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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
One of the dramatic moments in Robert Caro's "Master of the Senate"--a book in which few moments aren't dramatic--involves a bit of intrigue with an official called the Reading Clerk of the House of Representatives. After the House passes a bill, it is the duty of the Reading Clerk to carry it across the Capitol Building and formally present it to the Senate. In Caro's book, a feckless liberal senator attempts to waylay the Reading Clerk so that a civil-rights bill from the House doesn't get into the hands of the arch-conservative Senate Judiciary Committee, but the masterly Lyndon Johnson somehow maneuvers the clerk across the jam-packed Capitol Building unnoticed, so that he completes his mission.
I happened to witness the equivalent moment for the resolution empowering President Bush to wage war on Iraq, and, boy, was it not dramatic. The House, which in those preelection days was more conservative than the Senate, passed its version in the middle of the afternoon of October 10th, while the Senate was still debating. There were three or four senators on the floor of the chamber, wandering around and chatting with each other. Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, was speaking--offering an amendment that would require Bush to demonstrate that Iraq poses an imminent military threat to the United States before he could order an invasion. This had an effect approximately as electrifying as the speeches one hears on lazy afternoons in the Senate, in which members offer tribute to a long-dead home-state hero or ask for funding for a favorite small program. Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, one of the Senate's economic populists, had appeared in the Senate press gallery to push his party's main agenda that day, which was to "change the subject." He was attacking the Bush Administration's economic policy while Durbin was offering his amendment, and most of the reporters chose Dorgan over Durbin. There were only two or three people in the press balcony overlooking the chamber. At four o'clock, sure enough, the Reading Clerk, a bald man with a bristling mustache, entered, said, "Mr. President, a message from the House," bowed deeply, and presented the House's version of the war resolution. The only sign that anybody noticed was that Durbin stopped speaking for a moment. The Reading Clerk left, and Durbin resumed. The amendment went nowhere. After midnight, the Senate passed the resolution, and soon Congress recessed and the members went home to campaign for reelection.
Washington was preoccupied with the prospect of war in Iraq during the period between the appearance of Brent Scowcroft's antiwar op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, on August 15th, and President Bush's televised speech from Cincinnati making the case for war, on October 7th. After the speech, it became apparent that the Senate Democratic leadership was not going to fight the war-powers resolution, and the city's always fickle attention turned elsewhere--first to the sniper who was terrorizing the Washington suburbs, then to the midterm elections. The steady building-to-war rhythm was interrupted; the prospect of an invasion, however, is no less real because people aren't talking about it non-stop. Last week, the Administration obtained from the United Nations Security Council a resolution demanding that Saddam Hussein disarm immediately or face "serious consequences"--the fruit of a long negotiating effort meant to deflect the accusation that the United States was ignoring the international community. American military activity in (or, more accurately, over) Iraq is already at a higher than usual level, and troops and materiel are moving from the United States to the Middle East. Next month, General Tommy Franks,...
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