The Week in Review: Washington D.C.

Monday, March 5, 2007 | 7:18 a.m.

WASHINGTON - As soon as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced last week that Democrats would pause in their new attempt to push back against President Bush's Iraq war plans, the criticism began.

"Democrats Deeply Split Over New Iraq Strategy," read the lead story in the next day's Politico, a Washington publication. Various news accounts described the Democratic caucus as disorganized and in disarray.

Reid's aides offered a sunnier view: Democrats were simply having a conversation. "For good or for ill, one of the hallmarks of the Democratic Party is our policy fights are more public," one aide said.

But any way you slice it, last week demonstrated why Reid's old job, as minority leader, was easier than his new one - especially given his party's slim 51-49 majority.

The Senate opened the week with plans for a vote to reduce the broad authority to wage the war that Congress gave Bush four years ago. More than half a dozen Democratic senators agreed with the tactic, Reid's aides said.

But then anti-war Democrats broke away, publicly puzzling over why they should vote now to grant limited authority for a war they did not vote for in the first place.

Senators in the more conservative wing of the party also raised questions.

Republicans relished the fits and starts, with the minority leader dubbing them Reid's Goldilocks problem: He hasn't found the legislation that's just right.

Reid's situation is difficult. He wants to avoid a repeat of last month, when Republicans blocked the Iraq debate altogether. He is seeking an agreement with Republican leaders to have legislation from both parties brought up for debate and votes.

"Democrats are united - united in that the war in Iraq is going wrong," Reid insisted Thursday. He said he expects to bring a package to the Senate floor in a week or two.

With public opinion tilted against the war, one school of thought is Reid should push legislation that Democrats want to de-authorize the war, give troops mandatory breaks between rotations to Iraq, and even to withhold funding. That would force Republicans to go on record on each issue.

But other observers say Reid can't follow that approach for long without appearing to play politics with the war. Voters who put Democrats in power last fall want solutions, so he must find a way to win, they say.

"He's interested in affecting the policy, not getting bullet points on the next campaign brochure," a Democratic Senate aide said. A poll last week showed, for the first time, that a majority of Americans want a timetable set for troop withdrawals.

As Senate Democrats took their timeout, Republicans savored the stall.

"They lost all momentum," one senior Republican aide said. "Right now they are in a pretty deep pit" because the headlines changed from "Republicans blocking or losing" the debate to "Democrats are arguing amongst themselves."

Barbara Sinclair, a political science professor at UCLA, said voters are eager for answers, but are not paying much heed to the daily events on the Hill.

In the Senate, "there's always a lot of disarray on all sides," Sinclair said. "That just comes with the territory." Some Democrats argue that the Republicans are just as fractured. Seven senators broke ranks to join Democrats on last month's vote against the troop surge.

Sinclair said that Reid "is going to end up looking brilliant if the Democrats over time can get themselves together enough to come up with something so popular in the country that Republicans would be scared to filibuster it People are very unhappy with the war. They want it to be over."