The closest to what is happening now might have been when the British burned Washington while James Madison, a President whose bad judgment rivals George Bush’s, dithered in impotence. You could compare today with the turmoil of the Vietnam War years, when the will of the American ruling class began to crumble and the rich and powerful commenced arguing with each other about what to do and how to do it.

The big difference between then and now is that the Vietnam argument was a straightforward debate between stay and go; no in-between position was ever seriously considered. Not so with the Iraq war. Our ruling circles simply cannot bring themselves to pack up and leave. They think the consequences would be too horrible.

The war hawks of the Vietnam era argued the same kind of thing. It was said then that an American pullout would lead to the communization of much of Southeast Asia, but it didn’t happen. Could the predictions of what might happen in the Middle East come true after an American pullout? Yes, they could. Will they? Who knows?

In the Middle East, there is oil and Israel and there is America, caught in a war of its own making, unable to prevail and unwilling to leave. At this juncture, it’s important to emphasize that, even though the ruling circles have pretty much turned away from George Bush, they agree that the U.S. cannot pack up and clear out.

Usually, the prevailing opinion of the ruling classes must be doped out inferentially, but on this occasion we have a document that clearly shows what they think—even if they do not think very clearly. That document is the report of the Baker-Hamilton commission.

While recommending some sort of pullback of American forces, the Baker-Hamilton crew strikes a political missionary position that, in its high-minded obtuseness, is comparable to some of George Bush’s stances. They know how to lay down the law to the Iraqis as well as the President does:

“RECOMMENDATION 32: Minorities. The rights of women and the rights of all minority communities in Iraq, including Turkmen, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Yazidis, Sabeans, and Armenians, must be protected.”

It is one thing to write the Iraqi Bill of Rights when you can back it up with an army, but to do so when, instead, you are half-backing out of the country is moral blockheadism. It is exactly the kind of thing that George Bush has been doing the last four years.

One can only read recommendations 50 and 51, dealing with the Iraqi National Police and the country’s border police, with astonishment. Writing from a position of weakness and, one suspects, vast ignorance, Baker-Hamilton indulge in telling the Iraqis how to rearrange their bureaucracy.

With all the Baker-Hamilton talk about it’s time for the Iraqis to step up and take charge of themselves, it’s obvious this gang of Americans still wants to run somebody else’s country. Whether or not these recommendations are good ideas—and who of us non-Iraqis can even form a sensible opinion about that?—you shouldn’t put such stuff out in a public document unless you intend for the Iraqis and Arabs in general to know that we think they are inept children without the capacity to conduct their own affairs. The all-knowing attitude such pronouncements convey!

If there were any doubt about the attitude, this recommendation takes care of it: “RECOMMENDATION 67: The President should create a Senior Advisor for Economic Reconstruction in Iraq.” Yes, the little people will need one of them.

Given the worldwide suspicion concerning our motives for being in Iraq, one can only wonder at what may have been going through the Baker-Hamilton noodle when it penned these sentences: “The United States should encourage investment in Iraq’s oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies …. The United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise, in order to enhance efficiency, transparency, and accountability.”

It is possible that reorganizing the Iraqi oil industry might be a good thing, but in this document? How could the people who signed it have decided this was the moment to privatize Iraqi oil and invite in Western corporate interests unless their purpose was to ensure the opposition of Hugo Chávez and every other left-leaning person on the face of the globe? One can only chalk it up to a kind of cuckoo naïveté.

If the oil paragraphs were not enough, Baker-Hamilton had to stick in a sentence guaranteed to raise up every pro-Israeli group in the United States against the document. It read: “The only basis on which peace can be achieved is that set forth in UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and in the principle of ‘land for peace.’” Resolutions 242 and 338 call for the Israelis to give back to the Palestinians the territory stolen from them decades ago. Baker-Hamilton cannot have written the sentence oblivious of the rule which holds that while Arab states are bound to obey U.N. resolutions, Israel is not. But this was hardly the moment to stir up that controversy, even though everybody knows there will be no peace for Israel or the U.S. until they disgorge their ill-gotten gains and make nicey-nicey with their neighbors. If we are going to wait upon the Israelis making peace before we depart Iraq, a lot more of our soldiers are going to die.

Apparently, Baker-Hamilton looks upon our continuing to lose people as an inevitable cost. Certainly many of them will die if Baker-Hamilton is acted on. The document calls for scattering 20,000 of our people in Iraqi military units to teach them how to run armies and police forces à la Americain. At the same time, Baker-Hamilton observes: “All of our efforts in Iraq, military and civilian, are handicapped by Americans’ lack of language and cultural understanding. Our embassy of 1,000 has 33 Arabic speakers, just six of whom are at the level of fluency. In a conflict that demands effective and efficient communication with Iraqis, we are often at a disadvantage.”

