Bayh challenges Rove — and Clinton, too?

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Partition of Iraq?
He also raised questions by suggesting he’d accept the partition of Iran in to three countries. The Sunni, Shia and Kurds “must decide whether they want to live in one country together or not…. If they do not, then our mission is done.”

He mentioned “benchmarks for success” in Iraq, but didn’t define what he meant by “success.”

He called for increasing the Army by 100,000 troops – last July Sen. Clinton called for boosting the Army by 80,000 soldiers over four years – but didn’t address the question of how to find new recruits at a time when the armed forces have had some difficulty meeting their recruiting targets.

Always in the back of listeners’ minds at such pre-presidential campaign events is the question: Could this man excite Democratic activists in Claremont, N.H. or Cedar Rapids, Iowa on a frosty night in December of 2007?

Bayh is not the fiery orator Howard Dean was. He lacks the folksy charm of Bill Clinton, but he does have a laid-back wit and also something that most of his 2008 do not: a solid record as a governor.

With his votes against confirming Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Bayh may bridge some of the divide between himself and the left wing of his party.

Tensions with the Left
Some of his statements in the past have created tensions between the left and Bayh.

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When Dean's candidacy was soaring in July of 2003, Bayh warned that “the Democratic Party is at risk of being taken over by the far left.”

In May 2004, after abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became public, Bayh worried that the furor would sap support for the war, a war which left-leaning Democrats fiercely oppose.

“Our cause is morally superior to our adversaries,” Bayh said in May 2004, but he feared that moral superiority had been damaged by the Abu Ghraib images.

Bayh said it was necessary that the United States “ultimately prevail in what is a very noble and idealistic decision.”

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