Iraq could determine result of U.S. and UK elections

Peter Preston, Guardian News Service, London

Viewing figures for television news -- from London to San Francisco -- tell exactly the same story. Faraway places with strange- sounding names don't set punters' pulses racing any longer. Call it tuning out more than dumbing down. Moqtada al- Sadr, the Mahdi, Najaf? Let's see how our favorite athlete is doing (and leave our political masters to finish their August dozes).

The unholy streets round the holy mosque in the holy city shouldn't matter an electoral damn. Why, asked one American late- night comedian the other evening, can't we have our holy cities too? "Why not holy Toledo, Ohio?" Yet the poundings of the U.S. jets and the defiance of the fighters in the alleys bring curious unease in high places. Iraq's new "strongman" prime minister looks suddenly feeble. Coalition disaster, as well as coalition triumph, begins to surface. How is that playing in Tottenham (and Toledo)?

With some odd, even mysterious, dislocations. Last week an ICM poll for the London-based Guardian newspaper showed health, education and all the usual stuff heading British voter concerns -- and Iraq sliding to the bottom of the Issues Premiership. Media and chattering classes out of touch as Blair breathes again sensation!

But three days later, a Mori poll for the Finacial Times tried much the same exercise. Guess what? Schools and hospitals are supposedly relegation topics. The number one problem for Tony Blair's Labor party, apparently, is Baghdad (with foreign affairs and defense pounding in behind).

You can explain away some of these discrepancies, of course. Polls are taken at slightly different times, using slightly different formulations. There are inevitable margins of errors and borders of incomprehension. But there is also plain confusion. Where is the Iraqi issue, now for Bush and next year for Blair? Because if it is number one, then trouble comes calling.

The prime minister's hope rests on time and forgetfulness. So long after the war, do voters really remember and harbor resentment? The Labor party does, and, as we may see, in good conference measure. Many of those who demonstrated so furiously also remain incensed. But do wider fires still burn?

Most polling agrees on one thing. Labor, even in the doggiest days of mid-summer, remains ahead. The opposition Tories (Conservative party) are stuck with no more than a third of voters, incapable of moving beyond that. Tony Blair isn't popular, but he is more popular than the Tory leader Michael Howard. Perhaps Iraq is a migraine, but the Tories have no miracle on offer, just pain all the same. Labor only gets it in the neck if Iraq puts itself at the centre of the electoral calculation, an inescapable issue.

That may come to pass. Look at petrol prices going through the roof. Look at budget calculations getting dodgier. Look at a policy -- never apologized for, yet never justified by events -- that grows worse the more bad news piles in. Look at the commitment (in cash, effort and lives) without end. Yet it is difficult to see how Baghdad turns the screw that wrecks Labor. Whatever the electorate feels, whichever poll you believe, cause and effect remain only loosely connected.

And perhaps that is the way they'll remain across the Atlantic. There, Iraq is a number five sort of issue, behind the economy, education, Medicare and terrorism: Not out of sight, but out of the medals (where homeland terror flourishes like a winner's laurel wreath). TV, playing dumber than dumb, rates Olympic gold far ahead of Iraq's gloom. Most of the time, a news tickertape along the bottom of the screen handles faraway places. Even U.S. military deaths are taken routinely, as long as they come in penny packages.

The pending debate for the Republican convention is the size of the demos on New York's streets, not the substantive situation in Najaf's mosques. Ayad Allawi, apparently, is handling it. Our boys are the humble servants of Baghdad legitimacy and dawning democracy. A vital distance lends enchantment.

But TV can render distance irrelevant in a trice, for the political trick -- and media finagle -- cuts both ways. Allawi, and others from his cabinet, are busy chaps curiously available for satellite interview at the drop of an invitation from any relevant show.

It may prove an untender media trap. Shuffling off the direct pain of Najaf and Abu Ghraib, for the White House, means creating the impression of a tougher, tighter Baghdad administration. But what happens when Allawi is stuck with doing imperative Iraqi things, like more negotiation with Moqtada al-Sadr and less zapping from the skies? Then the armchair TV analysts begin to turn against him. Then it's somehow his fault that "our boys can't finish the job". But without him, there's no job to finish. Without his government's survival, there will be no elections and thus no eventual exit. Is this no-win with or without?

For George Bush, the size of the Shia insurgency is becoming a terrible test, a bet on Iraqi hearts, minds and resolve that tanks and jets cannot touch. There may be no alternative (and Kerry hasn't got one), but quagmires engulf the unwary.

And Blair, if both Bush and Allawi totter? That would be miscalculation compounded, one damn thing going with another -- and looking round for an inevitable sacrifice. That would be a foreign affair come home to roost.

Those polls, you see, may not be as dissonant as they seem to be. This crisis cuts both ways -- and Moqtada al-Sadr is a hairy man who may yet bring the smooth men much grief.