Democrats Juggle Party Loyalty and Support for Bush’s Agenda

COLUMBUS, Ohio —  When 1,000 Ohio Democrats gathered recently for the party’s annual fund-raising bash, there were patriotic songs, flags at each dinner table and no end to the star-spangled speeches.

But one of the biggest ovations came when Chairman David Leland offered a caveat to the evening’s brotherly tone. “We all support the administration and our armed forces in bringing terrorists to justice,” he told the partisan crowd. “We did not all become Republicans.”

With America at war, Democrats are tracing a difficult path between fealty to party principles and deference toward a commander in chief with skyscraping popularity in the polls.

Looking to next year’s fight for Congress--and, beyond, to the presidential race in 2004--party leaders say the challenge is finding the right balance between loyalty and opposition, between supporting the administration’s agenda and promoting their own.

They are confident that issues like job security, health care and public education will eventually move to the fore, inviting a debate that Democrats welcome, much as they did after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Meanwhile, “we have to find a respectable way to disagree,” said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, last year’s Democratic vice presidential nominee.

“That’s the line between supporting the president in the war on terror but not stifling the kind of healthy discussion and debate that is one of the great characteristics of our democracy.”

The sensitivities were underscored last week when Republicans attacked Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a prospective Democratic presidential contender, for musing on the possible risks of a prolonged bombing campaign against Afghanistan. Biden suggested his remarks, in a speech to the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations, were taken out of context.

But as the back-and-forth illustrated, the partisan cease-fire that held through September has clearly ended. The two major political parties have resumed their fund-raising, and Democrats and Republicans are bickering on Capitol Hill over everything from taxes to judicial appointments to airport security.

This year’s two gubernatorial contests, in Virginia and New Jersey, have turned decidedly bitter in the final few days. Even in New York, which elects a new mayor Nov. 6, politicking has returned to pretty much as usual.

At the same time, as partisan skirmishing resumes, Democrats are careful to avoid directly criticizing President Bush or saying anything suggesting less than total support for the war effort.

(For his part, Bush has focused almost exclusively on the war effort, abandoning much of his domestic agenda and halting all partisan activities.)

Terry McAuliffe, the voluble Democratic national chairman, is back to giving as many as eight speeches a day, six days a week. But he always starts with a popular refrain: “The Democratic Party stands 100% with President Bush as he fights terrorism around the world.”

That said, McAuliffe quickly enumerates the party’s differences with Republicans over education, tax cuts, health care and, lately, the plan to federalize airport security workers, which remains stalled on Capitol Hill.

In scores of conference calls with party strategists, congressional leaders and Democratic officials across the country, McAuliffe has urged a similar tack: lending selective support to the president while respectfully staking out their disagreements.

“So much of it right now is about tone,” said Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist and advisor to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). “It’s about not sounding as though your only purpose is to score potshots against your opponent.”

But if history offers any guide, that velvet-glove approach will eventually give way to more bare-knuckled disagreements.

“There’s a myth that gets promulgated that somehow the United States always stands together at a time of crisis,” said Douglas Brinkley, who teaches history at the University of New Orleans. “In fact, the country’s usually torn apart.”

Brinkley cites examples as far back as the War of 1812, which was deeply divisive. In modern times, Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon all faced robust wartime challenges.

While most Democrats are muffling their differences for now, few seem intimidated by Bush’s stratospheric poll ratings. After all, his father reached similar peaks of popularity during the Gulf War--only to lose office less than two years later to the governor of Arkansas, after all the heavyweight Democrats ducked the race.

“I don’t think anyone now is saying he’s unbeatable,” Dunn said of the incumbent Bush, though she acknowledged his “greatest weakness”--the perception of whether he is up to the job--”has undergone a sea change” over the last few weeks.

“Now the question is whether his priorities are our priorities,” Dunn said.

To that end, some of the Democrats’ top presidential prospects have started offering their own definitions of what constitutes a victory over terrorism.

“The measure of the national security of this country is not just in the muzzle of a gun,” Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) declared in a recent speech in New Hampshire, the traditional White House testing ground. “Our strength is defined also by the quality of our education and the safety of our children and health care and job security and long-term retirement security.”

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, another Democratic prospect, used his appearance in Columbus to echo that theme and tie the events of Sept. 11 even more explicitly to a Democratic agenda.

The victims of terrorism “didn’t just die for the America we are,” Edwards told party loyalists. “They died for the America we can be. . . . An America where our public schools are the best in the world . . . an America where every single child has access to quality health care and where health care decisions are not made by HMO bureaucrats.”

Some Democrats cringe at that kind of rhetorical reach. “Look, I don’t think too many Special Forces guys on the ground in Afghanistan are thinking, ‘I’m here fighting for HMO reform,’ ” said one party strategist in Washington, who declined to criticize his party leaders by name. “I don’t think too many Americans believe we’re fighting for education reform.”

But in Columbus, Edwards received an enthusiastic response from Democrats crowded into the Roman-columned Athenaeum.

Like many in the convention hall, Brian Wright praised Bush’s handling of the war effort--and nothing more. “I’ve been very disappointed in his leadership on domestic issues,” said Wright, a party activist from Cleveland, who suggested Bush’s popularity will wane with the passage of war fever.

“What’s important to people now will definitely not be important a year from now,” Wright said, “or even six months from now.”