"The Set-Up"

The Cunning Realist sees a grim future if the Democrats wait to inherit Bush's Iraq:

Democrats have a basic, important choice to make here. They can bask lazily in the waning days of an unpopular administration and allow Iraq to play out to their continued advantage, or they can get to work and at least try to put limits on the White House. The former will probably lead to victory in 2008, but it carries huge longer term risk for the party. For Dems, the worst-case scenario might be to inherit a failed, unpopular occupation upon which Congress has placed no tactical or funding limits, then having to put limits on themselves. Ultimately this might allow Bush to escape sole accountability for Iraq and empower the usual suspects to infect political and social discourse with the Weimar meme for the next new decades. Imagine the scenario of a cautious, vacillating Hillary clinging to an updated version of "peace with honor" while fighting off an alliance of Congressional Democrats and some Republicans who, after November '08, will no doubt rediscover their vestigial anti-interventionist instincts. How's that as a prescription for party and national disaster?