If terrorists strike, will nation unite?
If terrorists set off a dirty bomb in New York harbor or poison the Midwest’s milk supply, killing thousands, will Democrats and Republicans in Washington respond by pulling together as they did on Sept. 11, 2001?
Or will Democrats start pointing fingers at the Bush administration, accusing it of short-changing homeland security. And will Republicans blame Democrats for playing politics in a national crisis?
There’s reason to fear disunity — and that prospect ought to cause leaders of both parties to resolve to face the nation’s enemies together and to work to fortify homeland defenses so well that neither side has reason to blame the other.
Democrats certainly are hammering President Bush on the homeland security issue — partly out of justifiable concern that he is not doing and spending enough, partly to get to his right on a national security issue, and partly out of rage at the way the GOP used the issue to defeat Democrats in November.
In late January, for instance, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) declared, “When people ask, ‘Are we safer than we were on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001?’ the answer is, only marginally, because somewhere along the line we lost our edge. We let our guard down.”
On Tuesday, right-wing radio talk-meister Rush Limbaugh said of Clinton and other Democrats, “I’m not saying they want us to be attacked. But it’s almost as though the Democrats can’t wait for another attack.”
He went on to blame Democrats for “cutting the military, cutting intelligence funding, adopting the ACLU’s approach on national security and law enforcement.”
It could happen, this divisive blame game. For it not to happen, it’s time for the White House to stop dismissing Democratic complaints about low-ball funding of homeland security and to start listening — and for Democrats to take the political edge off their criticisms of Bush policy.
From the first days after Sept. 11, Bush has given Democrats the impression that anything they had to say on homeland security was not worth listening to.
Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) describes how he and Appropriations Chairman Bill Young (R-Fla.) used the time when Congress was shut down during the 2001 anthrax crisis to interview agency officials about their needs.
They compiled a wish list, Obey told me, then pared it down, cut it in half and went to the White House on Nov. 6, 2001, with then-Senate Appropriation Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and ranking member Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).
Whether it was reckless or not, it is true that Bush has blocked funding increases recommended by Democrats — at the same time touting his own increases for homeland security as adequate.
Bush’s budget for homeland defense agencies went from $18 billion in fiscal 2002 to $36 billion in fiscal 2003, and his 2004 request goes to $43.6 billion. But Democrats insist that actual new funding for domestic security programs goes up only $312 million, especially short-changing port security, local police, fire departments and health workers.
Experts I’ve talked to say cities need chemical weapons detectors, training and communication systems for fire and police departments, and a hospital “surge capacity” — with assistance from the military — to treat mass casualties.
If Al Qaeda were to set off a radioactive bomb in New York harbor or poison a city’s food or water supply, the Bush administration surely would spend billions more on homeland security. Why shouldn’t it do so now, to forestall the worst?
(Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.)