The lone, and lonely, optimist

VANCOUVER, Wash. — I'm standing in the back of a high-school auditorium that's seething with hundreds of angry people, trying to figure out: What is making them all so mad?

On the surface, it's clear. It's their congressman. Brian Baird, a Democrat who has represented southwest Washington for nine years, is the talk of the town. Even the nation. Since returning from Iraq a few weeks ago, he has vaulted from nowhere into the center of a national debate about whether to prolong the war.

Baird is anti-war. He voted against it back in 2002. Officially, he says it is "one of the worst foreign-policy mistakes in U.S. history." Off the cuff, he's blunter: "This goddamn war," he calls it.

Yet now Baird has become something else. It makes him queasy, and many of his friends and constituents furious.

He is the newest cheerleader for the war.

"The surge is working," Baird told folks in his first town-hall meeting since his change of heart. "There are signs the people of Iraq are coming together. What they need — what our military commanders are asking for — is more time. So I'm going to try to give it to them."

By which he means: No troop drawdowns until next April, at the earliest. No deadlines, period. It's basically "stay the course," which is preferable, he says, to the certain "catastrophe" of pulling out.

"I wouldn't be saying this if I didn't believe, from the bottom of my heart, that we now have a real chance of success in Iraq," Baird said.

What came next was one of the most severe tongue-lashings I've ever seen administered to a public official, at least face to face.

Six hundred people — from veterans to teachers, from a Columbia River boat captain to a lady who plays bagpipes at soldier funerals — spent nearly four hours castigating Baird.

He was called a sellout, Bush's lap dog, a neocon pet. Some scoffed at anything he said. Some told him to resign.

One man, a longtime friend and campaign backer of Baird's, said the congressman had broken his heart. It was a poignant moment. By the time the man finished, though, he'd worked himself into a red-faced, finger-pointing rant.

"You have screwed up, my friend! You have screwed up and you have to change course!" he shouted, then stormed out.

It went on like this for hours. Outwardly, Baird took it well. But he was rattled. Four local cops staffed the meeting and Baird brought along his own bodyguard. During breaks he lurked behind Baird to make sure no one rushed him from the rear.

When a congressman needs a guard to protect him from his own constituents, it says something about the level of anger in the air.

This is no longer a dispute about policy. It's personal.

It's not confined to this one congressman, or the war. Last week I went to a town hall held by Congressman Adam Smith of Tacoma. About a hundred people were there. They got angry, too, mostly about impeachment. Not one question was asked about Iraq.

"What's the point of asking about the war? It's going to keep going regardless," one man said.

There's an epic quality to how mad folks are. It feels like an anger that may last well after the war is gone.

Baird said he understands the mood.

I don't think he quite does.

He scolded people for not having open minds about the war. In his view, he is just reporting back with new facts. Not only are people refusing to listen, they're attacking the messenger.

"It would be far easier for me to come here and tell them what they're so sure they already know," he told me when the meeting was over.

"I honestly believe the war is going better now, enough that we should stick with it. What should I do — lie about that?"

We were standing outside when he said this, beneath a full moon. It hit me what the problem is. Baird is asking people for far more than just another six months or year of war. He's asking them to have hope.

They don't have hope. They've been burned too often, from the weapons of mass destruction to mission accomplished to the last throes.

That's why people are so mad. This anti-war congressman whom people respect is trying to appeal to our better nature. He's asking us to rise out of the cynicism and partisanship to seize on a ray of hope.

Yet people are saying: No. We don't have it in us.

Can you blame them? If what was in the air of that Vancouver auditorium the other night was the death of hope, it wasn't the people that killed it.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.