CAN SOMEONE PLEASE KEEP THE DEMS FROM TALKING ABOUT FOREIGN POLICY UNTIL NOVEMBER

Last night on Crossfire, Senator Harry Reid (D-NEV) trotted out a potential attack on Bush's Middle East policy.

Clinton worked on this problem until his last day in office. Upon President Bush taking office, his first day, he has ignored this until the last couple of weeks...I think that's a serious problem. He thought it would just go away, I guess.

And what should Bush have done differently? Check out the following exchange between Reid and Mr. Bow Tie.

REID... [T]he president should have been involved and the secretary of state should have been involved.
CARLSON: What should he have done?
REID: How about talking to somebody in the Middle East.
CARLSON: Oh, talking to somebody. That's a plan. I mean, talking? I mean, what specifically should he have done that he didn't do apart from talking? Talking about what?
REID: I think very interestingly enough, whether you agree with President Clinton's plan in the Middle East or not, he had a plan. He worked on it until his last day in office. He almost got it on. In fact, he got it on, but Arafat wouldn't take yes for an answer. And that's one of the problems we've had in the Middle East.

Hmm...so Clinton's plan of continuing to offer concessions to Arafat after he responded to Camp David with violence failed miserably, but Bush should have continued along the same path? The fact is that the Bush administration could have intervened in only two different ways: (1) by doing what Europe and the Arab world have pressed for -unilaterally pressuring Israel to make concessions in the face of terror, or (2) by cutting Arafat loose. Not surprisingly, Senator Reid, Joe Biden and friends didn't advocate either one.

Which brings me to another point. The Dems are facing a president who's enormous popularity is based almost entirely on two factors (1) suppport for his foreign policy, and (2) his personal charm. It's not as if Bush's popularity is based on his upper-class tax giveaway, his Exxon-Mobile energy policy or his last-second conversion to campaign finance reform. So, wouldn't the logical thing for the Dems to do is avoid offering insipid foreign policy critique and focus instead on their clear advantage on domestic issues. Which leads me to ask the question, are the Dems trying to lose the 2002 elections.