Dems Could Benefit from Iraq Victory

No one knows when our war on terror will end or what the end will look like. It seems a safe bet, though, that the war will be the 2008 election's major issue.

Logic would follow that if things are improving, the party of President Bush would benefit and the Republican nominee would get a boost. If the war still bears the stain of failure 20 months from now, that would seem to boost Democratic fortunes.

But it may not be that simple.

Think of the possibilities of war progress along a spectrum. At one end is a wholesale disaster - high U.S. casualties with no stability in Iraq and no prospects for improvement.

At the other end is inspiring success - a diminished insurgency, a big decrease in civil strife and strong indicators that Iraqis seem ready to accept this democracy experiment.

In between lie more moderate possibilities. Let's identify the two on either side of the spectrum's midpoint - a moderate story of frustration and stagnation that falls short of complete catastrophe and a scenario of middling improvement that holds promise but doesn't exactly look like a finish line.

Here's a prediction: If the war is plodding along in a mild funk as of Election '08, or if it has made moderate progress, the Republican nominee benefits. But if it heads to either extreme - the whiff of victory or the stench of defeat - it's a boost to the Democrat.

Two of those observations may seem odd. How would the GOP benefit from a still-stalled war effort, and why would a Democrat fare better if we make enormous strides?

Start with the fair assertion that an awful turn in the war rewards a Democrat. An already war-weary nation will surely be ready to bail if Iraqi violence and disorder stretch deep into next year. But what if 2007 and 2008 are more like three steps forward, four steps back?

Granted, that's a net negative, but if we see some things working, even while others are not, voters might give the right Republican a chance to tweak things.

And yes, where I wrote "the right Republican," you may safely read "Rudy Giuliani." If enough voters think the Bush administration can hand the baton over to a Republican successor who might fight even more ardently, that's a sale that might be made.

(One might give John McCain the same credit, but his chance of winning the Republican nomination are precisely zero.)

Switch to moderate improvement in the war, and the election defaults to a normal referendum: a war going pretty well after so many years of difficulty would be worth a handful of percentage points to any GOP nominee.

Now let's dream for a moment. Twenty months from now, Iraq is a fairly stable country with a government that seems to be working well.

Insurgent bombings are far more rare, and Sunnis and Shiites seem to be in a far greater mood to embrace peaceful democracy.

It is every Republican dream come true. And I guarantee it helps the Democratic nominee by a few points in the election.

Have we not shown how eager we are as a nation to get past a war mentality? If it actually looks like victory is at hand, millions of voters will start to refocus on domestic issues like health care where Democrats tend to score.

None of this is a prediction of which party actually wins; it's just an assessment of which party would get a positive bump from the various points along the spectrum of possibilities.

I can see the e-mails already: "Hey, Mark, if you think big success in Iraq benefits a Democrat in '08, does that make you hope for only mitigated success?"

Please. If a few points of Democratic candidate votes is the price I have to pay for a decidedly positive war outcome, I'll take it in a heartbeat. Partly because it's the only right way to feel, and partly because if Rudy's the nominee, it won't be that close anyway.