At debate, Democrats flip the script on a cut-and-run president

WASHINGTON — At Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Democrats flipped the script on national security.

For several decades — since the early Cold War, really — Republicans have usually been able to convince the country that they were the ones to be trusted to keep Americans safe. But, as with so much else, President Trump has squandered that durable advantage.

In Ohio on Tuesday, Democrats sounded very much like Republicans of yore in denouncing Trump for jeopardizing national security.

“When I was deployed, I knew one of the things keeping me safe was the flag on my shoulder represented a country that kept its word,” said South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a veteran. “You take away the honor of our soldiers, you might as well go after their body armor next. This president has betrayed American values.”

Former vice president Joe Biden shouted: “This is shameful! Shameful what this man has done!”

Sen. Kamala Harris said Trump “is basically giving 10,000 ISIS fighters a get-out-of-jail free card.”

Sen. Cory Booker declared that “Russia and Putin understand strength, and this president time and time again is showing moral weakness.”

Even. Sen. Bernie Sanders, no hawk, said that “when you begin to betray people” as Trump had done to Kurdish allies, “tell me what country in the world will trust the word of the president?”

A dozen years ago, President George W. Bush memorably attacked Democrats who wanted to pull out of Iraq: “The party of FDR, the party of Harry Truman, has become the party of cut and run.”

Now, a Republican president has recklessly pulled U.S. troops out of northern Syria, to calamitous effect, and it can truly be said: The party of Ronald Reagan has become the party of cut and run.

Trump’s Syria debacle has, above all, been a tragedy, but the blunder has left an enormous opening for Democrats to establish themselves as the champions of national security.

Polling shows that Trump, and Republicans, have lost some of their traditional advantage on matters of security. A Gallup

Democrats couldn’t agree on much at Tuesday night’s debate, which because of its format (a ludicrous 12 candidates onstage) was disjointed and desultory. If it established anything, it’s that the titular front-runner, Biden, is a spent force: He seemed halting and a beat behind (“secondly, I mean thirdly …”). Though the polls don’t yet reflect it, the candidates treated Sen. Elizabeth Warren as the front-runner, directing most of their challenges at her.

But for 25 minutes during the second of three tedious hours, Democrats asserted themselves as the defenders of the American military and American security. Though a couple of them (Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and businessman Tom Steyer) went their own ways, the others claimed the moral high ground once ceded to Republicans.

“Soldiers in the field,” the veteran Buttigieg said, “are reporting that for the first time they feel ashamed — ashamed of what their country has done. We saw the spectacle, the horrifying sight of a woman with a lifeless body of her child in her arms asking what the hell happened to American leadership.”

What happened? Trump happened.