Not just Kerry but the whole pack of '04 candidates seems overmatched by the current global crisis. In a disturbing Adam Nagourney piece in Monday's New York Times, dithering Democrats were featured complaining that in Iowa, nobody wants to listen to their speeches about women's issues or unemployment or the healthcare crisis; they only want to talk about war! Even Dean, who's benefited most from the surge of antiwar feeling in Iowa, whined to Nagourney: "I had a press conference and it was all about the war. And finally I said, 'Would anybody like to talk about the enormous jump in the unemployment rate that was announced in the morning papers?'"

For campaign staff, it's a scheduling headache, not a moral crisis: "Can somebody tell me what day it's going to start?" asked Sen. Joe Lieberman staffer Craig Smith. "You know it's out there, and you know it's looming, and it's like, 10 days from now, should we schedule a big, boisterous rally? I'm not sure that's a smart thing to do." Another one complained to the Boston Globe: "We may have to write a second speech" for this weekend's California Democratic convention, in case war breaks out unexpectedly.

Some reporters have taken to covering Iowans' obsession with the war as one of those eccentricities the primary system subjects us to every four years, like the overweening influence of the right-wing Manchester Union Leader in New Hampshire, or the candidates' justifiably ridiculed obsession with ethanol in the 2000 Iowa contest. Last week I watched a Des Moines Register columnist on CNN explaining his fellow Iowans' worries about war as though he was describing the offbeat cultural beliefs and habits of an exotic, isolated tribe that happens to sit on suddenly valuable land.

In fact, Iowans are very much in the American mainstream, and they're way ahead of the Democratic pack. They know that sadly, war matters most right now, and Democrats who complain about it don't deserve to win Iowa, let alone the presidency. What the befuddlement about war shows is that even the best of the current crop are campaigning to be managers, not leaders; they're at home with the business of fundraising and event-scheduling and policy briefings; they seem at a loss to respond to the ever-changing, life-and-death circumstances of a world on the verge of war.

Certainly the war will change the political landscape. If war breaks out, it may well be right to suspend campaign events and postpone "big, boisterous rallies" for a time, and congresspeople running for office may need to spend more time in Washington than Des Moines. Naked partisan posturing should be avoided. And candidates are correct to think about the tone of their remarks, to make sure nothing they say disparages the courage or integrity of those doing the fighting. They may suffer politically, for a while, whatever they do, because it's true that the nation rallies around its president in a time of war.

But they'll suffer more permanent political damage if they look like they're backsliding on their antiwar views. Democrats have to remember this is a mess that's at least partly of their own making. They've been treating Iraq like a tough campaign curveball, rather than a test of leadership and conscience, since before the midterm election. Democratic Leadership Council chair Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana typified the party's cowardice when he told reporters last year: "The majority of the American people tend to trust the Republican Party more on issues involving national security and defense than they do the Democratic Party. We need to work to improve our image on that score by taking a more aggressive posture with regard to Iraq, empowering the president."

Democrats mostly followed Bayh's bad advice, caving on the vote that essentially gave the president a blank check back in October, to polish their "image" and put the issue behind them -- so they could get back to talking about Social Security reform on the campaign trail. But voters didn't listen. "I hope the party learned a lesson in November 2002 about the perils of going into a fetal position," David Wade, a spokesman for Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, told ABC News just a few days before his boss issued his statement about not criticizing Bush once war begins.

Wade was right. And in his statement to the media this week, Kerry agreed with his spokesman, sort of. "I rejected the decision by some Democrats to surrender foreign policy issues to the Republican Party. I thought it was shameful." He insists "there will be an appropriate time to talk about the failures of diplomacy of the last months," but he doesn't say when that might be.

Kerry should remember: The Democrats' efforts to dodge the war politically didn't work last November -- and they paid with their political lives. The nation will pay for their timidity with real lives once the war starts. I hope Kerry reconsiders his pledge to censor himself, and commits to voicing his concerns about the war even if war breaks out. It's what he owes the troops.

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