In a presidency marked by big events, few may be more vivid than yesterday's pictures of a haggard Saddam Hussein in U.S. captivity. His dramatic arrest provides a major political boost for President Bush and considerably complicates the task for the Democrats who have argued that Bush's foreign policy needs a significant overhaul.
Given the unpredictability of the process of stabilizing Iraq, Bush likely faces plenty of difficult days as he moves into an election year. In that case, Republican and Democratic strategists said, Hussein's arrest may prove to have only a transitory impact on Bush's reelection prospects.
But after one of the bloodiest months in Iraq in terms of U.S. casualties since the war began, Hussein's capture represents the kind of concrete progress that the administration has been seeking, one that likely will bolster the president's case that his policy is working. With the economy also improving, both sides of the Democrats' argument to replace Bush appear notably weaker today than they did a few weeks ago.
The news from Iraq also puts a new and potentially uncomfortable spotlight on former Vermont governor Howard Dean, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination whose candidacy gained energy, converts and money from his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq -- and who is scheduled to deliver a major foreign policy address today.
Dean's rivals, led by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), sought to use Hussein's capture to argue anew that Dean's inexperience in national security could prove an enormous liability to the party if he becomes the nominee in 2004. "If Howard Dean had his way," Lieberman told reporters, "Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison."
The other Democratic candidates hope Hussein's capture somehow will disrupt Dean's path to the nomination, but there was no consensus among Democratic or GOP strategists about how the sudden turn of fortune for Bush in Iraq will affect the Democratic race. The issue may highlight concerns with the party about Dean's electability, but with much of the Democratic primary electorate, particularly in Iowa and New Hampshire, staunchly opposed to the Iraq war, the capture of Hussein alone may not result in significant erosion in Dean's support, according to several strategists.
'Too little, too late'
"It's too little, too late," lamented one Democrat who is allied with one of Dean's rivals.
The capture of Hussein robs Democrats of one of their most telling arguments -- and best applause lines -- to highlight the unfinished business in Iraq. The arrest may not lead directly to a diminishment of the terrorist attacks in Iraq, as Bush was careful to point out in his nationally televised address yesterday, but it provides the kind of psychological shift that could put the Democrats on the defensive as they argue against his policy.
Republican pollster Bill McInturff noted that, coming almost a year before the election, even an event as compelling as Hussein's capture will not by itself make Bush impregnable in his reelection campaign. "What one hopes is this sets the stage for the cooperation we need and builds the argument as to why we removed him from power," McInturff said. "If that happens, then everything else -- consumer confidence, increasing economic growth -- augur very well for Bush's reelection by a very significant margin."
Democratic pollster Peter Hart agreed that the capture of Hussein represents "the crown jewel in this military effort" and said Bush has accomplished what his father did not 12 years ago. "The question is where do we go from here," Hart said. "If this is indeed a turning point toward pacification, a sense of completion and a new Iraq, then I think the administration has succeeded in what they promised to do. But today is day one in the next phase of the Iraq mission and what we believed to be day one, when we saw the statue of Saddam Hussein toppled, turned out to be a very chaotic and difficult period."
Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank, said Hussein's capture will help the administration argue that "we don't have a calamity or a quagmire" in Iraq. "This is a sign of progress, which follows the bloodiest month in Iraq since we invaded. Basically it may check the pessimistic psychology or the rush to draw the worst possible conclusions about Iraq."
'Reach out to the U.N.'
Bush's potential challengers uniformly hailed the capture of Hussein, although some of them pivoted quickly to renew their criticism that, until Bush successfully turns the U.S. occupation of Iraq into an international operation, the danger to U.S. military personnel will continue to exist and the American standing in the world will remain tarnished.
"This is a great opportunity for this president to get it right for the long term, and I hope he will be magnanimous, reach out to the U.N., to allies who've stood away from us and use this as a moment to transform the entire operation in Iraq," Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) said on "Fox New Sunday."
Dean, campaigning in Florida, passed up the opportunity to criticize the president. "This is a great day of pride in the American military, a great day for the Iraqi people and a great day for America," he told reporters. "I think President Bush deserves a day of celebration. We have our policy differences, but we won't be discussing them today."
Dean has been trying to cast himself as more centrist in his foreign policy views than his opposition to the war suggests as a way of undercutting criticism that he is too far to the left. In last week's debate he talked in more detail about the importance of staying in Iraq until the job is finished. "This ups the ante for Dean to demonstrate that he can transform and be flexible when faced with news that is not so good for his candidacy," one GOP strategist said.
Ivo Daalder, a national security official in the Clinton administration and one of Dean's foreign policy advisers, said the major elements in Dean's scheduled foreign policy address today will not be changed by the capture of Hussein. Nor, he said, did the arrest represent a setback for the former Vermont governor, who said on the day Baghdad fell last spring, "I suppose" the Iraqi people were better off with Hussein gone.
"The issue wasn't capturing Saddam," Daalder said. "The issue was whether this was the right war at the right time. That critique still stands."
Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who also opposed the war, took the same position. "I don't think that the capture of Saddam Hussein in any way invalidates those concerns," he said from The Hague, where he will testify at the U.N. war crimes trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.
'Transforming event'
For Democrats, the immediate issue was not so much the impact on Bush but the potential effect on the nomination battle. Some Republican strategists said Hussein's capture represents a potentially serious problem for Dean. Former New Hampshire senator Warren B. Rudman called it "a transforming event" in the Democratic race. "Dean now has to either go back on some of the things he said or find another answer," he said.
Linda DiVall, a GOP pollster, said Dean's antiwar statements may be far less tolerable to the many Democrats who support other candidates or are undecided. "Dean has the hard left locked up, but there are plenty of Democrats who care about foreign policy and defense, and that is Dean's Achilles' heel," she said. "I think the process of anointing Dean as the Democratic nominee will be dramatically slowed down."
Of the four Democratic candidates who voted for the resolution authorizing Bush to go to war -- Lieberman, Kerry, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) and Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) -- Lieberman was by far the most aggressive in raising questions about Dean. At a minimum, Hussein's capture emboldens those four candidates to defend their vote.
There was little agreement among Democratic strategists about which of Dean's rivals might hope to benefit most from the expected focus on Dean's positions and foreign policy experience. Said one party strategist not aligned with a candidate, "I don't see this leading to a rethink among Democratic primary voters."
Staff writers T.R. Reid with Dean and Edward Walsh with Kerry contributed to this report.