Republicans Back on the Offensive

The only good thing about North Korea's nuclear test--aside from the fact that it may have been a dud--is the fact that it has broken the spell of the past two weeks' 1990s re-enactment.

I enjoy a good "Seinfeld" episode as much as the next guy, but in hindsight, the famous "show about nothing"--"Seinfeld" always obsessed over the minutiae of life--was a benign symptom of the more ominous underlying affliction of its era: the refusal to face up to the big issues of world events and to take the difficult and unpopular actions necessary to head off looming threats. The Clinton administration was the ultimate "show about nothing," particularly during its seedy final phase, when the nation was so transfixed by the ugly details of the president's personal life that most people failed to notice the nation was at war.

That's the real news of the Foley scandal: it is our political culture's first full-blown relapse into a 1990s mindset.

Two weeks ago, President Bush had successfully focused the mid-term elections around the most important issue of the day: the War on Terrorism and the need to stay and fight in Iraq. Then the Foley story hit, and every issue of actual national importance was driven from the headlines as we once again contemplated the sordid details of a politician's sex life. And this is not even a politician who is currently in office or running for re-election; Mark Foley resigned and quit politics the moment the scandal broke.

In 1998, we all ended up focusing on Clinton's personal life because neither his administration nor the Republican Congress gave us anything more important to talk about.

As I wrote in the October 1998 issue of TIA, "President Clinton's current troubles have inspired many comparisons to the recent film Wag the Dog, in which a desperate president attempts to distract public attention from a sex scandal by staging a war. Sadly, the real situation is the opposite. Clinton's sex scandal--and the Republicans' obsession with it--is distracting the nation's attention from the war Clinton isn't fighting."

And it wasn't just Clinton who was to blame. "In their eagerness to convict Clinton on this relatively narrow, minor offense," I complained at the time, "the Republicans are irresponsibly diverting attention from issues with far greater importance for the future of the nation"--including al-Qaeda's recent attack on US embassies in East Africa, the first salvo in Osama bin Laden's war against the United States.

But there is a difference this time. To their credit, the Republicans have given us real issues to focus on. For the most part, they have asked us to debate the real threats out in the world, especially the consequences of retreating from the war in Iraq. This time, it is the Democrats who are driving the effort to divert the public's attention from the real issues.

I argued recently that the Democrats deserve to be defeated in this fall's elections because they contribute nothing of value to the national debate. Boy, have they proven me right with the Foley scandal. The Republicans were doing well politically when the nation was focused on national security, but their poll numbers and electoral prospects dropped as soon as the Democrats exploited the Foley story. It is a measure of what the two parties have to offer that the one does well when the public focuses on the vital issues of the day--and the other does well when the public ignores vital issues in favor of trivial scandals.

This clearly indicates the best way out of this scandal for the Republicans. The only way out is to offer leadership on the real issues. Kim Jong-Il and his fissile fizzle have given them an excellent opportunity to do so. Congress and the Bush administration have four weeks left before the election, and they should fill those four weeks with a tough, comprehensive response to the nuclear threats posed by North Korea and Iran. Commentators on the right are offering some excellent suggestions. In today's New York Times, for example, former White House speechwriter David Frum outlines a plan to strengthen a military alliance led by South Korea and a newly nuclear-armed Japan--a development that would put enormous pressure on North Korea and, more importantly, on the regime whose support keeps Kim in power: China.

This is an opportunity to remind the American people that the Axis of Evil isn't Mark Foley and Dennis Hastert. It's Iran, the Iraqi insurgents, and North Korea.

The later Clinton years became bogged down in Clinton's personal life at the expense of the vital issues of the day because neither Clinton nor the Republicans gave us anything better to talk about. The Republicans can make up for that failure by giving us important policies and real issues to discuss over the next four weeks. If they do, they just might put the Democrats back on the defensive.

More important, they just might start to put the Axis of Evil back on the defensive, too.