Again, what were they thinking to suggest leaving thousands of our people in small numbers in detached semi-isolation, unable to communicate with the people around them except through the dubious offices of possibly treacherous translators? It probably will not happen anyway. Since our armed forces do not have 20,000 teachers to dispatch to Iraq, it will take years to train them up and act on the proposal. It is the Baker-Hamilton fuzzy thinking that is so alarming, because these people are our big shots. They come from the groups whose opinions are decisive.

Who can argue with Senator John McCain when he called Baker-Hamilton “a recipe that will lead to, sooner or later, our defeat in Iraq”? The question is, if not that recipe, then whose recipe? Mr. McCain believes we can still win—whatever that word means—by sending in more troops that most others say we do not have to send. Of course we could raise them, which ought to take a couple of years, while the ones we have in Iraq now hold on by their fingernails.

Another nation in our situation might save itself by picking out the commander of one of the warring militias and backing him until he subdued the country and assumed power as a dictator. That would bring us full circle, but it’s not our style. It is no more our style than subduing Iraq as Belgium’s King Leopold subdued the Congo by cutting the hands off males of military age.

Baker-Hamilton could not look defeat in the face. The document is a fudge, a way of putting off conceding that we have lost. That last statement will enrage many a patriotic supporter of our armed forces, who will say that we haven’t lost a single engagement. They will be correct, though it means nothing. Military historians tell us that in a guerrilla conflict, the occupying power wins every battle and still loses the war. That is what happened in Vietnam. We never lost a battle, not one.

And if we do pull out? Will there be worse chaos, a full-scale civil war, a failed state that Al Qaeda can use as a base, more horrors for the Iraqi people, a battle pitting the Sunni powers against the Shia and Iran? Maybe and maybe not. At this juncture, there is nothing else for us to do but pull out, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Once Mr. Schumer arrived, he set about decrying President George W. Bush’s efforts to roll back air-conditioning efficiency standards. This picture of the earnest, fist-pumping Chuck Schumer--clad in a stars-and-stripes tie and spending his holiday weekend in front of a bunch of cameras, surrounded by visual props (in this case, boxes of air conditioners on the sidewalk) and denouncing the latest Republican outrage in the hopes that someone was paying attention--seemed drearily familiar.

But this time, things were different. “Today, I’m calling for the President to back off from his proposal,” said Mr. Schumer, pausing as a bus roared by. “If he won’t”--at this point the Senator broke into a broad smile--“as a member of the Energy Committee, now in the majority, I’m going to call for hearings.”

Enemies of efficient air-conditioners, beware. Mr. Schumer can call hearings now.

For the last seven years, with the Republicans in charge of Congress, Mr. Schumer seemed to be battling history itself to keep his career moving forward, attracting attention for his agenda in the House through sheer force of will and shameless self-promotion, and in the Senate by transforming himself into a cross-party deal-maker bearing little resemblance to the partisan firebrand of his earlier days.

Now, with the defection of Vermont Senator James Jeffords from the G.O.P., the Democrats are the majority in the Senate, and Mr. Schumer’s life has been completely changed. He will have more real power than he has ever had. He has displaced Governor George Pataki as the kingmaker on the Bush administration’s appointments to New York judgeships and U.S. Attorney posts. His seats on the Judiciary, Energy and Banking committees make him the man to see for local politicians and Congressmen, many of whom have felt shut out of President Bush’s Washington. (Mr. Schumer said that a number of Congressmen, including three upstate Republicans, have called him since the Jeffords switch to ask for his help on various matters.) And if his media exposure in the past few days has been any indication--he’s been everywhere, crowing about the power the Democrats now have over the appointment of federal judges--the American public will be seeing a lot more of Mr. Schumer.

The prospect of all Chuck Schumer, all the time is less than thrilling for some New York politicos. “For the last 300 Sundays in a row, Chuck Schumer found some reason to stand on a pedestal at some press event,” said Jerry Kassar, the chairman of Brooklyn’s Conservative Party. “Maybe this will give him the opportunity to do two or three at a time.”

