On the third anniversary of the war in Iraq, the little operation that could, this weekend, the President and other members of his cabinet celebrated by giving us their optimistic outlooks on where we've been and where, exactly, we're headed. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said that "the terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq" and that he believes "history will show that to be the case," adding that "now," much like most of the past three years, it seems, "is the time for resolve, not retreat." (You be sure and let us know when retreat -- or exiting, to use a less inflammatory and charged word -- is prudent, 'kay?)

Vice President Cheney said that his previous statements that we would be "greeted as liberators" and that the insurgency was "in its last throes" "were basically accurate and reflect reality," in much the same way that calling a bulldog a tuna fish or saying that a baseball game is almost over after the first pitch are basically true. While the President, in his expansive, multi-layered two-minute speech on the subject, merely said that he was "encouraged by the progress" and that "we are implementing a strategy that will lead to victory in Iraq."

This, despite the latest comments from some of the sources most directly involved with the affair. Take those of the former Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, who said the country was rapidly approaching "a point of no return" -- "It is unfortunate that we are in a civil war," he said. "We are losing each day, as an average, fifty to sixty people through the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."

And before you rush to rebut him -- like General George W. Casey Jr., the senior US commander in Iraq, who said we were "a long way from civil war" on CNN -- remember that just because they don't have snappy gray or blue uniforms yet doesn't mean they aren't experiencing some form of civil war. When over 1,300 Iraqis die in reprisals and violence the week after the Shiite temple's destruction a month ago, and hundreds more die in the intervening weeks, you know something serious is going on. 

Don't let the semantics get in the way here. Take the President's repeated declarations that we are in a war on Terror, for example. Quarrel, if you will, with his choice of language and whether we're actually in a war -- conflict, even -- that is winnable, but no one is denying that we are stuck in a situation that demands serious attention. Same holds true here -- call it a civil war, if you like, call it a friendly disagreement between centuries-old enemies. Either way, something bad's going on that warrants immediate attention.

But Allawi's not the only one -- Senator Biden, who has made repeated journeys to visit the country, said, "By any measure, in my view, we're worse off in Iraq today than we were a year ago" and retired General Paul D. Eaton, who was in charge of the Iraqi military's training from 2003-4, said last week that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq," adding that he "must step down."

And while it's taken forever, it seems like these, and the mass of similar criticisms that have been piling up the past five years, are finally -- finally -- having resonance with the general public. Maybe it's the vernal equinox and the dawning of spring -- new buds on the trees, new thoughts in the mind and hopes in the belly -- but it seems at long last that people are taking notice of the world around them. Bush's approval rating is at an all-time low, 33%, among all categories of people, but most interestingly among his supporters, too. 

Among self-described Republicans he's down from 89% in Jan. 2005 to 73% now; among conservatives he's down from 94% to 78; among Bush voters in 2004 he's down from 92% to 68; among white evangelicals from 72 to 54; among the rich (incomes over $75k) from 56 to 41, all changes of at least 15% in just a little over a year -- and it's interesting that Eaton used the term "incompetent" to describe Rumsfeld's performance on the job. That's because in the same Pew survey, when asked for their one-word description of the President, "incompetent" was the number one descriptor used by the respondents.

29 of the 710 people surveyed thought the President was "incompetent," 21 an "idiot," and 17 a "liar" when asked for the first thing that came to mind. (Somewhat humorously, "ass" pulled in 8, "jerk" 7, and "stupid" 6, as well.)  In fact, for the first time in three years they've been surveying this, negative one-word descriptors outranked positive ones for the President, this time severely. In May 2003, positive one-word descriptors (the top three of which are "good," "Christian," and "honest") outweighed negative ones ("incompetent," "idiot," and "liar") 52 to 27. Three years later the numbers are virtually reversed -- negative terms trump positive ones 48 to 28.

