Republican Chuck Hagel Getting Attention

With one exception, none of the Republican candidates for president are the kind of men capable of repairing the damage that George W. Bush has done to our nation and particularly our foreign policy. McCain is increasingly out of touch, clueless and compromised. Giuliani is a public relations illusion whose flaws are considerable and largely kept out of the public eye for the moment. Newt Gingrich wants to start World War III. The rest of the field are lightweights, though one or two of the lesser knowns would be better than George W. Bush (but is that saying much?). The one exception, the only potential Republican candidate that worries me, is Senator Chuck Hagel. Why? Because he's qualified to be president and would be the only Republican candidate that would give the Democrats a serious challenge. He's also capable of steering the Republican Party away from its lunatic fringe back to a more authentic conservativism.

Steve Clemons of The Washington Note has an article from the Weekly Guardian about Hagel; here's a couple of excerpts but give it a read:

Anti-War Veteran May Rally the Republicans

by Ewen MacAskill, Washington Bureau Chief, The Guardian

Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator from Nebraska, is one of the few senior figures in either Congress or the Bush administration to have been in combat. While many of them deferred their service, like the chief hawk, Vice-President Dick Cheney, or did a short spell on home soil in the National Guard, like George Bush, Hagel spent time in the mud of Vietnam as an infantry sergeant.

That experience explains why he is one of the leading opponents in Bush's own party of the Iraq war. When the president announced his decision in January to increase the number of US troops in Iraq by 21,500, Hagel's comment was one of the most widely quoted in the media. He called the troop surge "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam."

(snip)

Hagel's anti-war views are not confined to Iraq. During the Israeli war against Hizbullah in Lebanon last year, he urged Bush to call an immediate ceasefire, something not only the president but Tony Blair refused to do.

He also calls for the closure of the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where more than 300 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Muslim world have been detained without trial. He sees this as damaging America's reputation as a champion of human rights.

While Bush refuses to open dialogue with Iran, sent an extra aircraft carrier group to the Gulf and insists that all options remain on the table, including a military strike, Hagel spoke passionately at Nora's in favour of negotiating with Tehran. His opposition to escalation of the Iraq war and avoidance of one in Iran can be traced to his still strong memory of Vietnam, from which he returned in 1968 with shrapnel in his chest and two Purple Hearts. Like the former secretary of state, Colin Powell, another Vietnam vet and one of the few members of the administration who cautioned against the Iraq invasion, Hagel has seen at first hand what happens in war.

I suspect Chuck Hagel will enter the presidential race but I have doubts that the Republican Party, as it now exists, will be smart enough to make Chuck Hagel their nominee for president. For the moment, the right wingers are full of their own hubris and are likely to destroy the Republican Party by making all kinds of demands that most Americans oppose. I doubt the right wingers will go for Senator Hagel and they seem to control their party at the moment; and ordinary Republican conservatives seem unwilling to take back their party (or to turn off Fox News, for that matter). But Hagel will make the race considerably more interesting and he may very well surprise us.