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A Call for Party Moderation Edward I. Koch During the six years Republicans have held the presidency and both Houses of Congress, they failed to persuade the American public that they should be the permanent majority party continuing to run the country.
In that respect, they are no different than the Democratic Party, which failed to make their leadership long lasting. This inability to lock out the opposition for a long time is a good thing.
It makes both parties better and stronger. I believe that the reason for the failure in each case was the inability of each party to chart and keep a moderate political course of action once they took over.
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When the electoral victory was achieved, the radical wings of both parties, regrettably, gained influence. The Democratic Party turned to the radical left, and the Republican Party turned to the radical right. Now, once again, the Democrats have been given the opportunity to lead the Congress.
Let us hope their party leadership will agree that the party's future depends on pursuing a policy of moderation, without betraying its historical philosophy which is center left. The party, to its credit, also has a self-imposed mandate to assist the poor and help bring them into the middle class by extending the helping hand of government to those unable to make it on their own.
The Republicans should now examine what, in addition to the conduct of the Iraq war, brought on their defeat.
It was not simply the war in Iraq. We won the traditional war by seizing Baghdad in an amazingly short period of time. The subsequent occupation of Iraq and the incompetence displayed by so many of the civilian leaders of our country led Americans to conclude they too wanted regime change.
According to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll, "The American public has abandoned President Bush on the Iraq war and is looking to Congress for a way out that includes a timetable for withdrawing American troops . . . By 62 percent to 35 percent, Americans disapprove of Mr. Bush's handling of the war." The poll was taken Dec. 8 through Dec. 11.
The president needs, of course, the support of Congress and the public in his remaining two years. It is essential to the survival of this nation and the survival of Western civilization that the free world and the many nations not yet part of the free world but still freer and far less of a threat than those held in thralldom by radical Islamic governments join closer together, and find common ground in standing up to international Islamic terrorism.
President Bush should invite to Camp David representatives of all of these governments, many of which are now allied with us under NATO and the regional alliances in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Kuwait and Israel, and seek to find that common ground.
Let us see how many of our friends accept the invitation and how many desert us and decline to come. Let the agenda, made available to all before the meeting, be clear on what it is we are seeking to do — hammer out a joint response to radical Islamic international terrorism. Let everyone know that the meeting will not be diverted to address all of the ills of the world, thereby addressing none and assuring the failure of the conference.
The fact that this week it was reported in the press that Saudi Arabia has told the U.S. that if we leave Iraq, it will feel compelled to support its Sunni brothers and sisters in Iraq, makes clear that Saudi Arabia and other Sunni neighbors may very well be available to join us in Iraq with boots on the ground to make sure we don't leave.
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Jimmy Carter's book vents his longstanding hostility to the State of Israel. The critics of his book, according to the New York Post, are those who worked closely with him, such as professor Kenneth Stein who "worked closely [with] the former president . . . on Arab-Israeli issues," and has now resigned from his position as a fellow at the Jimmy Carter Center at Emory University."
Stein says, according to the Post, "Carter's accusatory tome ‘is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions and simply invented segments.'"
Stein goes on, "the Israel-bashing diatribe discusses several meetings at which he was present. Yet ‘my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book . . . being a former president does not give one a unique privilege to invent information.'"
When I was mayor and he was running for re-election, I told him that unless he changed his position on Israel, I would not campaign for him. He changed, but clearly only for the election, which he lost. Once the American people got to know him, they rejected him.
Edward I. Koch, author, lawyer, and talk-radio host, was a member of the U.S. Congress and, for 12 years, the 105th mayor of New York City.
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