Evan Bayh Co-sponsored the Iraq War Resolution

By Ari Melber 08/14/2008 11:42AM

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who is now being mentioned as a strong candidate for Sen. Barack Obama's running mate, co-sponsored the 2003 resolution authorizing the Iraq war.

Bayh not only voted for the war and embraced its neo-conservative rationale by chairing the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, as a New York Times profile noted this week. He went further, taking the single most aggressive, pro-war position possible. The few Democratic co-sponsors of the White House Iraq resolution provide context for the kind of senators who shared Bayh's position at the time -- they include Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn), Zell Miller (Ga.) and John Breaux (La.).

This legislative approach was not only on the far end of the pro-war spectrum, it undercut the efforts of even pro-war senators to advance alternatives pressing disarmament over invasion. There was a bipartisan Biden-Lugar proposal from the leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for example, and an effort by Sen. Carl Levin (Mich.) to require more diplomacy and potentially avoid the entire war. (Levin, the current chairman of the Armed Services Committee, ultimately voted against the war.) Thus while the Senate's official leaders on foreign policy sought to check President George W. Bush's march to war, they were undermined by a few senators who rushed to endorse the entire White House approach as written. At a personal level, Bayh's choice was also striking because he undercut Sen. Richard Lugar, the respected Foreign Relations Committee chair from his home state of Indiana.

It is a testament to Bayh's political skills and Washington popularity that he not only retains "centrist" credentials, despite staking out a war position to the right of Republican colleagues, but apparently remains in serious consideration as the running mate to a Democratic nominee who owes his rapid rise to early, unambiguous opposition to the war. Facing a slew of candidates with other advantages -- from a primary populated by former diplomats, governors and seasoned Washington hands to the current race against a foreign-policy-fixated veteran -- Obama calmly stressed how the right judgment is better than the wrong experience.

Now he needs to use that same judgment to choose a leader with the right experience.

C-SPAN video of Bayh's 2002 Iraq speech.

Comments:

h_o_o_s_i_e_r_ten
Posted 08/14/2008 01:10pm with

Here’s the problem, Ari. I reading your own bio, I know that you at one point thought that John Kerry should have been President of the United States. In fact you were on his payroll—during the primary. John Kerry as I recall supported the Iraq War initially, then changed his mind.

Evan Bayh has followed a similar path. The core of what you write is correct—Bayh was a huge supporter of the war early on. When it became undeniable that it was a failure, he changed his mind—in a way that matches the mood shift of the American public.

I’m curious: what’s changed for you? Why is the original War Resolution vote more indictable now than it was four years ago?

I have followed Bayh’s career. He’s been a hawk on defense issues. He isn’t an ideologue though—when it was clear that we weren’t accomplishing anything in Iraq, he apologized for his vote. Yes, he said he was wrong. (Of course, you conveniently don’t mention that. I wonder why.) In fact, he has endorsed Obama’s plan for withdrawal within 16 months of the start of a new administration (something you also are not willing to credit him).

Bayh is not a Big Scary Monster. He doesn’t want endless war. He doesn’t want war at all, but he is a Realist who thinks that we need to have enough intellectual and moral integrity to recognize that sometimes that’ s what it takes to keep America safe and to maintain international order.

You’re a good writer. You’re capable of writing a piece that actually reflects the complexities of the man instead of this mono-dimensional fear-mongering piece.