Put up Your Dukes, Democrats

Wiretap hearings give the party a chance to show that it fights for the rule of law and homeland security

As this week's hearings into President George W. Bush's wiretapping program make all too clear, the war on terror has been running parallel to a war within the Democratic Party.

It is tempting to sum it up by saying that it's a war of the activist, ideological left against the mainstream, more conservative middle. But that would be too simple. It's also a war between those who think the Democratic Party has been too quick to accommodate the Bush administration and those who think the Democrats have abandoned the important role of opposition party. The result is a party that all too often seems to be afraid of its own shadow.

Added to this is a near pathological fear of Bush's political adviser Karl Rove. It goes back to the 2002 midterm elections, when Rove performed a nice piece of political jujitsu on the unwitting Democrats by taking their idea — the Department of Homeland Security — and using it to beat the you-know-what out of them.

The 2004 election wasn't much better. At the Democratic convention, speakers were instructed not to criticize an incumbent president running a failing war. And their candidate was instructed not to defend himself after attacks on his war record. With this kind of baggage, it is no wonder a significant number of Americans concluded that if the Democrats couldn't even make war on the Republicans, they were a bad bet to make war on terror.

Now that another election year is upon us, the fear of Rove is back — even though corruption, cronyism and Katrina have combined to erode the Bush administration's popularity. Some Democrats are so freaked by the past they are arguing that members of the party should stay away from one of the biggest issues of the day: the Bush administration's domestic spying operations.

This is a mistake for two reasons. First, if the Democratic leaders stay away from this issue, the activist left will fill the void. The left wing of the party frequently manages to sound weak on defense and weak on terror. Nothing could play more into Rove's hand. He wants this debate to be about eavesdropping on al-Qaida, familiar territory on which they win.

Second, if Democratic leaders can't question an issue with profound constitutional importance, a great many Americans will wonder — as they did in the past two elections — whether this party believes in anything at all.

And so the challenge is to get the debate onto Democratic grounds. Here's where not to go. Over the weekend, The Washington Post reported that a majority of these questionable wiretaps led to nothing at all. So what? One good lead could save American lives. Democrats ought to be in favor of all leads that could break or at least interrupt al-Qaida.

Second, it is oh so tempting to compare the case of a president who lied about his girlfriend and got impeached with the case of a president who lied about violating the laws designed to protect Americans' privacy and didn't. Don't go there. It looks like sour grapes.

The questions Democrats ought to be asking are simple: "Why, Mr. President, was the existing law (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) not sufficient to protect us?" The answer is likely to have to do with the new technology of communications, an answer that does indeed have some merit.

So the next question is: "Why, Mr. President, didn't you seek to update our laws so that they are in keeping with the new technology?" The answer is likely to be that going to Congress would reveal the program to the enemy. But every year Congress passes an intelligence budget that is not revealed to the enemy, to the public or even to the rest of the government. Surely there is a way to do this.

If Democrats get sucked into a debate over tactics in the war on terror, they will lose. But it's hard to see how they lose if they wage the debate over the rule of law and if they show their willingness to amend the law to strengthen the war on terror.

Most important of all, however, is that they take strong positions, grounded in strong values. So how about this for a start, provided to me by my colleague Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution: "We believe that the conduct of war is consistent with the rule of law."

It could even fit on a bumper sticker.

Elaine Kamarck is a lecturer at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and was a senior adviser to Vice President Al Gore.