Campaigns and Election
09-12-07
Petraeus Testimony Unlikely to Cause Immediate Shifts in Iowa
By Justin Schardin
This week's testimony before Congress by General David Petraeus and
Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the progress of the Iraq surge has been longawaited by many Washington officials. While conventional wisdom holds that some members of Congress are preparing to use the testimony as cover to alter their positions on the war, a pair of Iowa experts says not to expect significant change soon.
Bruce Gronbeck, director of the University of Iowa Center for Media Studies and
Political Culture said he doesn't predict much of Iowa's congressional delegation making position changes, with one potential exception.
"It seems to me the key person whom this may embolden is [U.S. Rep. Leonard
Boswell]. He's simply not real loud on this issue...he may get pushed further, though I think his balancing job is a little bit trickier because he's under such pressure and always being targeted if only because he's getting older and sicker."
"I don't think the rest will. The new congressional reps on the east end of the state have been working pretty loud and hard already on this issue," he continued, adding that freshman Democratic U.S. Reps. Bruce Braley and David
Loebsack, in particular, had to focus on other issues.
"By this time of a campaign [they] have to do exactly what they're doing, which is spending time on home issues and talking about getting security money [for
Iowa]. They've got to show they're doing something for the folks back home.
They're getting close enough now, almost within a year to the next vote, so they can't live or die on the war issue."
Iowa State University political science professor Steffen Schmidt said that a
Monday New York Times/CBS News poll may affect Democrats' strategy. The poll said that while Americans trust Democrats about four times as much as
President Bush (21 to 5 percent) to bring the Iraq war to a successful end, they trust military commanders far more than either, at 68 percent.
The Republicans are hanging together and believe that the surge has some positive side effects and that there is some progress and that on the military front you need to continue to support things," Schmidt said. "[The situation] now poses for [Democrats] a very, very complicated...strategy of how they're going to take a

position that we should be winding down...and yet not look as though they are not undermining the American troops."
"I think...the Democrats in the Iowa delegation are going to try to propose something that...does not suggest that we're going to abandon Iraq and let it fall into total chaos," he added. "It'll involve helping to make the environment safer for American troops... And it'll involve pushing the Bush administration to mobilize more diplomatic firepower and have the State Department play a bigger role in trying to push the Iraqis to come up with conciliation legislation... They have to differentiate themselves from the Bush admininistration."
"But it's much more difficult to say what [Democratic New Mexico Gov. Bill]
Richardson, says, which is get all the troops out by December. I would put money on it that they're not going to do that," said Schmidt. "The Iowa delegation is going to have to be closely consulting with the leadership to figure out how to handle it. It is very complicated. It is less complicated for Republicans."
Gronbeck believes that in general, since the Iraq issue "just keeps pounding them in the face," presidential candidates will need to find new ways to keep talking about the war to hold public attention. He said in that regard it will be interesting to gauge the effectiveness of Obama's detailed policy speech to be delivered in Clinton, Iowa this afternoon.
He also believes former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee may be affected the most since "he's finally going to have to come out in concrete ways and participate in concrete discussions on specific issues."
Gronbeck said that Thompson "has to spend time where the rest of the candidates already have been able to develop their basic positions," and Iraq in particular costs any candidate. "The war and immigration are the two issues...that are in a sense almost irreconcilable. You're always going to be attackable on those two issues no matter what you do."