Mr. Smith takes a stand.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Question: What does Republican Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon have that his better-known GOP Senate colleagues Richard Lugar, Pete Domenici, John Warner, George Voinovich and Lamar Alexander don't yet possess?

Answer: The courage to back up criticism of President Bush's bungled Iraq war strategy with a vote to change course.

Smith cosponsored an amendment to a defense appropriations bill that would force Bush to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq in 120 days. That's a lonely stand for a Republican.

He also was one of just four Republicans during an all-night session Wednesday who joined Senate Democrats in a cloture vote to end a Republican filibuster and allow consideration of the troop withdrawal amendment. Even with help from Smith, Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, the 52-47 tally fell eight shy of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate.

Despite the grandstanding by both parties during the Senate's ineffectual slumber party, Smith's gutsy break with GOP leadership sends an ominous signal to the White House: The war's political endgame is well under way. Last year, a nonbinding withdrawal resolution won just 39 votes.

The Oregon Republican's defection clearly has spooked the administration. Smith got an earful of persuasion from the president in a 30-minute phone call before his vote. On Wednesday, he received a personal visit from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Smith's critics are quick to point out that he voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq in 2002 and, as recently as last summer, opposed withdrawing U.S. troops. They claim that political expedience rather than maverick backbone was behind Smith's emotional change of heart, shared in a speech on the Senate floor last December.

`And I for one am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day,' Smith told his fellow senators. `That is absurd.'

Granted, Smith's 2008 re-election campaign would be much tougher if the swing voters who decide statewide elections in mostly anti-war Oregon link him with Bush on the Iraq war. And Smith still makes the mistake of parroting Bush by calling Iraq `ground zero' in the war on terror.

But if voters got rid of every politician who ending up doing the right thing for politically expedient reasons, there would be a lot of empty seats in the halls of government. The congressional stalemate over the Iraq war continues precisely because not enough Republicans have come to realize that it's both politically expedient and morally right to do what Smith has done: change directions.

He's nowhere near as vehement in his criticism of Bush as Hagel, but that's probably a function of Smith's low-key, genial manner. Smith characterized his phone call with Bush as `a heart to heart as friends with a real difference.'

But Smith speaks honestly about Iraq in a way that many Republicans in Congress would do well to emulate.

`I don't see it any longer as a fight we can win or as a fight that's our own,' he told an Associated Press reporter on Wednesday. In retrospect, Smith said, it might have been better to have left Iraq after the president made his famous `Mission Accomplished' speech in May 2003.

`He should have said, `Keep sailing home boys,' because that's all we can win,' Smith said.

Actually, it would have been better never to have ratified Bush's decision to invade Iraq. Smith will have to live with the tragic consequences of that vote, as will a majority of his congressional colleagues. Right now, Smith is doing what he can to make amends, and for that he deserves credit.