Democrats Join in Challenge to Bush Over Foreign Policy

"One of the fundamental lessons we learned from the 2002 campaign season is you can't not talk about the most pressing issue of the moment and be ... competitive," said Dan Gerstein, the communications director for Lieberman. "The reaction you are seeing, not just among the presidential candidates but Democrats in general, is we are not going to allow Bush to go unchallenged on security issues."

In the presidential primary, these arguments may help the pro-war Democratic candidates reach party activists resistant to invading Iraq. The relevance of this case in the general election may depend on how a war in Iraq and its aftermath play out.

"If the war is a smashing success, Bush can say we want to try to be multilateral, but we have to do what we think is right," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, an independent polling group. "But if it doesn't go well, this criticism will be much more salient."

The emerging debate is raising issues of principles rarely discussed seriously in U.S. political campaigns. At its heart is a fundamental question: Does America best safeguard its security and advance its goals in the world by maximizing its freedom for unilateral action, even at the cost of tension with allies, or by stressing multilateral collaboration, even at the price of constraining its actions?

Recent surveys show the country characteristically divided on that choice. While most Americans say they want United Nations sanction for any attack on Iraq, narrow majorities typically say they would back an American attack with other willing nations if the U.N. balks.

Neither Bush nor the Democrats jostling to oppose him take an absolutist position in this debate. No major Democratic contender says the United States should never use force without United Nations approval. And no one in the administration says America should completely disregard the views of allies or abandon international institutions such as NATO or the U.N.

Yet Bush and the leading Democrats have staked out clearly contrasting positions along the continuum from unilateral to multilateral action.

Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said Bush has shown his commitment to international cooperation by organizing more than 90 countries to participate in the war against terrorism and by rallying the U.N. to demand a resumption of arms inspections in Iraq.