With California's 2008 primary moving from June to February, pundits across the country are debating the impact our state will have on the presidential race. While California's influence on who is chosen to go on to the general election is yet to be seen, one thing is clear: With candidates certain to flock west to corral critical early support, California has a chance to define what the candidates will be talking about through next November.
For California voters, the early primary represents an opportunity to weigh in on the most critical issue facing this nation - the war in Iraq - and to ensure that the next president will do what President Bush has refused to do: face up to the realities of this war and bring our troops home. Californians will be able to make their voice heard loudly and clearly in the presidential contest and perhaps even on a ballot measure calling for an end to the war.
Shortly after signing the early primary bill into law, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called on Californians to demand from presidential candidates real answers to the questions on voters' minds. Given the opportunities presented by the candidates' heightened interest in California, he said, "We have to make sure that we ask the tough questions," rather than be satisfied with "rhetoric" and "nice lines." I agree with the governor; running for president isn't an American Idol audition - this is too important a contest for style or celebrity to trump substance.
But here's where the governor is wrong. In remarks that would surely disappoint the 140,000 brave American troops in Iraq and sadden the families of those troops, the governor went on to say the presidential candidates have been talking too much about Iraq. While calling for candidates to talk seriously about the issues that confront California, he said we have to "go beyond just the regular stuff of talking about Iraq, because right now everything you hear on television and all the talk shows is about Iraq."
Certainly our country has myriad challenges that our next president must tackle, but solving every one of those problems - the health care crisis, the education crisis, the stunning number of American children who live in poverty - begins by ending this war. This misguided war is not only draining our treasury, damaging our nation's moral standing in the world and taking our focus off the real work of fighting terrorism - it is diverting energy and attention from solving the most critical challenges facing our country. There is no issue more important in the 2008 presidential election.
Every candidate - Democrat or Republican - owes the people of this state and this country a simple, clear answer to this question: "If elected, will you immediately end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home safely?"
Four decades ago, America found itself in the midst of another presidential election conducted against the backdrop of a deeply divisive war. The man elected in 1968 - Richard Nixon - claimed that he had a plan to end U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, but he was fuzzy and evasive on the specifics.
With Americans turning against that war, Nixon's promise, which came to be known as his "secret plan" to end the war, was in fact a secret plan to win the 1968 election. As president, he not only failed to pull American troops out of Southeast Asia, he escalated the war with secret bombings in Cambodia and Laos.
From the time Nixon took office in 1969 to April 1975 when the war finally ended, more than 23,000 more American lives were lost - nearly 40 percent of all American losses in Vietnam. Nixon's secret plan stands out as the most deadly broken campaign promise in our nation's history.
It has often been said that those who forget the lessons of history are destined to repeat it. This war has already claimed more than 3,250 American lives, including 330 men and women from California. It needn't take one more life. And no candidate should be elected without making a solemn and specific pledge to end the war and bring our troops home immediately.
California has a long and proud history of giving voice to America's conscience, including leading the effort to end the Vietnam War. With California's primary in the national spotlight, now is our chance to lead again.
