Washington ? Foreign ministers usually try to avoid commenting on election results in other countries. But their appointment schedules are not so discreet. An increasingly well-beaten path to Capitol Hill by special envoys and other officials visiting the nation’s capital attests to the new power that Congress holds in foreign policy.

That result – like so many others it has produced – is exactly the reverse of what the Bush administration hoped to achieve. As it empowered its critics on Iraq by focusing so relentlessly on them (see the current trial of Scooter Libby) and made civil liberties a salient issue by adopting extreme positions (see the Bill of Rights), the dismissive attitude President Bush has displayed toward the legislative branch helped push Congress into taking on policymaking duties it is ill-equipped to handle.

The confusion and bickering over competing Senate resolutions to support, oppose or split the difference on Bush’s proposed “surge” of five additional brigades into Iraq illustrate how Washington is rolling rapidly toward the worst of all policy worlds: One in which 535 would-be secretaries of state try to micromanage battlefield tactics on the basis of last November’s returns.

In public and in private comments to foreign visitors, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has suggested that Democratic victories in those elections have settled any lingering debate over Iraq for the American public. It is the job of the Democratic Party and Congress to bring the troops home as quickly as possible, Pelosi asserts, or Congress will not be complying with the public will.

The push for rapid U.S. withdrawal understandably alarms Turkey and Arab states in the region, which are already traumatized by the violence and chaotic conditions of neighboring Iraq. Among the foreign officials and diplomats headed to Capitol Hill last week to assess the new balance of power and to urge Washington to exercise strategic patience in Iraq were the foreign ministers of Turkey and Egypt.

While noting their countries had opposed the 2003 invasion, both urged lawmakers to consider the disastrous consequences of hasty American withdrawal from Iraq. “We support President Bush’s new strategy and think it should be given a chance,” Turkey’s Abdullah Gul told me during a session with journalists here Monday night. A similar message was carried to Capitol Hill by Egypt’s Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who devoted 90 percent of his official meetings on a two-day trip to talking with members of Congress, according to aides.

Predictably, bilateral concerns dominated the exchanges on Capitol Hill. Gul made a spirited case that U.S.-Turkish relations would be wrecked by congressional passage of a bill that would condemn as “genocide” the mass killing of Turkish Armenians a century ago. Gheit showed concern that Democratic majorities in the House and Senate might exert new pressures on Egypt over human rights and democracy issues.

But they also sought to inject foreign policy considerations into an American debate that is now above all about domestic U.S. political strategies and fortunes, and only nominally about Iraq. “We now understand better the problem of taxation without representation,” says a diplomat based in Washington. “You make decisions that profoundly and increasingly affect our survival and prosperity, while our ability to influence those decisions shrinks to next to nil.”

This emerging foreign lobby is not a monolith. Most European governments “more or less secretly cheer the Democratic efforts to rein in Bush,” says a European diplomat. “But they will be very careful about taking a public position for or against the surge.”

The White House has contributed significantly to the debasing of the public debate by its secrecy and political manipulation of national security issues, and by walling out the congressional leadership of both parties from serious consultation and coordination while undertaking a historic high-risk, high-reward gamble to conquer and then remake Iraq. That kind of close-minded, dogmatic approach is not one that Democrats in Congress should aspire to emulate, by tuning out the genuine concerns of Iraq’s neighbors and other nations.

Bush is reported to be preparing to shake up his unsuccessful congressional liaison office as chief of staff Josh Bolten completes his overhaul of the White House staff. But all of the evidence argues that it is Bush’s own view of cooperation with Congress that most urgently needs to be shaken up.

The White House hunkered down behind procedural gimmicks to block Senate passage of a resolution opposing Bush’s surge. That is shortsighted. But Democrats will fare no better if they use domestic election results as the main criterion for shaping what will increasingly be a congressionally influenced U.S. foreign policy.