Give Peace a Chance?

Lorelei Kelly writes: "The world public opinion poll that found seven in ten Americans favor Congressional candidates who will pursue major changes in US foreign policy, want less emphasis on use of military force to solve problems and want to work more cooperatively with the United Nations. Most favor direct talks with North Korea and Iran to boot!" See more here.

I do think the political prospects for candidates espousing "dovish" views is considerably worse than a simplistic read of the polling data would indicate. On the other had, I also think the political prospects of such views are considerably better than is commonly accepted inside Democratic campaigning circles, where the thinking seems to be that you always want to position yourself as hawkishly as you can manage. Here's John Hostettler (R-IN) touting his 2002 vote against the war -- "In October 2002, when America was clamoring to go to war in Iraq, I voted against sending America's sons and daughters into harm's way because the intelligence did not support the claim that there were weapons of mass destruction there." No doubt he took a lot of shit, politically, for his stand at the time. But there are probably a lot of perfectly cynical pols out there who think they'd be in better shape today if they could make Hostettler's claim honestly.