“Where’s Charlie?”

A nagging question liberal Democrats raise about Senator Charles Schumer became newly relevant last week when he failed to appear at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing into Russell Feingold’s motion of censure of President Bush. Schumer’s absence followed his running away – with most of his colleagues - earlier last month when the censure proposal was introduced by Feingold. At that time the usually voluble senior senator from New York was quoted as saying of the motion “I’m not going to comment.”

Behind Schumer’s sudden reticence, according to admiring media reports, is his role as head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. He does not want to say or do anything that would alienate swing voters in Red states where Democrats have a chance of winning several marginal seats. Many New York Democrats see Schumer’s strategy as part of a pattern of Democratic disarray, an unwillingness to take on the catastrophe-prone Bush Administration with one uncompromising united voice.

Members of his New York base know that, long before he took the DSCC job, Schumer had mastered the art of looking and talking like an aggressive liberal while acting the ultra-cautious centrist. It’s the authentic Schumer they see these days, willing to discuss at length any non-inflammatory issue such as China trade policy, rebuilding Ground Zero, Dubai Ports, or homeland security in general. And he’s always been reliably voluble on judicial appointments, “guaranteeing” Democrats would turn back any attempted conservative takeover of the courts.

Schumer’s rhetoric on appointments began to lose credibility a year and a half ago in the aftermath of John Kerry’s uncombative presidential campaign that clearly aborted Democratic hopes of reclaiming the White House. On the day newly re-elected President Bush named Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General, Schumer called the choice “encouraging.” He then did little more than acquiesce in the confirmation of the man who provided the military with a rationale for torture. The dismay he and his many soft-on-Gonzales colleagues caused already despairing party members in late 2004 led to the Democratic dark valley of 2005/06.

Schumer, his national campaign plan nothwithstanding, voted against the appointments to the High Court of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito at turn of the year. But he obviously shied away from his onetime role as a lead organizer of opposition to the president’s unacceptably radical judicial nominations. That uncharacteristic shyness at critical moments calls attention to the disconnect between how Schumer is perceived by much of the mainstream media and how by progressive Democrats. That liberal faction, as mentioned above, has long noted with disapproval Schumer’s unwillingness to use his publicity-attracting skills to address anti-populist initiatives like tax cuts for the wealthy and Medicare reform. Except for one statement calling attention to a bankruptcy law loophole for the wealthy and a recent initiative to reimburse people wrongly denied prescription drug coverage, Schumer has had little, if anything, else to say (according to his press release website) on those issues over the last two years.

More troubling to progressives has been Schumer’s conspicuous silence on the war in Iraq. He has not even deigned to join the “It’s-not-working” chorus that includes conservatives as well as mainstream Democrats and Republicans. A check of Schumer’s press releases yielded not one in more than three years that deplored any aspect of the war except the lack of combat pay for spouses of our troops on duty there. A request earlier for something unpublished the senator may have said critical of the war clearly perplexed his communications person. “He’s been pretty supportive, ” the aide said. (Another press aide told me this week that published allegations Schumer had said something positive about the war were emphatically false.)

In fairness, Schumer did say the right things before voting the wrong way on the resolution to grant the president war powers. “ If I were President,” he said on Oct.10, 2002, “ I would not go to war now. My next step would be, as ours must be, to explore fully the compelling force of a determined United Nations. Given the President's recent statements of support for action through the U.N.; if he were to invade Iraq now after passage of the resolution, he would have completely misled Congress and the American people.”

Such a pre-war position would seem to have required vigorous criticism of the preemptive invasion, its chaotic aftermath, and, if nothing else, the horrors of the Abu Ghraib torture chamber. Schumer’s silence may have been part of his consistent bi-partisan strategy, choosing safe issues to gain the type of broad support that enabled him to win reelection with a record 71 percent of the vote in November of 2004.. But the avoidance of confrontation in an office secure until 2010 seems cowardly to progressive Democrats. Worse, they believe it to be counter-productive from a national perspective.

Party activists expect widely recognized attention-grabbers like Schumer to help re-energize the rank-and-file with plain, non-conciliatory speaking about the two wars: the one in Iraq that is draining us economically as well as morally, while exacting tens of thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and the one at home – the class war – that is widening the chasm between the privileged and the poor.

With New York’s junior Senator Hillary Clinton embracing a calculated policy of political risk-aversion, Schumer has been given an opportunity – and a challenge: He can let people know where he and the party stand as the beleaguered Bush Administration tries to sustain its rightist offensive. His speaking out in broad opposition to Republican policies – a role change from “Where’s Charlie?” to “There’s Charlie!” - would be a welcome sign the “disarrayed” Democrats have regrouped and are ready again to fight.

Political journalist John Richard Starkey is a partner in Perfect Pitch Communications, a Manhattan-based polling and media relations firm.

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