Stardate 20030730.1744

(On Screen): For a while, for a golden day or two, those who despise President Bush thought that they had finally seized on something that could deeply harm him. "Bush lied!!" they trumpeted. Everyone now knows a new word yellowcake, which refers to a form of Uranium ore. And with the volume set to 11, the story was shouted from the rooftops: the entire political case for war in Iraq had been a fabrication. Right there in the 2003 State of the Union message was the claim that it was necessary because Saddam had tried to buy uranium from the African nation of Niger.

Never mind that the political decision for war had been made in October, when Congress (including the Senate, which was controlled by the Democrats at the time) passed an authorization for war under the War Powers Act.

When Uday and Qusay were located and killed in Iraq, some leftists pouted that it was distracting the public from the real story, and indeed a few proposed that the administration had actually known where they were for weeks and decided to move in on them as a way of distracting the public from the real story.

In the realm of the molehills, this has actually been one of the bigger mountains located by the anti-war left. I think it was completely unrealistic for them to believe that this was somehow going to lead to a real and significant political shift in this nation, but they've been demonstrating clearly for the last year that they're almost entirely disconnected from the popular mood.

NBC and the Wall Street Journal have commissioned a poll to learn whether a week of screams that "Bush lied!!" had really made any difference. Short answer: no.

Americans divided almost evenly on whether Bush played fair with the facts in laying out the case that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was seeking to rebuild his weapons of mass destruction. Forty-seven percent said they believed Bush exaggerated the evidence, while 48 percent said he presented the most complete information he had. ...

But respondents faulted Democrats for making too much of the issue. More than half, 56 percent, said the Democrats were “playing politics” by accusing Bush of making misleading claims, compared with 30 percent who said the criticism was valid.

Nor has the drop in trust shaken Americans’ underlying belief that the war was proper. More than two-thirds — 69 percent — continue to believe the United States “should have taken military action,” down a statistically insignificant 2 points from May. Twenty-seven percent said it should not have taken military action.

Which, from my point of view, means that the majority of Americans have a pretty rational view of the situation. The war was justified, and we should have fought it. The political machinations before the war may not have been all we might have hoped for, but the result was the right one.

It also means that if the Democrats, or their leading candidates, continue to make opposition to the war the keystone of their political position, then they're going to be facing electoral catastrophe next year. There's no reason to believe that the yellowcake "scandal" will have any political significance in the long run.

The glee with which many on the left embraced this comes, I think, from two factors. First, they're desperate; from their point of view things have been going terribly badly. Which is to say, things have not gone badly at all. All of their fearfully-predicted (and secretly hoped for) terrible results didn't happen. So recently they've been woefully short on issues, and were forced to run with a trivial one because they had nothing better.

Second, there is an ongoing deep difference between their view of the situation and the one held by the majority of Americans. They seized on this because from their point of view it actually did seem important. I think now they'll be both mystified and angry to discover that most Americans just don't think it was all that big a deal.