Ross Douthat imagines the state of our politics today if the Iraq War never happened:
[T]ake away Iraq’s imprint on our politics, and America might well have still elected a Democrat to replace George W. Bush. But because of Iraq, the Democratic majority that did come to power in 2006 and 2008 has been more aggressive on public policy, less defensive in the culture war, and more proficient in the art of base mobilization than a hypothetical Clinton Restoration would have been – and their Republican opposition has been more ideologically bunkered-down, less nimble and less inclined to woo the center, than the G.O.P. might have been absent the trauma of Iraq.
Without Iraq, there is no Obama presidency. Obama would not have been able to distinquish himself from Clinton in the primaries and would have lost to her. Perhaps even more importantly, there would have been no Howard Dean. Thus, while Hillary would have gone on to beat John McCain due to the 2008 economic collapse, the Democratic Party would be a moderate mess, as the progressive take over of the party in 2005 would not have happened, and the 2006 retaking of Congress probably does not happen (although it would have in 2008).
Meanwhile, a new Gallup poll finds that public support for new federal spending to create jobs is, as Greg Sargent puts it, “simply overwhelming.”
72% support federal spending “to put people to work on urgent infrastructure repairs” and 72% support a “federal jobs creation law that would spend government money for a program designed to create more than 1 million new jobs.”
Here is an ad that will be playing a lot in 2014:
Finally, back to Iraq…
“Is it really too much to ask that those who supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq so enthusiastically at the time, and whose second thoughts have been far less fierce and full-throated than their initial enthusiasm, not deploy virtually the exact same crusading rhetoric about the necessity of the use of U.S. power in the name of overthrowing tyrants, and of America serving as an armed midwife to the birth of democracy in the Middle East, with regard to Syria as they did a decade ago with regard to Iraq?” – David Rieff, TNR.