A somber mood in the House

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - It was a gray and slushy day in the nation’s capitol but inside the Capitol building a cozy wood fire was burning in the fireplace in the speaker’s lobby right off the House floor, a perfect day to stay indoors and debate the war in Iraq.

At issue: a non-binding resolution opposing President Bush’s Iraq policy.

The fact that the war will continue as long as the congressional funding continues seemed to put the members we interviewed in the speaker’s lobby in an especially somber frame of mind.

There was no feeling that the Democrats were about to score a victory they could cheer about – partly because members know that they will have to vote on another $100 billion in supplemental funding for the war next month.

Not an impeachment mood
The mood Tuesday was not the one observed in 1998 during the worst of the Clinton impeachment battle, when House members were screaming and yelling at each other on the House floor. Instead it was gloomy, fatalistic.

Before members buckled down to a non-stop series of five-minute speeches Tuesday, all 435 filed in to vote on the “rule” – the procedure that allowed the debate to take place – with no Republican alternative allowed.

As they came off the floor into the speaker’s lobby after voting, members pondered how much the debate meant.

It’s not polite to ask a House member if his day’s work really matters, but some members were wondering whether the resolution would have any impact on the president.

“This is like theater,” said one Democratic House member who opposes the war but did not want to be identified by name. “People will get up on the floor and make sententious statements – and then we’ll walk out of here and we’ll still be in a war.”

'Looking for a rationale'
Republican Rep. Jim Walsh, who almost lost his upstate New York district last November, will vote for the resolution.

We asked Walsh: will any minds in the House be changed over the next three days of speechmaking?

“I think on our side it will change a few,” Walsh said. His hunch was that some Republicans who were at first leaning toward voting for the resolution might vote “no.”

Some of his GOP colleagues have come up to Walsh to ask him how he’ll vote. “If they’re asking me what I’m doing and why, then they’re looking for a rationale” for voting for the resolution. And perhaps they haven’t yet found it.

Will the outcome of the vote on the resolution – assuming it gets about 280 votes on Friday – change Bush’s mind? “If he is surprised by the number of Republican votes for this (resolution), it might affect his thinking,” Walsh said.  

But he noted that the troop surge is already underway and won’t be affected by what the House does. The key test is next month’s vote on funding the war. Voting for this week’s non-binding resolution is not an indicator of the vote on funding, he said.

“Funding is a much higher standard – especially for Republicans,” Walsh said. And yet he is facing pressure back home in Syracuse: the mood in his district is not improving. “People are more impatient, much more than a year ago or two years ago.”

Walsh said constituents are reacting to “the constant drumbeat of death and destruction; the lack of any positive news.”

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