"Honesty" has gone from being the top choice in February of last year (38) to sixth this month (14), while "incompetent" has crawled from fifth (14) to first, as mentioned above. Things have gotten so bad that 56% of the people surveyed feel the President is "out of touch" with the government, more than the number who felt Ronald Reagan was (47%) at the peak of his asleep-at-the-wheel accusations post Iran-Contra in August 1987. This is a rather amazing downturn for the man who once enjoyed approval ratings over 80% after 9/11 and a rather resounding margin of victory in his reelection.

So where do we go from here? We have a President that nearly three-quarters of the country is unhappy with, who even his core supporters are deserting en masse, and yet still nearly two and a half years to go until the next presidential election. If the impeachment argument presented here recently is still unpalatable to you, maybe it's time to revisit electoral reform with the midterm elections bearing down on us next year.  

But if you thought the aforementioned numbers made you feel unrepresented, consider those quoted by Hendrik Hertzberg in last week's New Yorker in his piece on a recent legislative push to possibly eliminate the electoral college. 

"As has become increasingly clear over the past few general elections, with their red states and blue states, an American Presidential campaign is no longer truly national. It takes place almost exclusively in the purple states—the "battleground states," where neither party can be sure of a lock. In 2004, there were thirteen such states, accounting for twenty-eight per cent of the population (and thirty-two per cent of the ultimate vote, since turnout increases with the uncertainty of the outcome). In the final month, the candidates spent $237 million on advertising, $229 million of it in those thirteen states. (In twenty-three states, they didn't spend a dime.) At the same time, President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Senator Kerry, and Senator Edwards attended a total of two hundred and ninety-one campaign events. Two hundred and sixty-eight of them were in the lucky thirteen."

This argument, which like that for impeachment becomes more plausible and compelling the longer you think about it, is to apply a section of the Constitution granting states the right to appoint its presidential electors -- its College votes -- in whichever manner their state legislature sees fit. So the plan, according to the  Campaign for a National Popular Vote, the idea's originators, would be for each state to sign a compact (after first passing a state law formally decreeing it) vowing to grant its College votes to the winner of the popular vote. Once enough states had done so -- enough to win a majority of the 538 total votes -- the College would effectively be dead and the popular vote -- the voice of the whole country, not a select portion of it -- would once and for all determine who is our President.

This would eliminate the lack of representation described above and lead, as Hertzberg writes, "to an improvement in the over-all health of [our] democratic order." He teases out the devil's argument below:

"In only one of the past twenty-nine Presidential elections has the winner of the popular vote not also been the winner of the electoral vote. So why not stick with an arrangement that, since 1888, has "worked" ninety-seven per cent of the time? Because the deepest argument for a national popular vote has nothing to do with who wins. It has to do with the over-all health of a democratic order...

There's a traditional view that without the Electoral College Presidential campaigns would simply ignore the small states. It hasn't worked that way. The real division that the Electoral College creates, in tandem with the winner-take-all rule, is not between large states and small states but between battleground states and what might be called spectator states. Of the thirteen least populous states, six are red, six are blue, and one—New Hampshire—is up for grabs. Guess which twelve Bush and Kerry stiffed and which one got plenty of love, long after the primary season? Size doesn't matter. At the other end of the spectrum, the three biggest states—blue California, red Texas, and blue New York—were utterly ignored, except for purposes of fund-raising."

This has resulted in a situation where a mere sliver of the country's voice is heard and to "the death of participatory politics in two-thirds of the country."

"If you live in a spectator state, it might be fun to persuade your neighbors to vote your way, or ring their doorbells, or hand them leaflets. But it can't make a difference. And it doesn't matter which side you're on or which color your state is. Widening your ticket's margin of victory or narrowing its margin of defeat is equally pointless. In this sense, our Presidential campaigns are not only not national; in most of the country they're not local, either."

And so steps are under way in the Illinois legislature -- my home state, I'm proud to say -- to address this. As Hertzberg notes, "For fifty years, polls have consistently shown that seventy per cent of the public favors direct election." It's time to see if our voice -- that increasingly marginalized three-quarters we've mentioned so much here today -- will finally be heard.

Until next time, my friends...