There's no daylight between President Bush and what any Democrat is saying about the Middle East conflict. Polls show that Americans sympathize with Israel but don't want us to get drawn into the fighting. The small band of neocons who beat the drums for war with Iraq are trying to goad Bush into doing whatever it takes to get rid of Hizbullah in Lebanon.
"It reminds me of that old schoolyard taunt: 'You and what army?'" says Matt Bennett of Third Way, a centrist group founded to challenge liberal orthodoxy. The neocons have not lost their faith in American invasions even as the fallout from Iraq emboldens Syria and Iran and threatens to engulf the region in all-out war. What this latest outbreak of violence means for Bush's portfolio as he leads his party into the fall elections is anybody's guess. It could overshadow the mess in Iraq and serve as a distraction for Republicans, or it could help Democrats by reminding voters how everything seems to be coming apart on Bush's watch.
If this were a normal news time, the big story this week would be Bush's veto of legislation to expand federally funded embryonic stem-cell research. Bush's defiance on the issue has the potential of being as big a political gift for Democrats as the Massachusetts gay-marriage ruling was for Republicans in the last election. "The public clearly sides with science on this issue," says Republican pollster Frank Luntz. But he adds that there are so many cutting-edge issues out there—Iraq, immigration, energy prices—that embryonic stem-cell research falls behind in comparison.
Sixty percent of Americans support this research (according to a recent Gallup review of polls on the subject), and when they see Bush holding up adoption as an alternative to scientific study, they know it's a false choice. Most people understand intuitively that the overwhelming majority of embryos that are the byproduct of in vitro fertilization will not become babies, and real medical and scientific advances could be made if these embryos were available to scientists. Bush banned the media from watching him wield his veto pen, the first of his presidency; then he welcomed cameras as he explained his decision at a White House reception surrounded by "snowflake babies" and their grateful parents.
There are 400,000 embryos languishing in storage tanks at fertility clinics; only a very small number are candidates for adoption. "Even with federal funding available to encourage adoption, the number [of pregnancies from these embryos] is 128, which makes it conclusive that these 400,000 embryos will either be used for scientific research or thrown away," said Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, who supports expanded research. The legislation, which passed by wide margins in the Republican-controlled House and Senate but fell short of a vetoproof two-thirds majority, would only use embryos that would otherwise be discarded, and then only with the written consent of the couple that created them.
The impact of the newly energized stem-cell debate is being felt in individual races. Pennsylvania Rep. Curt Weldon, a toe-the-line conservative, surprised everybody by voting to overturn Bush's veto despite having voted against the legislation. His Democratic challenger, retired Navy vice admiral Joe Sestak, thanked him for his reversal, likening it to John Kerry's famous campaign faux pas, "I voted for it before I voted against it." In Weldon's case, he voted against it before he voted for it. Weldon is best known for believing that the jury is still out on WMD in Iraq. First elected in 1986, this is his first tough race. The last four Democrats who ran against him collectively raised $78,000, chump change. Sestak has raised more than a million dollars, even outpacing Weldon in the last quarter in part because of some pretty slimy personal attacks by Weldon that backfired.
In a conversation with NEWSWEEK, Sestak said he decided to run while living in the oncology ward of Children's Hospital in Washington as his daughter, then 4 years old, was being treated for a brain tumor. "I've seen the other side," he said, explaining that in his daughter's room was a toddler diagnosed with acute leukemia whose parents were uninsured. Hearing their anguish helped crystallize his decision to seek office, as did his opposition to the Iraq war ("tragic misadventure," he calls it). Once he learned his daughter was in remission, he drove to the county in Pennsylvania where he grew up and declared his intention to run for Congress. Recently retired after 31 years in the Navy, he had always harbored an admiration for politicians and served as director of defense policy in the Clinton White House.
Weldon accused him of being a carpetbagger because he was only renting in the district while his wife and daughter were still in the Washington area. When Sestak explained that his daughter remained in treatment, Weldon questioned why she wasn't being treated in Philadelphia or Delaware, closer to home. The upshot was an outpouring of campaign contributions, mostly from liberal bloggers incensed by Weldon's cheap shot. Sestak and his wife eventually posted a letter thanking everybody but asking that future donations in the name of their daughter, Alexandra, now 5, be directed to cancer-treatment centers. This is an unusually personal race, but that's what it takes to engage voters when so much else is going on.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
