Squelching the Surge
by Noam Lupu

This week the Senate will vote on a non-binding resolution opposing President Bush's plan to send over 20,000 more troops to Iraq. Bush's last-ditch effort to salvage some semblance of success from the adventure in Iraq — and Bush's presidential legacy — is variously seen on Capitol Hill as " a dangerously wrong-headed strategy, "too little, too late," and "counterproductive."

And those are the Republican reactions. On Sunday's Meet the Press, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer said he expected a majority of Republicans to vote for the anti-Bush resolution.

This opposition to the troop surge is more than political squabbling. It also reflects broad public opposition to the plan. In a recent CBS News poll, 66 percent of Americans said they opposed the plan. Nearly half of Americans think US goals in Iraq are no longer achievable at all, regardless of troop levels. And 72 percent of Americans think the president should seek congressional approval for the troop increase. What's more, public opposition to the president's Iraq strategy is why Democrats took control of Congress in November's elections.

All of this, though, is unlikely to deter the White House. As commander-in-chief, the president is empowered to make strategic military decisions without congressional oversight. And since the Senate is unlikely to cut funding for the troops already in Iraq for fear of looking unpatriotic, it's unlikely Congress will be able to pass any serious binding resolutions to stop the escalation.

Still, the question facing the White House is whether the time has come to follow public opinion. How you answer that question depends a great deal on how you define democratic government, either as rule by the majority or rule by mandate.

If democratic government means rule by the majority, then public opinion matters. President Bush is fond of saying that he's the decider, but in a democracy the real decider is the majority. And since an overwhelming majority of Americans opposes the troop surge, the president's hands should be tied.

If, on the other hand, democratic governments means rule by mandate, then public opinion is almost superfluous. Bush was elected because the voters believed in his ability to lead and in his ability to make the right choices for the country. He was given a four-year mandate and if he chooses to increase the number of troops in Iraq, it's within his prerogative to do so, regardless of public opinion.

The best form of democratic government is probably somewhere between these extremes. Bush has a four-year term, and in a presidential system without referenda or early elections, individual policies are not subject to new votes by the general public. The president shouldn't have to run every decision by the American public. Hence executive privilege and classified information.

But public opinion matters. Why else would the Bush administration have inflated the reasons for going to war in Iraq in the first place, or attempted to keep secret its wire-tapping program? Why else did the president dismiss Donald Rumsfeld after the Democratic victories in November? Democratic government is, after all, "by the people, for the people." And no administration wants those people turning against it.

The obvious answer for the Bush administration — which clearly believes in the troop surge — is to try to change public opinion. If administration officials can be convinced of that this strategy will work, then the president and his advisers should explain their reasoning to the public. If there are valid reasons to believe more troops will do the trip in ending the civil war in Iraq, those reasons should be vetted by the electorate.

The problem for Bush, of course, is that the American public opposes the troop increase not because it sounds like bad military strategy, and probably not even because it sounds eerily similar to the Vietnam escalations of the early 1960s. The real reason is that the American public no longer trusts the president's leadership. By last week's poll, Bush's approval ratings had fallen to an abysmal 28 percent. Only 42 percent of Americans see Bush as a strong leader.

Such massive levels of unpopularity are uncharted waters for an administration that enjoyed 82 percent approval at this time five years ago. Back then, the American public — and the media — gave the president carte-blanch, buying the nonexistent link between Saddam and Osama, buying the overblown WMD case, even buying the "Mission Accomplished" photo-op. Those were the days when a senior Bush adviser told Ron Suskind, "we create our own reality." It was sheer hubris: a popular president thought he had public opinion in the bag.

A series of blunders, from "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" to "the insurgency is in its last throes," have stripped Bush of his credibility. Almost anything coming out of the White House these days is politically radioactive. The administration clearly faces an uphill battle with any new strategy. (It hardly helps, of course, that the administration pushed up the departure of General George Casey, who publicly expressed concern about a troop increase, and his replacement by Lieutenant General David Petraeus, who supports it.)

But skepticism and debate make for sound policy. The president may be endowed with the powers of the commander-in-chief, but he's still our elected representative. It's not enough to hope the surge works and then changes public opinion. A skeptical public deserves to be convinced by the administration before sending more troops into a civil war.

In last week's State of the Union Address, the president's message was "give it a chance to work." The days of blindly following the administration line are over, Mr. President. It's time to give the voters more credit.