In our opinion people are underestimating the decision of the House of Representatives to deal with the Battle of Iraq via a resolution that is nonbinding. The editorial writers and pundits are laughing at the Congress, but the nonbinding resolution has the potential to be one of the greatest break-throughs in democracy since the invention of the legislature. It put the new Democratic majority in the House squarely on record as being against the war without taking a stand. Over the weekend, the maneuver may have failed to get past the Senate. But even the glimmer we’ve gained of the nonbinding resolution is enough to put on display possibilities that are nigh endless.

A nonbinding resolution would, for starters, be a wonderful way for the Democrats to go about expressing their view that Americans should have to pay higher taxes. Everyone knows the Democrats are in favor of making people pay higher taxes, but no one wants to pay higher taxes him- or herself. What better way to deal with the dilemma than to pass a nonbinding resolution opposing President Bush’s tax cuts? Then the Democrats would be able to tell their grandchildren that they were actually in favor of higher taxes all along, while the country would be able to enjoy the growth and job creation that derive from the president’s strategy.

Another issue on which this would be ideal would be immigration. Here is one of the most contentious issues ever to come before a bicameral legislature. On the one hand are the left-wingers in the Sierra Club and the right-wingers worried about the lawlessness on the border. On the other hand are the free-market, pro-growth forces who don’t care from where America gets its Americans. The advent of the nonbinding resolution holds the promise that the Congress could pass, say, a nonbinding resolution closing the border altogether, while millions of people could then swarm into the country and sustain economic growth for another generation.

So versatile is the concept of the nonbinding resolution that it could be used to deal with everything from, say, same-gender marriage to cigarette smoking. We’ve long felt the best way to deal with cigarette smoking is to pass a nonbinding resolution against it. This would enable people to light up in a restaurant with the same insouciance with which President Bush has sent a surge of troops to the rescue of our forces in Baghdad. Congress could use the same session to pass a nonbinding resolution legalizing same-gender marriage, enabling the states to continue to outlaw such unions, even as the Congress took a stand on one of the most difficult issues of our time.

Now we comprehend that there are going to be a few kill-joys who insist this is ridiculous — that the very phrase “nonbinding resolution” is an oxymoron. If, they will insist, it is nonbinding, then it isn’t a resolution in the first place. But that will strike most people, or at least the Congress, as being overly literal. Some of our most serious legislators voted for the nonbinding resolution on the war. Even Senator Kerry voted for it. Indeed, the nonbinding resolution is a formulation not all that dissimilar from his having voted for funding the war in Iraq before having voted against it, except the flip-flop makes him look like a clown and the nonbinding resolution like a statesman. It’s amazing it hasn’t been put to greater use.