No Mandate

The Republican party spin machine would like you to believe that the November election constituted a mandate for its conservative agenda: tax cuts for business and the rich; relaxation of efforts to tighten accounting practices and corporate financial reporting regulations; privatization of the social security system; a roll-back of environmental protection; construction of a national missile defense system; withdrawal from international treaties and resisting establishment of international law; packing the judiciary with right-wing judges; repealing Roe v. Wade.

Speaking at a forum on the presidency at the University of Utah, which he attended briefly in the 70s without graduating, Bush political advisor Karl Rove said last week, "Things are moving in a new direction.... It's not just that Republicans picked up three seats in the Senate or six or seven or eight seats in the House. It's something else more fundamental, but we'll only know what it is in another two years or four years."

As Will Hutton succinctly put it in his recent opinion piece for the Observer (UK), "Horseshit."

Bush's campaigning in the last days before the election made the difference in several close races. But although Republicans won most of the close races, a closer look underscores how divided the nation is. Republican Jim Talent beat Democratic incumbent Jean Carnahan by 23,531 votes in Missouri. In New Hampshire, John Sununu beat Democrat Jeanne Shaheen by 18,817 votes. The margin of victory in those races, and hence control of the Senate, was less than two percent of the combined votes in these contests.

Democrats did win governorships in Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Tennessee and even Dick Cheney’s home state of Wyoming. In South Dakota, which gave Bush one of his biggest margins of victory in 2000, and where he tried to make the Senate race a contest between himself and Tom Daschle, the Democrat won. A Democrat also unseated an incumbent Republican congressman in Arkansas. Writing in the Detroit Metro Times, Jack Lessenberry observed darkly that " Democrats would still have the U.S. Senate except for the plane-crash states."

The day before the election, the Gallup organization found that in choosing their local candidate 45% of voters did not intend their vote to represent any message to Bush. Only about one third of voters saw their vote as sending a message of support, suggesting that many voters who contribute to Bush's high job approval rating did not side with Bush in the 2002 election. The poll demonstrated clearly that the election was not a national referendum on administration policies.

One of the few things that the election did demonstrate with certainty is that the nation is still nearly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, as it has been for the last five years. Independents, many of whom are urban or suburban professionals have sided with the Democrats over the last ten years, particularly in California. Since September 11, 2001, however, many have sided with Bush on foreign policy. In many cases it was these voters who provided the Republican margin of victory in this election.

The election was historic, as it was only the second midterm election since 1934 in which the president's party gained seats in Congress. The other election was in 1998 during the Clinton impeachment proceedings. Joe Conason and Terry Neal have pointed out that then, as now, special circumstances were operating. In 1998 independents and moderates lashed back at Republicans who had "grossly overplayed their hand in the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal." In 2002, aided by the administration's propaganda machine, many voters feel that "we are at war." John Dean wrote recently, "War presidents automatically win public approval," and suggests we "Try to imagine a Bush Administration without September 11, and it will become clear how thoroughly war has taken over the agenda."

In August 2002, Democrats appeared to have the political advantage. Day after day huge companies revealed that they had falsified financial statements, and their collapse left older employees without retirement savings. 55% of the public said that Bush cared more about large corporation than ordinary working people, and polls showed public support for Democratic positions on every issue except "national security." Then, in what White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card admitted was a marketing campaign, Bush and the administration ratcheted up the war-mongering rhetoric about Iraq.

And the administration position was regularly modified in the effort to obtain and retain public support. The August position advocated unilateral US action against Iraq. White House lawyers opined that Bush could invade Iraq without a congressional resolution. Vice President Cheney derided weapons inspections as providing "false comfort." Bush's standing in the polls dipped, and senior Republican advisors, including Brent Scowcroft and Henry Kissinger recommended seeking international support. By the time Bush addressed the UN General Assembly, he sought validation from that body -- something he had previously ridiculed. A member of the Bush Sr. administration noted "The most amazing thing he accomplished for himself is that he has shifted so skillfully since Labor Day.... He is now standing for the very things he criticized others for in the early part of the year, yet paid no price for it. In fact, he's being praised for it." Moreover, as emerged late in the campaign season, many of Bush's statements in support of his war plans were demonstrably false. Yet with few exceptions neither the press nor the Democrats called Bush to task.

The Democratic Leadership Council issued the following statement on November 6.

We do not accept the idea that the results represent some sort of huge policy mandate for the President, even if he had a policy agenda to advance. This is still very much a 50-50 nation. Republicans gained just three seats in the House and (at this moment) two seats in the Senate. Democrats picked up four governorships, which are now split 25-25. It appears the two parties are almost exactly dead even in total number of state legislators. This election was not like 1994, with a big across-the-board tide; it was more like 1986, when many close races broke in one direction at the last moment.

