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Exit strategist: Influential Republican Senator Richard Lugar may not be ready to sign on to a full withdrawal just yet, but his patience with the president’s policy is clearly exhausted.

FOREIGN POLICY: Who’s running the show in the U.S. administration regarding Iraq? Is it Vice President Dick Cheney? Defense Secretary Robert Gates? Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice? Or is it the president?

Matthew Dowd: (Laughs.) Well, that’s probably not a question for me, as I don’t really talk to them anymore—at all—since my New York Times front-page break with the president. So I don’t know.

FP: There’s a well-known quote from the president in which he says, “We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections.” Do you believe that the president and the vice president consider themselves to be accountable to the American people?

MD: I don’t know what they feel. They may feel like they’re accountable. But in many ways, their actions don’t reflect that they think they’re accountable. I can just speculate, but it doesn’t look as if they think Congress has a role in this. It has a very strong “my way or the highway” feel.

FP: The White House has started shifting its rhetoric very delicately in talking about a post-surge Iraq. What should we make of what’s going on?

MD: I’m sure that they’re trying to make the best of a bad situation, not only a bad on-the-ground situation, but a bad political situation. The American public is on the opposite side of where the administration is. And so, I think that they’re trying to do the best they can in a bad place. They don’t have many options left. The public basically has Iraq in its rearview mirror. The public has basically decided, “This was unsuccessful; now what can we do going forward?” and not, “How can we make it a success?” And that’s a much different place.

FP: Depending on how you ask the questions about withdrawal, though, don’t people give different answers? If you nudge people and say, “Wouldn’t pulling out embolden al Qaeda,” don’t you see different results?

MD: There’s still a little of that, but there’s much less of it today. Everything has converged into, “This is a mistake; it’s not going well; and we need to figure out a process to get out of there.” The public basically thinks Iraq’s in a mess, and the only thing our soldiers are serving there seems to be as targets. And so the public doesn’t know what the mission is.

FP: Recently, a number of prominent Republicans in Congress such as Richard Lugar and Pete Domenici have come forward and broken with the president’s Iraq policy. What do you think is happening? Are they reacting to the polls? These are guys whose seats aren’t threatened, right?

MD: They’re speaking out, like I did in April, to say basically that the status quo is not tenable. They’re doing it not from a political perspective; they’re doing it from a perspective of “We’re putting our most precious resource on the line, and what are we gaining?” They’re just trying to speak truth to power. I might be a member of the Republican family, but when it’s not going well, somebody’s got to stand up and say, “Enough’s enough.” They see the reality, and they also know where the public is on this.

FP: But the growing opposition to the Iraq war among Republicans hasn’t translated into support for outright withdrawal. Is there a middle ground that people are going to support, somewhere between the surge and withdrawal?

MD: There probably will be, but it will be a nice way to say withdrawal. It will be done in a way that looks measured or rational or supporting the troops. I think the primary driver now is getting our troops out of harm’s way, not “what can we do to secure Iraq?” And I think the relationship in the public’s mind between securing Iraq and terrorism has been uncoupled. The polls say now that people don’t think the Iraq war has made us safer from terrorism.

FP: If you were advising a candidate in 2008—(MD: I’m not)—what would you advise that candidate to say about Iraq?

MD: Well, first, I’d always advise a candidate to tell people what he feels and not just make something up. I would also let them know where the public is on this, and that going forward, Iraq is no longer about how we win—it’s about how we overcome the mistakes we’ve made.

Matthew Dowd was chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection campaign and is the cofounder of ViaNovo, a management and communications consulting firm.

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