effort at national unity. And so today, we are a polarized nation with Democrats assuming that Bush is a modern day Nixon and Republicans believing that Democrats are “stab in the back” traitors.

Read the entire post. People may (and will) differ with him on some of his key points. But a couple of things he raises are worth underscoring:

1. Accurate comparisons to Nixon so far fail because there is no sign yet that warantless wiretapping was conducted against the opposing political party to garner campaign political intelligence. Pul-leaze don’t throw the FBI’s surveillance of PETA back at us (we did a post on that ourselves by the way). We’re talking about tapping of top Democrats’ phones during the 2004 campaign. If it ever turned out that happened then it would be Watergate all over again — and a major constitutional crisis would unfold. BUT: the administration’s aggressive just-do-it expansion of executive branch powers plus reports that even John Ashcroft wouldn’t sign on to the wiretaps means this is not your typical admininistration — and there are troubling red flags that Congress needs to examine. Why wouldn’t John “Let’s-Pull-Out-All-Stops” Ashcroft agree to it?

2. There is indeed a perilous business-as-usual attitude in both parties. Many GOPers act as if the United States doesn’t need people’s ideas who don’t belong to their party, that the entire system is set up to let the President run the show, and that cultivating NATIONAL UNITY…which will take “hard work”…is a distraction rather than a NECESSITY in a time of the external war (Iraq) and our defensive war (shoring up the U.S. homeland and preventing attacks). Many Democrats seem to forget that although they have a perfect right to be concerned about and freely discuss the Bush administration’s excesses and genuine credibility gap — and remain patriots in doing so — it is still a reality that there is indeed a threat out there. This doesn’t EVER mean Democrats can’t say what they believe to oppose and pull-out-all stops to replace the current administration. But there truly are people out there who want to kill Americans en masse — and that is not an exaggeration.
3. Indeed, as Moose writes, “politics should not be the animating concern of the moment.” But that is precisely what has happened in 2005 with polarization soaring to heights (or plunging to depths) even greater than in 2004. Iran is potentially the Hurricane Katrina of international crises: it’s a gathering storm and everyone does lip service to the storm but it seems to be moving faster than anyone expects. Will Western Democracies, as in the case of New Orleans, be unprepared and overtaken by events if it hits? Where is the serious, sustained, intelligent, high profile discussion of Iran in both parties?

Moose also writes:

The Moose has faith that, at the end of the day, the clear majority of the American people will not view the continuing danger through a partisan prism. They will recognize that the President made a close call on the surveillance issue, but it was not made out of venality. They will also believe that there was a great intelligence failure concerning Saddam’s weapons and there was incompetence in the occupation, but that premature withdrawal would be disastrous.

That assertion will likely earn him some denunciations in some quarters but he’s probably on the mark: unless some new scandal emerges indicating that the Bush administration used warrantless searches to spy on Democrats during the last presidential campaign the “I-word,” realistically speaking, is likely going to remain just that. And so far, at least, it does not appear as if the American people back an immediate withdrawal — which not even all Democrats back.

But, lingering in the back of Bull Moose’s take on events, there is this:

911 happened due to various failures on the part of several American administrations of both parties, interagency bureaucratic bungling, and the U.S. being set up to look for mid to mid-late 20th century security threats versus the mega-terrroist threats of the late 20th century. Osma bin Laden waited and planned a long time before hitting the “GO!” button.

Most terrorism experts in and out of government think there will come a time when the “GO!” button is pushed again. This can’t be used as an excuse to stifle democratic debate, political opposition or campaigns to replace the existing government. But it’s a reality BOTH parties must keep in mind: this still is not Sept. 10, 2001.

The tragedy is that the terrorism issue has become so politicized that if another major attack took place recriminations on both sides could make national unity as elusive as the effort to put Humpty Dumpty together again.

UPDATE. The Los Angeles’ Times Ronald Brownstein, in a piece on the importance of Presidents building consensus, compares no-compromise President James K. Polk with Bush and draws some lessons. Read the whole post but here’s the quote that’s relevant to what we said above:

Polk’s unwavering, impermeable conviction defines one approach for organizing a presidency in such circumstances. But Polk’s early critic — Lincoln — offers Bush a better model for leadership during a difficult war. In the Civil War, Lincoln was nothing if not resolute. But as Goodwin notes, he also calibrated his decisions — from key personnel appointments to the timing of emancipation — to hold together all shades of opinion committed to the Union.

Bush lately has met more with Democrats and acknowledged mistakes on Iraq. But substantively, he has not conceded much, either about Iraq or his tactics in the broader war on terrorism (except his belated capitulation to Senate demands for a ban on torture in the interrogation of prisoners). The divisions over Iraq are so deep that nothing Bush could do would bridge them entirely, and his inclination to ignore his most implacable opponents is understandable. But Bush would place the nation’s security on a more stable foundation if he worked harder to find a consensus agenda with those critics whose assessment of the threat in Iraq and at home was closer to his own.

Part of Lincoln’s genius, as one close advisor wrote, was his understanding that in the pursuit of national unity, it was the task of the president “to mollify and moderate” the country’s fractious interests and diverse viewpoints. That’s one reason Lincoln is revered and Polk, for all his ferocious accomplishments, is barely remembered.

A lack of consensus won’t make Bush’s — or the nation’s — task any easier. Or his legacy any better.