Cognitive dissonance

Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall try to make sense of the post-election collapse of support for the war in Iraq. Writes Marshall

The dead-even political polarization of America remains the defining fact of our politics. Close to 50% of Americans were dead set on voting for President Bush almost no matter what. Or they were dead set on voting against John Kerry. For our purposes, it's the same difference.

I think that many Bush supporters simply couldn't take stock of the full measure of the screw-up in Iraq during the election because doing so would have conflicted their support for President Bush. Iraq and the war on terror so defined this election that support for the war and the president who led us into it simply couldn't be pried apart.

Perhaps it wasn't so internalized. During the slugfest of the campaign supporting Bush just meant supporting the war and this is what people told pollsters when they were asked, because one question was almost a proxy for the other.

You can even do a thought experiment by imagining how many conservatives during election season would have been so staunch in their support for the war if it were being fought under a President Gore or a President Clinton. The question all but answers itself.

In any case, I think what has happened is that the end of the campaign season has departisanized the war -- at least to a measurable extent -- and folks who were emotionally and intellectually committed to reelecting the president (just as there were people on the other side with similar commitments) are now freer to see the situation in Iraq a bit more on its own terms.

I think that's probably right. But I'd go further -- and simpler. Much of what has happened since the war ended is that the Bush administration has experimented -- as MoDo puts it -- in truth telling. The Catastrophic Success himself has begun admitting that freedom is not really on the march these days, and Rumsfeld's new bout of "Message: I Care" is signalling in very clear terms that the administration itself doesn't believe they are winning the war. And even Americans with those ribbons festooning the backs of their SUVs will take the hint and agree that a losing war is not a good war to support, and Dear Leader is giving them more and more permission to admit it.

But that "departisanship" of opinions about the war infuriates me and makes me want to make sure that a political price is paid. I'm speaking primarily of the press's darling, John McCain. Now, I don't expect a Republican Senator to have actively campaigned for John Kerry, no matter how much that was to be fervently wished. But for him to have been out there hustling for George Bush and then, mere weeks after the election, to say that he has no confidence in the conduct of Bush's DefSec is galling. McCain knows well -- knew well in the weeks running up to Nov. 2 -- that Rumsfeld's conduct of the war is predicated on Bush's conduct of the war. I don't recall Chuck Hagel noisily rooting for Bush's reelection. For McCain to have done so -- lending Bush some much needed credibility -- now appears an excercise in rank cynicism.