The Tempting Of Michael Howard

Michael Howard, the leader of the British Conservative Party, is really a very fine man: highly intelligent, principled, capable. As Home Secretary in the last Conservative government, he was a tough-minded crime fighter, Britain's answer to Rudy Giuliani. Since he left office after the Conservative defeat in 1997, Britain generally and London especially have become dirtier, less civil, more dangerous.

Howard has a powerful personal story to tell as well. Howard's parents arrived in Britain as refugees from the Holocaust. He is the first Jew ever to head a major British political party. (Benjamin Disraeli had converted to Christianity at the age of 13.) And Howard is only the latest in a series of Conservative "firsts": The Conservatives were the first to choose a Catholic leader (Iain Duncan Smith), the first to choose a leader from a working-class background (Edward Heath) and the first to choose a woman (you know who). Just by standing on the hustings, Howard gives the lie to the shabby slur that the politics of inclusion is the politics of the Left.

But nobody is perfect. The British election campaign that comes to a vote on Wednesday presented Michael Howard with a terrible temptation--and when his party comes to look back on the events of 2005, they will realize that he did severe and lasting harm by succumbing.

The temptation was to play politics with the Iraq war.

Michael Howard voted in favor of the Blair government's war resolution in October, 2002, as did a majority of his colleagues in the Conservative Party. But over the ensuing months, the war rapidly lost popularity in Britain, and Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal credibility and his close relationship with U.S. President George W. Bush emerged as the Labour Party's gravest points of political vulnerability.

And so, through 2003 and 2004, Michael Howard step by step altered his once strong and clear views on Iraq. In hopes of getting to 10 Downing Street, he used carefully coded language to try to reach out to war opponents--without formally abandoning his still theoretically pro-war position, finally arriving at a position on the war so elaborately double-embossed, so intricately reverse-chased, that it defied human understanding.

In a July, 2004, debate in the House of Commons, Howard declared (1) that if he had it to do all over again, he would not have voted in favor of the October, 2002, war motion, but that (2) he still supported the war nonetheless. At various points over the past 18 months, he has accused Blair of "dereliction of duty," has demanded he resign and finally called him a liar outright.

At the same time, Howard has said that he had "many areas of agreement" with the Prime Minister and has endorsed most of Blair's present policies. When asked point-blank what he would do in Iraq today, Howard has simply changed the subject, announcing that it is time to "move on" from the Iraq debate.

Many people have compared Howard's difficulties with Iraq to those of John Kerry. But there is a big difference. Over nearly two decades, Kerry had established a record as one of the most dovish members of the U.S. Senate. He opposed the Reagan defense buildup of the 1980s, opposed the struggle against communism in Central America, and opposed the first Gulf War.

When Kerry voted in favor of America's war resolution in October, 2002, few doubted that he was engaged in an act of political opportunism: that he truly wanted to vote "no," but that he was afraid that a "no" might cost him the presidency--as indeed his vote against the Gulf War had probably cost him a place as Bill Clinton's running mate in 1992. As Kerry moved to a more and more anti-war position in 2004, he was moving closer and closer to his true self.

Howard, by contrast, is an instinctive hawk. His October, 2002, vote reflected his genuine views--his move toward a more anti-war position has been a move away from his true self.

It's hard to say which act of opportunism is morally worse, Howard's or Kerry's. Politically, though, I fear it is Howard's that will prove more damaging to his party. Kerry did the Democrats one great service: By attacking Bush on the war and losing so badly, he discredited Vietnam-era anti-war politics probably for good. Since November, every would-be president in the Democratic ranks has steered sharply to the right on national security--and if the Democrats win in 2008, Kerry's negative example will deserve much of the credit.

Howard also will almost certainly lose. But what message will Conservatives take away from the experience? I very much fear that they will put the blame for their defeat not on Howard's maladroit opportunism but on his inner core of conviction. I fear that next time they will go looking for a man who is all opportunism--and given the state of today's Conservative Party, they will have a wide range of choice.

Howard, tragically, arrived at the right answer only at the very end: British voters in fact have moved on from the Iraq debate. They were never going to vote out Tony Blair if they did not trust the Conservatives on health, education and the economy. And if the Conservatives could have regained that trust, no opportunism on Iraq would have been needed in the first place.