For many of the state’s representatives in Washington, however, a newly empowered Mr. Schumer is nothing but good news. After all, the state has not had a particularly powerful advocate in the Senate majority since Alfonse D’Amato was tossed out of his seat in 1998 (by Mr. Schumer), with the prospect of a further freeze-out during the Presidency of Mr. Bush. “This is great for Chuck, which means it’s great for all our constituencies in New York,” said Queens Democratic Representative Gary Ackerman. “He’s going to head a [subcommittee], and it’s a lot easier to wheel and deal when things have to go through your committee. We need his help on a lot of things, so I would say this puts us in a much better position.”

Much of Mr. Schumer’s newfound influence will come from his position on the Judiciary Committee, where he will head the subcommittee on courts, effectively giving him veto power over Mr. Bush’s judicial appointments. Since Mr. Bush took office in January, Republican Governor George Pataki and Mr. Schumer, the state’s senior U.S. Senator, have sparred over who would have the final say in advising the President on appointments in New York. That battle is over now that Mr. Schumer is part of the Senate majority. “There was a perception that because New York was such a Democratic state, Governor Pataki would be the one guy who could talk to the White House,” said Mr. Kassar. “That’s changed now--the Governor’s ability to deal with the Bush administration and to push candidates for nominations has definitely been hurt.”

On a national level, Mr. Schumer’s ability to act as guardian of the nation’s judicial benches will afford him an invaluable pulpit, especially because the committee’s chair, Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, seems content to let Mr. Schumer assume the role of attack dog while he takes on the traditionally conciliatory role of committee leader. This means that Mr. Schumer will be perfectly positioned to play a starring role in the first great, divisive battle of the Bush era--when the President chooses his first Supreme Court nominee.

“The single biggest thing that scares Democratic base voters to death is Bush’s ability to pack the courts, and Chuck just happens to be at ground zero in that fight,” said Representative Anthony Weiner, a Brooklyn Democrat and close ally of Mr. Schumer. “I think that when the Supreme Court nomination comes, Chuck is going to be such a prominent opponent that he’s going to be talked about in Presidential terms. That’s how much influence he’s going to have over the whole thing.”

Worlds Apart

Politically speaking, Mr. Schumer is also benefiting from something of a power vacuum. His junior colleague from New York, Hillary Clinton, is supposed to be hogging all the attention of the local and national media. The reality is that Mrs. Clinton’s needs and priorities are a world apart from Mr. Schumer’s, at least at the moment. With a constant media contingent devoted almost exclusively to chronicling every last detail of her life in Washington, Mrs. Clinton has come to resemble one of the small plastic animals in a game of Whack-a-Mole. Under such circumstances, it is unlikely that she would adopt a higher public profile amidst the partisan, process-driven, inside-the-Beltway commotion surrounding the Jeffords defection. Mr. Schumer has had no such reservations.

For her part, Mrs. Clinton will probably benefit from the shift in the Senate by pressing legislation--like her teacher-recruitment bill, or one of her packages of economic incentives for upstate New York --without getting laughed at by the Senate leadership. “For Hillary, having the machinery of the Senate under Democratic control just means that she can translate some her broad, programmatic issues to real legislation,” said Jeff Plaut, a Democratic political consultant. “I’m also sure that she likes coming to work a whole lot better when the boss is Tom Daschle and not Trent Lott.”

For Mr. Schumer, his fate is inexorably tied to the Jeffords defection. Pro-life columnist Nat Hentoff has already condemned the pro-choice Mr. Schumer as a practitioner of “bully-boy politics” because of his threats to wield influence over the judicial selection process. And a spokeswoman for the National Abortion Rights Action League has crowned him their champion for the very same reason. Mr. Schumer’s increased prominence can be expected to trigger similar responses from a host of pundits and advocacy groups in the months to come.

Even ordinary, non-politically-obsessed New Yorkers seem to have taken an interest in Mr. Schumer’s new standing. After he finished his spiel on efficient air-conditioning, a number of passers-by on 14th Street congratulated the Senator on the turn of events. “It’s great. Keep going,” said one, grabbing Mr. Schumer by the shoulder.

“Schumer for President!” said another.

Mr. Schumer stayed around to soak it all in, shaking more hands and posing for pictures.

“I was looking the other way,” he said to one picture-taker. “Take another one.”

When the television cameramen packed up and left, Mr. Schumer strolled across the street toward his car. He stopped to talk to one more reporter. “One of the reasons I ran for Senate was that I was tired of going to the floor every day in the House and beating up on Republicans,” he said. “I wanted to get things done.” He paused as another bus rolled by. “If people think now that this is going to make the whole country the way it was under Bill Clinton, it won’t. But it’s a dramatic change.”