If it could be arranged, surely Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman would hug Wisconsin Democrat Sen. Russ Feingold right now. As the White House struggles to find its political footing, Sen. Feingold has offered it a handy crutch with his proposal to censure President Bush for the National Security Agency surveillance program. The Democrats had just concluded a successful two-week bout of eroding the president's national-security credentials with baseless attacks on the Dubai ports deal. Now, the party's Left apparently believes it's time to switch back to type and bolster Bush's national-security credentials by demonstrating the Democrats' own lack of seriousness in the War on Terror.
The Feingold proposal is a disaster on all levels for the Democrats, but it is a boon to the Wisconsin senator, thus capturing the current Democratic political dilemma in microcosm. The left-wing netroots are rallying to Feingold's proposal, and posting the phone numbers of Democratic senators, so Bush haters everywhere can call to urge them to vote for the Feingold's censure resolution. These bloggers and their readers are a key part of Feingold's constituency for a run for the 2008 presidential nomination from the left. Anything Feingold does to please them helps himself, even if it is irrational and harmful to his party's interests. It often will be, since the netroots can't distinguish between political strategy and pointless, self-gratifying stunts. This is why they pushed Democrats to compound the disaster of the Alito hearings with a doomed filibuster of the nomination, championed — not coincidentally — by another '08 hopeful, John Kerry.
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What I find especially interesting about Feingold's push for censure is that it comes just as Congress is getting ready to rubber-stamp what the President has already been doing on the NSA program. Congress is getting ready to make this NSA program Feingold is complaining about explicitly legal. They didn't need to, of course, seeing as how the federal courts have already ruled that such programs fall within the inherent powers of the executive branch, but they're doing it none-the-less.
Which is what makes Feingold's censure move so baffling. Does he really think that Congress is going to censure the President for doing something they're getting ready to authorize him to do anyway?