Democrat says Bush ‘recklessly’ waged war

Democrats gearing up to challenge President Bush’s Iraq war plan added a personal note to their campaign Tuesday as Virginia Sen. Jim Webb drew on his family’s history of military service to accuse the president of betraying the trust of those fighting today.

“We trusted the judgment of our national leaders,” said Webb, a Vietnam veteran and former Navy secretary whose father served in the Air Force after World War II and whose son is a Marine serving in Iraq.

“We owed them our loyalty, as Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay.”

Bush, in contrast, took the country to war “recklessly,” Webb said before concluding that if the president did not work to bring the war to an end, “we will be showing him the way.”

Webb, who delivered the official Democratic response to the president’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, also sounded populist economic notes as the freshman senator contrasted the declining economic fortunes of the middle class with the skyrocketing salaries of corporate chief executives.

Since assuming control of the House and Senate this month, Democrats have focused on popular domestic legislation aimed at establishing their credentials as advocates for the middle class, including raising the federal minimum wage and cutting interest rates on student loans.

“We in the Democratic Party hope that this administration is serious about improving education and healthcare for all Americans, and addressing such domestic priorities as restoring the vitality of New Orleans,” Webb said. Bush made no mention of New Orleans or Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city in 2005.

In the Spanish-language Democratic response, Rep. Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles also sounded an economic alarm bell. “Our economy has grown,” Becerra said. “But what does it matter if parents must work sometimes two jobs each, just to pay the bills? Today, 37 million people in the United States live in poverty.”

Other Democratic lawmakers also expressed little enthusiasm for the president’s speech.

“I appreciate the president’s effort tonight to extend an olive branch of bipartisanship,” said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland. “Unfortunately, President Bush has simply failed to work in a bipartisan way and to deliver on many of the commitments he has made over the last six years.”

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Bush fell far short of her party’s vision to move the country forward. “The president finally acknowledged the problem of global warming and the need to develop alternative energy sources, but he did not offer a real plan to deal with climate change or to put us on a path to energy independence,” the New York Democrat and presidential hopeful said.

Bush “finally addressed the need to deal with the healthcare crisis, but offered a proposal that does nothing to make health insurance more affordable or accessible for the millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans,” Clinton said.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) noted: “I have to say, two of the best words I heard tonight were ‘Madam Speaker,’ ” referring to Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, the first female speaker of the House.

Iraq looms as the nation’s most pressing issue. And Webb’s speech -- delivered across the Capitol from the House chamber where the president spoke -- came as Democrats prepared their first legislative initiative against the president’s war policies.

Democratic leaders in the Senate are working to refine a resolution opposing Bush’s plans to deploy 21,500 more troops in Iraq in the coming months. The resolution gets its first hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today.

Meanwhile, Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith on Tuesday became the sixth Republican to sign a measure opposing the troop escalation introduced by Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), also a former Navy secretary.

Webb made no specific references to the resolutions or the president’s plan for a troop buildup. Instead, Webb -- whose impassioned campaign against the war helped unseat a once-popular GOP incumbent -- condemned the president’s decisions in broad terms while calling for a change in policy.

In what has become the Democratic position on the war, Webb called for a more aggressive diplomatic effort in the Middle East and urged a strategy that “will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq.”

Webb noted the diminishing public support for the war. And he concluded with pointed comparisons to two Republican presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, who ended the Korean War after he was elected in 1952, and Theodore Roosevelt, who championed aggressive reforms in the face of rising income inequalities a century ago.

“These presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world,” Webb said. “Tonight we are calling on this president to take similar action.”

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noam.levey@latimes.com