It's interesting that the Republicans find the need to raise the issue of mandate at all. Despite campaign claims that he was a "uniter not a divider," the 2000 election -- so close that political favors were called in from the Supreme Court to decide it -- did not prevent "Junior" from embarking on an attempt to dismantle every progressive initiative since the New Deal. And that effort was only thwarted by Jim Jeffords' defection from the Republican Party.

Or as Bob Herbert wrote recently in the New York Times,"I think of the G.O.P. as the costume party. It wears a sunny mask, which conceals a reality that is far more ideological, far more extreme, than most Americans realize."

Having already enacted huge tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans, immediately after the 2002 election Republicans began talking about making the existing cuts permanent and launching a new round. There is method to this madness, as Bush revealed shortly after Congress enacted the first round. In this administration as with the Reagan administration before it, the real motivation for tax cuts is not economic stimulus, but rather, as an unidentified "prominent conservative" admitted to the New York Times in January 2001, to "starve the beast."

The "beast," of course, refers to the federal government, and the effect of "starving" it of revenue means that the government will simply not have funds to pay for popular programs -- like Social Security and Medicare -- opposed by conservative ideologues. These leftover commie-haters see the specter of socialism in any government social program. Historian Robert Dallek has written that Ronald Reagan, demigod of the conservative movement, "saw Medicare as the advance wave of socialism, which would `invade every area of freedom in this country.'"

With Newt Gingrich lurking mostly out of the limelight, standardbearer Tom Delay has taken the lead in opposing environmental and safety regulations. When Paul J. Crutzen, Mario J. Molina, and F. Sherwood Rowland were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for discovering the link between chlorofluorocarbons and ozone depletion, DeLay mocked the award as the "Nobel Appeasement Prize."

In one of the more sinister and far-reaching exercises of their new-found power, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, the Bush administration will now try to pack the federal judiciary with what John Dean calls "socially, economically and politically conservative judges," who view their position as an opportunity to turn their philosophical orientation into law. This effort began soon after taking office, when the administration informed the American Bar Association, which had been advising administrations on the selection of federal judges since the Eisenhower administration, that its services were no longer desired.

After Jim Jeffords' defection the administration was forced to cooperate with congress in developing legislation, but it continued to nominate right-wing judges. Herbert observes,"With two more justices like [Thomas and Scalia], progressive government would be caught in the devastating trap of a right-wing assault from all sides — the White House, the Congress and the courts — with the Treasury drained of all money for new initiatives.... Slick? Adroit? Any number of adjectives will do. How about dangerous?"

Dangerous because the right wing faction of the Republican party is a distinct minority, especially when all minority parties are taken into consideration. But this fringe faction is determined to impose its ideology on the nation by securing the appointment of judges who will frame that ideology in law from the bench. At a time when the nation is far from consensus politically, a small fringe is seeking to exert power by controlling the judiciary.

Dean quotes Alexis de Tocquville, "If ever freedom is lost in America, that will be due to the omnipotence of the majority driving the minority to desperation and forcing them to appeal to physical force." and James Madison, "In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly said to reign as in a state of nature." With the loss of a functional majority in the Senate, the filibuster remains as the Democrats' only weapon in the fight to keep the judiciary free of ideologues. It remains to be seen if they will use it.

Ironically, in September the New York Times reported that a number of prominent Republicans and Bush supporters were convinced that "the most certain way for Mr. Bush to continue to rise politically, and ultimately win re-election in 2004" was for Republicans to lose the midterm election. A divided government, these politicos reasoned, would allow Bush to:

• Continue to use the Democrats as a foil
• Avoid the conservative agenda of his own party
• Continue to present himself as a Washington outsider

A convincing example of the executive branch using divided government to its advantage can be found in the experience of the Clinton White House. After Republican gains in Congress from the election of 1994, many predicted failure for the administration. But with the aid of Dick Morris -- arguably Bill Clinton's Karl Rove -- Clinton charted a course between the liberal wing of his own party and the extreme positions of Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Democratic control of the Senate has so far allowed Bush to endorse those extreme positions, knowing that they would never be enacted into law by the Democratic-controlled Senate. With the House and Senate both under Republican control, Bush could find himself under pressure to enact a conservative agenda, while at the same time the narrow margin of majority could require major compromises to get legislation passed. An unidentified "senior White House official" told the Washington Post, "The president remembers life before Jim Jeffords switched parties."

Alternatively, if a conservative agenda is enacted into law, Bush could find himself blamed for unpopular legislation. For the time being, at least the Republican leadership seems to be trying to avoid that predicament. Less than a week after the election talk had begun of lowering expectations about tax cuts, settling for "a modest tax agenda that is probably more symbolic than substantive." Making the tax cuts "permanent" is viewed as a largely symbolic gesture, since nothing Congress does is permanent.

