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August 9, 2002 9:00 a.m. Time Out Leaving Saddam alone is the pragmatic thing to do, according to Time.

lthough President Bush has a "near obsession with extinguishing Saddam," his administration is divided into two camps — "one pragmatic, the other jihadist." That's not an editorial in The Nation. It's Michael Duffy writing an alleged news article in Time. (It's in the issue with the cover story on how the Bush administration could have prevented 9/11 if only it had listened to the tough counsel of Sandy Berger. Gee, wonder who the sources were?)

This is one of those articles where all of the polemical work is done through labels. In addition to getting the outrageous "jihadist" tag — really, didn't an editor's eyebrow rise a bit at that? — Secretary Rumsfeld and co. are also labeled "the hotheads" and "the war party." They are "guys in ties" (not uniforms). Paul Wolfowitz is "fiercely gung-ho." In case we didn't get it the first time, we also hear again about Bush's "obsession with Baghdad."

Duffy tells us this about Powell and his fellow "pragmatists": "Derided as dewy-eyed optimists by their rivals, this group believes that worldwide opinion of the U.S. is so negative these days that Bush cannot attack Saddam without some clear provocation." Note that Duffy does not say that the hawks are "derided as jihadists by their rivals." He just comes out and characterizes them as such in the putatively objective voice of Time. (Which is just as well, since it's doubtful that Powell would actually use the word.) Note also that Duffy gets the major criticism of Powell wrong. It's true that the hawks believe the doves are too optimistic about some things, but they think they are too pessimistic about others. The prevalent tone of the doves is pessimism about American power, as in the remainder of Duffy's own sentence ("Bush cannot attack. . .")

Duffy makes one shrewd point in his article. The doves' leaks to the press may have the effect of helping the hawks, since all the back-and-forth leads the nation "to assume some kind of war is inevitable." Perhaps Duffy's article will be similarly self-undermining. The best line in it refers to the conflict of 1991 as "Gulf War I."

STOCK ANSWERS
Earlier this week, Howard Wolfson, the executive director of the House Democratic campaign committee, and Glen Weiner, the committee's polling director, sent out a memo urging their party's candidates to tie Republicans to Social Security privatization. The bear market, they assert, has made the idea a loser.

Wolfson and Weiner cite several polls on Social Security. They demonstrate convincingly that voters continue to trust Democrats over Republicans on the issue and that voters think Social Security is an important issue. They do not, however, cite any evidence that the public actually opposes the policy denoted by "privatization" — i.e., allowing people to invest a portion of their Social Security funds in capital markets.

On that question, the poll evidence is quite clear: The public remains supportive. The latest numbers come from a Harris poll of 1,010 adults conducted in mid-July. At harrisinteractive.com, Humphrey Taylor writes, "This Harris Poll was conducted when all the stock market indicators had been falling for several days and were close to or at their lowest levels for four or more years.

"Given this timing, one surprise is how little the bad news from Wall Street had changed public attitudes toward the privatization of Social Security. The 56% majority who are generally supportive of privatization has not declined since a year earlier. The only difference is that fewer people are strongly supportive, down from 25% to 21%, and more people are somewhat supportive, up from 31% to 35%. Last year 39% were opposed to privatization; this year 38% are opposed. In other words, the very substantial falls in the stock market do not seem to have changed public optimism about the long-term outlook.

"This is, of course, a highly divisive political issue, and is one issue where a clear, if not huge, majority prefers the president's position to that of most Democratic leaders. Those who support the president's position include 36% of Democrats, and maybe more importantly, a 59% majority of Independents" (emphases in original).