Capture will complicate campaign for Democrats

By Dan Balz and David S. Broder
The Washington Post

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In a presidency marked by big events, few may be more vivid than yesterday's pictures of a haggard Saddam Hussein in U.S. captivity. His dramatic arrest provides a major political boost for President Bush and considerably complicates the task for the Democrats who have argued that Bush's foreign policy needs a significant overhaul.

Given the unpredictability of the process of stabilizing Iraq, Bush likely faces plenty of difficult days as he moves into an election year. In that case, said Republican and Democratic strategists, Saddam's arrest may have only a transitory effect on Bush's re-election prospects.

But after one of the bloodiest months in Iraq in terms of U.S. casualties since the war began, Saddam's capture represents the kind of concrete progress the administration had sought, one likely to bolster the president's case that his policy is working. With the economy also improving, both sides of the Democrats' argument to replace Bush appear notably weaker today than they did just a few weeks ago.

The news from Iraq also puts a new and potentially uncomfortable spotlight on former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination whose candidacy gained energy, converts and money from his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq — and who is scheduled to deliver a major foreign-policy address today.

Dean's rivals, led by Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, sought to use Saddam's capture to argue anew that Dean's inexperience in national security could prove an enormous liability to the party if he becomes the nominee in 2004. "If Howard Dean had his way," Lieberman said, "Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison."

The other Democratic candidates hope Saddam's capture somehow will disrupt Dean's path to the nomination, but there was no consensus among Democratic or GOP strategists about how the sudden turn of fortune for Bush in Iraq may affect the Democratic race. The issue may highlight concerns with the party about Dean's electability, but with much of the Democratic primary electorate staunchly opposed to the Iraq war, Saddam's capture alone may not result in significant erosion in Dean's support, according to several strategists.

"It's too little, too late," lamented one Democrat who is allied with a Dean rival.

Saddam's capture robs Democrats of one of their most telling arguments, to highlight the unfinished business in Iraq. The arrest may not lead directly to fewer terrorist attacks in Iraq, as Bush was careful to point out yesterday in his televised address, but it provides the kind of psychological shift that could put Democrats on the defensive as they criticize his policy.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff noted that, coming almost a year before the election, even an event as compelling as Saddam's capture will not by itself make Bush impregnable in his re-election campaign. "What one hopes is this sets the stage for the cooperation we need and builds the argument as to why we removed him from power," he said. "If that happens, then everything else — consumer confidence, increasing economic growth — augur very well for Bush's re-election by a very significant margin."

Democratic pollster Peter Hart agreed that the capture of Saddam represents "the crown jewel in this military effort" and said Bush has accomplished what his father did not 12 years ago. "The question is where do we go from here," Hart said.

Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank, said Saddam's capture will help the administration argue that "we don't have a calamity or a quagmire" in Iraq.

Ivo Daalder, a national-security official in the Clinton administration and one of Dean's foreign-policy advisers, said the major elements in Dean's scheduled foreign-policy address today will not be changed by Saddam's capture. Nor, he said, did the arrest represent a setback to the former Vermont governor, who said on the day Baghdad fell last spring, "I suppose" the Iraqi people were better off with Saddam gone.

"The issue wasn't capturing Saddam," Daalder said. "The issue was whether this was the right war at the right time. That critique still stands."

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who also opposed the war, took the same position. "I don't think that the capture of Saddam Hussein in any way invalidates those concerns," he said.

Linda DiVall, a GOP pollster, said Dean's anti-war statements may be far less tolerable to the many Democrats who support other candidates or are undecided. "Dean has the hard left locked up, but there are plenty of Democrats who care about foreign policy and defense and that is Dean's Achilles' heel," she said. "I think the process of anointing Dean as the Democratic nominee will be dramatically slowed down."

Of the four Democratic candidates who voted for the resolution authorizing Bush to go to war — Lieberman, Sen. John Kerry, Mass., Rep. Richard Gephardt, Mo., and Sen. John Edwards, N.C. — Lieberman was by far the most aggressive in raising questions about Dean. At a minimum, Saddam's capture emboldens those four candidates to defend their vote.

Staff writers T.R. Reid with Dean and Edward Walsh with Kerry contributed to this report.

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