If after President Bush left, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean came to your office and said, "We need a more unified Democratic message on Iraq," would you agree that there is a problem with the Democratic message?

Absolutely. There is a real timidity and weakness in terms of Democrats being willing to stand up to this error of American foreign policy. I think one of the greatest errors in American foreign policy in our modern lives is the divergence into Iraq that was done by the president. It is not sufficient for Democrats to point out the dishonest way we were taken into war. Nor is it sufficient for Democrats to simply point out that what is being done now is extremely mistaken. Democrats have to talk in terms of a strategy that, if they were in the White House, they would implement to successfully finish this particular mission, but more importantly, to get back to the real focus on the terrorist networks that attacked us on 9/11.

The Democratic message shouldn't begin with Iraq. The Democratic message should begin with, "We are committed to fighting and defeating the terrorist elements that attacked us on 9/11."

Why don't you think the Democrats have taken these steps? Why is there this confusion, this hedging?

Fear.

Of what?

Fear of being accused of not being supportive of the troops, which of course is an outrageous response to reasonable questions about Iraq. But it does tend to intimidate people. Fear that somehow people will be accused of being unpatriotic. Fear that the president will say, as he almost always does, that those criticizing the Iraq war don't understand the lessons of 9/11.

I think it is President Bush who doesn't understand the lessons of 9/11. I think it's President Bush who hasn't even read carefully the 9/11 report, which clearly defines the threat we are facing. The threat we are facing is this international terrorist network that attacked us, and the amount of radicalism that may exist among Islamic peoples that can provide the recruits to fuel the international terrorist network. The president doesn't understand the difference between what is going on in Iraq and that effort.

The conventional wisdom coming out of 2004 was that a big reason why John Kerry lost was because President Bush appeared to be a stronger leader on national security issues. The conventional wisdom now says that if a politician says we should leave Iraq before all of our goals are met that will be seen as a sign of weakness.

The president has been masterful -- not in handling this war or explaining why it was done -- but he has been masterful in trying to scare Democrats from having a reasonable position, by saying that is a position of weakness. The response to that is that the terrorist organizations love the fact that we appear to be stuck in Iraq. It's not a sign of weakness to try to change course. It's a sign of intelligence. It's a sign of wanting to win the fight against terrorism. The Democrats have to be comfortable saying that.

That is our biggest problem. The Democrats tend to think, "Oh, I can't question this." The way to deal with this is to make sure that we begin with the commitment to do this right. You don't begin by saying, "Let's just get out of Iraq." That shows the same kind of narrow focus and lack of understanding of the issue as the president has shown. A good way to say it in Iraq is not the be-all and end-all of national security. It happens to be an important place. But it was made more important by errors, not by good policy.

You were involved in the 2004 race, supporting John Kerry. Looking back, what were the mistakes that he made or his staff made? What do you think cost him that race?

I think the mistakes really began with the 2002 congressional election. We were doing very well in the Senate races. And we had a great chance to hold the Senate. I saw that many Democrats in the caucus understood that this Iraq war didn't make sense from the point of view of 9/11. It didn't really seem that persuasive on weapons of mass destruction. But what the party decided, it seemed, was, "OK, look we can't beat Bush on the national security stuff. We'll just cede foreign policy to the Bush administration, and we'll beat him on domestic issues, where clearly we had the upper hand." I felt at the time -- and I certainly voted against the war -- thinking, in part, that there is no way the American people are going to elect a party that only feels they are better on the domestic side.

That's the context that this 2004 election occurred in. And that's the context, that people like John Kerry and John Edwards were stuck with votes in favor of the Iraq war. They were in a box. Those of us that didn't think it was a good idea and didn't think it related to 9/11 were able to say, as Howard Dean said, we never thought this made sense. It put Kerry in this terrible position, even though I think he did as well as he could, of having voted for the war but being critical. And then, of course, the really devastating piece was having voted against the $87 billion [in supplemental funding for the Iraq war], which I happened to have voted for. It just put him in a bind. I think it all related to the decisions that were made in 2002 for which we paid a price in 2004.

So there is a chance of correcting that going into 2008?

We have a wonderful opportunity to say, "Look, however people voted in 2002 on the Iraq war, clearly the war has not been conducted in a way that any reasonable senator could have expected." That is the fault of the administration. That's not the fault of the Congress. I don't think anyone can say it was the fault of the Congress. We should lay out the fact that this administration has failed to anticipate a number of scenarios that many of us have warned them about. They have mismanaged the situation. We as Democrats want to do two things. First, we want to make sure that this Iraq policy has a clear mission and a reasonable, flexible time frame for completion. And secondly, that we are going to return the primary focus of American national security to the overall fight against terrorist networks that are hitting us in Indonesia and the Middle East, in Europe and potentially the United States.

It's fair to say, I think, that foreign policy is not the only area where Democrats have a problem right now. Where else do Democrats have to change course or strategy going into the 2006 and 2008 elections?

I think we have to simplify our themes to the point where we portray ourselves ... as what David Ignatius recently referred to as a "party of performance." He recognized that the American people at this point, especially after Katrina and after the problems in Iraq, are looking for a party that can actually, simply do the job. Of course that relates to FEMA. But I think it also relates to foreign policy, to Iraq, to the fight against terrorism. It also relates to the issues, that if you listen to people, you will hear them talk about ... We should be willing to take a stand on the healthcare issue that is stronger than some people might be comfortable with.

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