Iraqi war, term limits make good vote fellows

Mark me down as a hard cynic on why state Senate leader Don Perata wants to place an Iraq war referendum on the primary ballot next February.

The open secret in the Capitol is that the Oakland lawmaker and his fellow Democrats are hoping to lure liberal voters to the polls to provide an extra push for revising term limits.

This went unmentioned -- and was scarcely only hinted at by one Republican -- during a lengthy Senate debate on the Iraq withdrawal measure Wednesday. The bill was sent to the Assembly on a party-line vote, 23 Democrats to 11 Republicans.

“This measure is cynical, with all due respect to the author,” declared Sen. Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield). “It’s wrong to try to manipulate the voters.”

That’s a political concept I’d never heard of before.

But that aside, I later asked Ashburn what he meant by the bill being cynical. The Republican replied that Democrats really didn’t believe the ballot measure could have an effect on President Bush’s foreign policy. And voters would wind up feeling disillusioned.

Indeed, there’s precedent for that thesis from the Cold War. In 1982, California voters approved Gov. Jerry Brown’s ballot measure calling for a nuclear weapons freeze. President Reagan completely ignored the measure. Some White House clerk was allowed to quietly accept and effectively dump the document.

Reagan went on to upgrade and expand America’s nuclear forces and intimidate the Soviet Union into ending the Cold War.

Right here, however, let’s state the obvious: George Bush is no Ronald Reagan. If he were, our troops wouldn’t even be in Iraq.

But back to the cynicism of this Iraq pullout bill: I asked Ashburn whether he was implying that Perata was trying to skew the election turnout to the left to pick up additional liberal votes for term limits revision. “I don’t want to speculate on people’s motives,” he demurred.

But plenty of other people will off the record. And their answer is, “Of course.”

And that said, so what?

First, changing term limits is a just cause.

Current term limits -- three two-year terms in the Assembly, two four-year stints in the Senate -- don’t allow for enough on-job training for lawmakers. Ashcraft is one Republican who publicly concedes it.

“It’s created a chaotic situation and shifted power from the elected to the unelected -- to the staffs, the civil servants and the lobbyists,” he says.

Ashcraft is joining Democrats in pushing for a modest change that would reduce the total allotted years from 14 to 12, but allow all of them to be served in one house.

Second, California voters should be allowed to sound off on the war at the ballot box.

It beats rioting in the streets and on campuses, as many Americans did during the Vietnam War.

“The peace movement helped end the war, but it wasn’t pretty,” Perata noted during the Senate debate. “It was angry and divisive. It tore communities apart. Leaders lied. Liberties were trashed. And it made an entire generation cynical about government and distrustful of its leaders....

“The Iraq War has lasted longer than U.S. involvement in World War II -- a war in which Americans knew why we were fighting Hitler and Tojo.”

Coincidentally, the Iraq referendum debate came on the 63rd anniversary of the Allies’ D-day invasion of Nazi-held Europe. The contrast between that war era and today couldn’t be more stark.

Then, Americans were totally united and willing to sacrifice. Under a strong president, the country acceded to a military draft, “whatever-it-cost” arms buildup and consumer rationing. Today, our forces are understaffed and ill-equipped while the president cuts taxes for rich people.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona said it best in Tuesday night’s debate of Republican presidential hopefuls: “This war was very badly mismanaged for a long time.”

So Californians deserve an opportunity to urge President Bush -- in the ballot measure’s words -- to “immediately begin the safe and orderly withdrawal” of troops.

It’s a wasteful war, Perata said, that has cost America 3,400 dead -- 340 of them Californians -- and $350 billion.

But Republicans had some valid points.

“We’re elected by the people of California to handle the issues of California,” asserted Senate GOP leader Dick Ackerman of Irvine. “If you want to handle federal issues, you can try to be elected to Congress.”

Calling for a public plebiscite on a war “in its darkest day,” argued Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster), “is just bad, bad policy, bad form.”

Sen. Dave Cox (R-Fair Oaks) warned that if the measure were approved by voters, it could undermine troop morale and “embolden the enemy.”

It’s not clear whether Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger would sign or veto the bill. He hasn’t committed himself and is straddling both sides of the war -- asserting the need to emerge from Iraq victorious, yet calling for a timetable for withdrawal.

But it would be hypocritical for this self-proclaimed “governor of the people” to deny Californians an opportunity to express their view on the nation’s overriding issue. After all, he’s a governor who once called a costly special election on, among other things, inconsequential teacher tenure.

Schwarzenegger could keep playing both sides by allowing Californians to vote on the measure while personally opposing it, declaring there can be only one commander-in-chief.

Perata admitted the war referendum was unusual, but argued that “this is an extraordinary moment that requires an extraordinary step.”

Agreed. But a lot of us suspect the core motivation is changing term limits.

And that’s fine. Sometimes political self-interest meshes neatly with the public interest.

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george.skelton@latimes.com