Increased military spending, and a prescription drug plan for the elderly are competing with tax cuts in an environment of increasing federal budget deficits. Bush economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey told a gathering of investors last week, "We need fundamental tax reform, but if you look at history, this is not something that is proposed in a State of the Union [address] and enacted three months later." Yet any delay could have political cost. During the recent campaign Bush and Republican candidates blamed the "obstructionist" Democrat-controlled Senate for legislative delays. Some observers predict voters will now blame Republicans for delays, even if Democratic political maneuvering slows the progress of legislation.

On the morning of November 6, soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott told the Christian radio network American Family Radio "We will move the partial-birth abortion bill through. The House did it this year. Once again, Tom Daschle would not call it up. I will." Later in the week the White House tried to lower expectations on this issue, as well, in a conference call to prominent social conservatives. But religious conservatives were not necessarily appeased. Ken Connor of the Family Research Council told the Washington Post, "This Republican Congress was elected because of the pro-life vote, and they need to heed that vote.... We know the abortion issue was the number two issue that prompted voter turnout in Minnesota, the number three issue in Missouri, and we know 76 percent of self-identified religious conservatives in Georgia voted for Saxby Chambliss. In no small part, the favorable outcome of this election for Republicans is a consequence of motivated pro-life voters who turned out to the polls."

While the ban on so-called "partial birth abortions" is considered, even by pro-choice Democrats, likely to pass the Senate, reproductive rights are an extremely contentious issue, and one of the many issues where the conservative Republican position runs counter to public sentiment. Since 1975 the Gallup organization reports consistency in public support for the legality of abortion. Most recently 82% of those polled said that abortion should be legal.

If national security is the only issue on which the public favors the Republican approach, the administration has a vested interest in prolonging the war on terrorism, or at least in keeping the public alarmed. The recent dire warnings that were revealed to be "summaries" of old intelligence fit that pattern. If and when terrorism abates for an interim, the nation's attention could return to topics such as the government's positive role in regulating market capitalism, which favor the Democrats. Or if the Bush administration has a foreign policy failure or failures that are reported critically in the US news media, the Democrats could re-establish their pre-1960's role as a party trusted in foreign affairs.

The Democratic party leadership has joined the pundits in debating whether, in Terry Neal's words, they lost "because they were moderate accomodationists who failed to excite the base or because they were out-of-touch liberals who lost the suburban swing vote?" Nancy Pelosi, newly elected House minority leader seemed to suggest the first alternative, saying "We must draw clear distinctions between our vision of the future and the extreme policies put forward by the Republicans. We cannot allow Republicans to pretend they share our values and then legislate against those values without consequence."

Others suggested a multifaceted approach: find a leader who can join both wings of the party, find a message that says what the party stands for rather than what it opposes, let the best PR people distill the message into something that's easy to understand, and get the message out to the membership with instructions to repeat it every day.

Either approach has elements in common with Joe Conason's concise analysis of today's GOP.

The Republicans never make the mistake of thinking that there's no difference between their party and the Democrats, no matter how impatient they might have become with the elder Bush, Reagan or any other politician. That is the biggest difference, in some ways. They don't walk away. They don't hide under the pillow. They don't waste much time with third parties. They sucked up their drubbings in '92 and '96, and fought back harder. They do have many advantages -- including a pliant media, a fat corporate expense account and an intense desire to dominate. Anyone who thinks they can't be beaten, however, hasn't been paying attention for the last 10 years.

References:

Janofsky, Michael "Rove Declares Nation Is Tilting to Republicans" NY Times 13 Nov. 2002

Lessenberry, Jack "What really happened?" Metro Times (Detroit) 13 Nov. 2002

Weisbrot, Mark "Democrats Could Try Telling the Truth" Chicago Tribune 12 Nov. 2002

Milbank, Dana "Lott's Promise to Bring Up Abortion Worries Bush Aides" Washington Post 12 Nov. 2002

Herbert, Bob "Behind the Smile" NY Times 11 Nov. 2002

Weisman, Jonathan and Dana Milbank "GOP Revises Agenda Of Extensive Tax Cuts" Washington Post 11 Nov. 2002

Hutton, Will "A Dark Week for Democracy" The Observer (UK) 10 Nov. 2002

Dean, John "DANGEROUS TIMES AHEAD AFTER ELECTION 2002: Despite the Nation's Deep Divisions and Bush v. Gore, The President Plans On Filling The Courts With Right Wing Judges" FindLaw's Writ 8 Nov. 2002

Judis, John "Democrats will be back" Guardian (UK) 8 Nov. 2002

Conason, Joe "Joe Conason's Journal" Salon.com 8 Nov. 2002

Neal, Terry M. "Historic Victory, Yes -- But, a Mandate?" Washington Post 8 Nov. 2002

Gibbs, Nancy and Michael Duffy "Trust Me, He Says" Time 3 Nov. 2002

Berke, Richard L. "Why the President Can't Lose in November" NY Times 1 Sep. 2002