t he p erils of o ptimism 311arguments echoed ones heard a generation earlier when dominoes
seemed destined to fall across Southeast Asia and American credibility
was at stake.
But warnings of future terror attacks worked only for a time before
repetition numbed the audience. The very effectiveness of security
countermeasures put in place after 9/11 lessened any sense of urgency,
while frequent alarms and the absence of follow-up attacks made it
appear that the administration was crying wolf about terrorist threats.
Besides, as terrorist networks took root elsewhere in Asia, Africa, and
the Middle East and cells of violent extremists launched attacks in
Europe or were exposed in the United States itself, a war going badly in
Iraq did not seem an eff ective antidote to the danger. Antiwar activists
began to gain signifi cant mainstream support, too, when Democratic
Representative John Murtha, a Vietnam veteran, urged a prompt with-
drawal from Iraq in November 2005.
With the war at a stalemate by the end of 2005 and the adminis-
tration unable to articulate a clear plan to bring it to a successful con-
clusion, public opinion turned against the president and his handling
of the war, and he struggled to retain backing among key Republican
leaders. Here, too, Bush looked more and more like Johnson. Support
dipped to 40 percent or below, numbers that paralleled Johnson’s from
mid-1967 onward. An August 2006 poll found that 56 percent of
Americans viewed the war as a mistake. Although Bush did not need
to think about reelection, the same could not be said for Republicans
in Congress. By early 2006 they feared loss of their majority status, and
growing numbers of those facing tough battles for their seats broke with
the president over the war—much as Johnson had suff ered mounting
defections among Democratic lawmakers.
Nearly three years into the insurgency, control over public debate
about the war threatened to slip from the administration’s hands.
One GOP lawmaker expecting a hard reelection contest, Represen-
tative Frank Wolf, came up with the idea of a bipartisan com-
mission to prod the administration to reexamine its Iraq policy.
After Vice President Cheney rebuffed him, Wolf used intermedi-
aries to persuade Rice instead, and she in turn got the president to
sign off on a commission before Cheney, Rumsfeld, or others could
object. Bush held out for James Baker, who had overseen the Bush