The good plan of John Edwards

John Edwards is making the right call on Congress's response to Bush's veto of the defense appropriations bill. Edwards insists that Congress keep sending it back to the President until he understands that it's a message directly from the American people that says, "Get Out of Iraq.'

Leading up to this confrontation the people have been polled endlessly, and they stand far more willing to just plain leave Iraq now than what's allowed for by Congress's plan, which, coming from Democrats isn't so much a withdrawal plan as it is a policy for creating a process for achieving the goal of getting out of Iraq in pretty much the orderly way the US got out of Germany after WWII.

Even in George Bush's perfervid conception of Presidential powers, nothing trumps the people. It's the uncomfortable recognized truth of democracy that the people, should they become of one mind about the thing, can lay low even the most exalted elaboration of executive privilege, and the horse it rode in on, too. Turn it all to rubble. Before it comes to that democratic institutions provide any number of opportunities for the functionaries of government to defer to the people's express will in the matter instead.

The President, no matter how kingly current special circumstances are said to have made him, must defer to the people, who, as everyone knows, have trumped plenty of kings in their day.

There's no doubt the people want the war over. Congress can depend on that. They can expect constant pressure to actually withdraw from Iraq in fact, once they turn over authority for their confrontation with the President to the will of the people by repeatedly tossing the same redeployment language back in his face and reminding him that the will of the people is, "Get Out."

From members of Congress reluctant to cede such authority there is talk of reaching a consensus following negotiations with the President. Fie on that shit, is what I say. Iraq, the whole of it, needs confronting, and the Edwards scheme is the best way forward. America needs to make a big public deal out of the thing now, and that won't happen if Congress goes behind closed doors with the Administration to settle on some compromise.

Oh, of course I'm all about the Let the People Speak and the Populism and such, naturally inclined to favor anyone like Edwards saying anything remotely like music to my ears on the subject. Let there be a confrontation, please.