Faced with the dismaying prospect of Democratic unity and Republican schism during the 2008 nominating contests, conservative columnist David Brooks today turned time traveler. Taking a journey through his own space-time continuum, Brooks argues that Democrats are not unified now because they not might be in the future. In 2009 as in 1993, he claims, Democrats will splinter as they are forced to make excruciating choices in the wake of a devastating Bush presidency. Call it Brooks' Law of Republican Fiasco Management
Brooks' starting point is the seeming consensus Democrats enjoy even as presumptive Republican nominee John McCain battles back a conservative insurgency not yet in its last throes. Alas, he argues in "When Reality Bites," it is the party of Clinton and Obama that is crippled by conflict in the present because it yet might be upon recapturing the White House:

"But when you think about it, the Democratic policy unity is a mirage. If the Democrats actually win the White House, the tensions would resurface with a vengeance.
The first big rift would involve Iraq. Both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have seductively hinted that they would withdraw almost all U.S. troops within 12 to 16 months. But if either of them actually did that, he or she would instantly make Iraq the consuming partisan fight of their presidency."

Whether Clinton or Obama, the next Democratic President would face a hellstorm of opposition both within and without the party. "There would be furious opposition from Republicans and many independents," if President Clintbama proceeded with an Iraq withdrawal. But hesitating to do so based on changing circumstances on the ground, Brooks argues, would spur civil war within the party:

"The left wing of the party would go into immediate uproar. They’d scream: This was a central issue of the campaign! All the troops must get out now!"

Brooks's futuristic flight of fantasy designed to escape today's grim Republican reality extends to domestic policy as well. Just as in 1993, President Obamaton will face a fiscal disaster bequeathed by his or her Bush predecessor. And the debate over deficit control versus economic stimulus will once again, Brooks insists, rip the Democratic Party asunder:

"The economic slowdown, the hangover from the Bush years and the growing bite of entitlements mean that the federal deficit will almost certainly top $400 billion by 2009. The accumulated national debt will be in shouting distance of the $10 trillion mark. With that much red ink, the primary-season spending plans are simply ridiculous.
It'd be 1993 all over again. The new Democratic president would be faced with Bill Clinton's Robert Rubin vs. Robert Reich choice: either scale back priorities for the sake of fiscal discipline or blow through all known deficit records for the sake of bigger programs. Choose the former, and the new president would further outrage the left. Choose the latter and lose the financial establishment and the political center."

Now, it's possible that the Brooks the conservative water carrier could be right about the Democrats' future. (Given conservatives' unfailing record of being proven wrong on almost every issue during the Bush presidency, that alone cause for optimism.) But his reverse prescience (Democrats may be divided in the future; therefore they are divided now) isn't merely a logical fallacy. It's an act of partisan desperation.
Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have signaled their intent to begin the drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq and their refusal to establish a permanent military presence there. Both Senators have said they will roll back most of the dangerously misguided Bush tax cuts to help pay for their health care plans and restore some semblance of fiscal sanity in Washington.
But given the domestic and foreign policy wasteland either will inherit from George W. Bush, Brooks argues, Clinton or Obama faces certain cleavage within their party. The inescapable need to clean up after the Republican Party in 2009 as in 1993, he insists, will inevitably split the Democratic Party. (Bill Clinton's presidency, of course, produced an unprecedented economic expansion ad ended with approval ratings near 70%.) Therefore, the sophistry of Brooks' Law concludes, Democrats are not united now.
While historical revisionism is always an essential arrow in the Republican quiver, Brooks deserves credit for true innovation here. In a single column, he gets the past, the present and the future wrong.