In the Missouri Senate, a simple war resolution provokes a leng

Former lieutenant governor Harriett Woods, who lost U.S. Senate races to Jack Danforth and Kit Bond, will lead an "Alternatives to War" march this Sunday afternoon in St. Louis. Woods' freedom of expression, guaranteed by the sacrifice of our brave soldiers, sailors and airmen, finds its echo among members of her party in today's Missouri Senate, where she used to serve.

It was Thursday morning, March 20, prior to beginning the legislature's weeklong spring break. As the war had begun the previous evening, we took up a resolution supporting our president, the troops and their mission in Iraq. You might have thought such a resolution would be sure to win swift and unanimous approval. You would be wrong.

Senate Minority Leader Ken Jacob, D-Columbia, began a lengthy series of objections to the resolution offered by Sen. Jon Dolan, R-Lake St. Louis, who is a former CIA officer and a career National Guard officer. Jacob's point seemed to be that support for the troops, which he and other members of his party favored, should be divorced from all other expressions in the resolution. Other members of Jacob's party joined in, putting us through a debate that kept us there more than an hour and 15 minutes past our scheduled adjournment. Jacob's agonizing over phrases and commas seemed so strained that I likened it to debating how many Iraqis can dance on the head of a pin. Veteran Democratic Sen. Harold Caskey arose to inquire: "Mr. President, if this debate lasts longer than the war itself, can't we all just go home?"

At nearly 1:20 p.m., we got to the roll call vote: 30 aye, two no.

Nationally syndicated columnist Don Lambro has described a Democratic Party "at war with itself over what to do in Iraq." Lambro reports that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California tried, "in the words of a Democratic leader, to 'tone down' language in the House resolution supporting U.S. troops and President Bush as the nation's commander-in-chief."

Pelosi quit this effort after a scolding from Rep. Martin Frost, Texas Democrat, who wrote her saying: "We should not equivocate in our support. Our troops must know that we not only admire their bravery and honor their call to duty, but we must also assure them their cause is just."

Well, yes.

One must understand that these Democrats operate inside a party whose activists reserve their most thunderous ovations for the fiercest anti-war contender among the presidential aspirants. That would be Howard Dean. The former Vermont governor is arrayed against Sens. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, John Kerry of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North Carolina and Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, all of whom support the president, the policy and the mission. In what you might call a bit of political market positioning, Dean has surged to within one point of favorite Kerry in the latest poll in New Hampshire, where Kerry had been thought a prohibitive favorite in the nation's first primary state.

So the McGovernite Dean has savvy Democrats dreading a repeat of 1972, when they lost 49 states.

Peter Kinder is assistant to the chairman of Rust Communications and president pro tem of the Missouri Senate.