11-16-2002

POLITICS: The Politics of Promise

It seems eons ago-many pre-9/11 events appear that way-but the victorious
GOP is only seven years removed from its disastrous game of chicken with
President Clinton


over budget policy and only four years away from its punishment for
overreaching on impeachment.


And it was only two years ago that the Republicans barely elected as
president a malapropism-prone Texan who was out-polled in the popular
vote. Yet today, however improbably, George W. Bush and his party stand on
ground that Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan never
managed to occupy.


Facing minority status in a nation thought to be divided 50-50, the
Republicans made inroads in state legislatures, held their own in
governorships, expanded their margin in the House of Representatives, and
recaptured a Senate that had been taken from them during Bush's first
months in office. Suddenly, for Bush and these 21st-century Republicans
the possibilities in politics, policy, and international affairs seem
unconstrained. "There's no question, it's a tremendous opportunity
for the Republican Party," said GOP pollster Linda A. DiVall.
"Now, for the scary part-now we have to govern!"


A similar theme was echoed by Kenneth L. Khachigian, a Reagan White House
official. "The potential is there for President Bush to create a true
legacy-and to bring the party along with him," he said. "Young
Bush has prepared some very fertile ground for Republicans,"
Khachigian added. "But like any garden, it needs to be
tended."


If they tend it wisely, Republicans could plant seedlings in the form of
specific legislation that ranges from forming a vast new federal agency
that makes Americans safer to ending inheritance taxes forever. In time,
such policies-if they are implemented in a bipartisan fashion and
ultimately seen as successful-could take root in thematic ways that expand
the reach and appeal of the GOP. One example: Anointing a generation of
conservative judges to the federal bench is, for the social conservatives
who form the Republican base, its own reward. But equally important is the
way the president goes about doing this. If he is content to jam rightist
judicial appointments through the Senate on close, bitter, party-line
votes, a backlash is likely. If, however, Bush does what he said last week
he wants to do, which is to fix the broken nominating process-and that
means compromising on some nominees as a show of good faith-the potential
reward for his party is that voters could come to see it as tolerant,
broad-based, and capable. In short, a majority party.


"It's a great opportunity, a historic opportunity," says Sen.
Bill Frist, R-Tenn. "It all comes from the president."


The election returns that rolled in on November 5 jolted both parties,
even though the margin between the status quo and Republicans' winning
clear-cut control of the federal government was small. It is true, as The
Washington Post pointed out, that a change of some 41,000 votes in only
two states-out of a total 77 million votes cast nationwide-would have kept
the Senate in Democratic hands. But it is also true that Republican House
candidates out-polled Democrats by an estimated 52 percent to 46 percent
nationally on November 5, and that of the eight state legislative chambers
that switched hands, seven went from Democratic to Republican control. And
that voters gave Bush exactly what he asked for, a working majority in
Congress.


"There is no greater luxury in politics than having control over your
own destiny-it doesn't get any better than that," said Douglas
Sosnik, who served as Clinton's White House political director. "They
have that now. To use a tennis analogy: They are serving."


A Rare Window Opens


The question for the next two years is whether this perception is a
blessing for the Republican Party or a curse. Several prominent political
scientists and independent analysts expressed skepticism that the
Republicans will actually alter the stalemated nature of American
politics. Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, cautioned
that the Democrats' cratering in public opinion-and the Republicans'
gains-may be feeding on itself and prove "fleeting." Likewise,
Princeton University presidential scholar Fred I. Greenstein noted that
every election produces a winner and a loser, but that true political
realignments "are few and far between."


However, among Republicans-and some prominent Democrats-the prevailing
attitude is that something real happened on November 5, and that the GOP
does indeed have a rare window of opportunity to accomplish big things.
One reason is that Republicans almost universally believe they are being
led by an extremely capable politician, and they don't mean White House
political adviser Karl Rove. Well, some do. "I'm so impressed with
Rove," said Marlin Fitzwater, press secretary for Bush's father.
"I wish we'd had somebody who was strategically as good." Other
GOP political mechanics also came in for praise, notably former Christian
Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed, who helped devise a GOP sweep in
Georgia. But Reed himself gave credit where it belonged. "Guys like
me look real good when you have a great candidate," he said,
referring to Bush as well as to the Republicans on the ballot.


A second reason for Republican optimism is that party leaders insist they
have learned their lessons from previous GOP attempts to govern. In 1980,
a surging Reagan captured the Senate for the Republicans and put the fear
of God in enough House Democrats that the new president was able to ram
his economic program through in his first year. But the working majority
that Reagan fashioned soon bogged down as Democrats regrouped. With that
in mind, Republicans believe they must move quickly. The day after the
election, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member on the Senate
Finance Committee, announced that he would attempt to pass a host of
specific proposals that had stalled under the Democrats, including a
Medicare prescription drug benefit. Likewise, even before taking over as
the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard G.
Lugar, R-Ind., is making plans to focus national and worldwide attention
on the fight against terrorism.


The other lesson Republicans say they have learned is to not arrogantly
overreach. Their proclivity to do just that was evident in 1994, when
incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other GOP conservatives
determined that a "revolution" could be inferred from success in
a single election cycle. They were soon proved wrong.


"I think both the White House and the Republican leadership in the
House and Senate are very aware of the need to avoid hubris and
overreaching," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told National Journal.
"In the Senate, it still takes 60 votes to get most legislation
passed in order to overcome a filibuster. That means that bipartisan
coalitions are still going to be the order of the day.... So I anticipate
that those of us in the center will continue to play a key role in
reaching across the aisle, working with the White House to get things
done. I noticed that everyone from the president to our leaders in the
Senate have been very temperate in their comments, post-election, and have
pledged to work hard on the very large, unfinished agenda-to get the
economy going, to pursue a prescription drug benefit-and I found those
messages to be both appropriate and reassuring."


Such sentiments are to be expected from a Senate moderate, but what about
a fiery House conservative? What about "The Hammer"-feared Texas
Republican and new House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. "You're going to
see a kinder, gentler Tom Delay," predicted Grover Norquist, a
conservative GOP activist and anti-tax crusader. An even better sign was
that DeLay himself says he has wised up. "We learned our
lesson," he said this week. "You can't turn this country around
on a dime."


Having said that, Republicans on Capitol Hill came out of the 2002
elections remarkably unified and willing to follow the president nearly
anywhere. Good thing for Bush, because he is taking them-and the nation-to
places it hasn't been in quite a while, including a possible pre-emptive
invasion of a foreign nation and an expansion of law enforcement powers at
the expense of civil rights. So far, this has only contributed to his
aura.


"The main thing for Bush is, he's got to keep prosecuting the war on
terrorism effectively," said Donald A. Baer, White House
communications director in the Clinton administration. "The public
supports his leadership on this. Sometimes in politics, the obvious stuff
is the most important."


International headlines to the contrary, Bush has increased his clout in
foreign capitals. "This president is one of the strongest in
history," said Nancy Soderberg, a top National Security Council
official in the Clinton administration. She believes that the November 5
election returns had a bearing on the 15-0 U.N. Security Council vote on
November 6 affirming Bush's Iraq initiative.


"It's clear that 9/11 gives Bush the power to do things no one has
ever had before," she said. "The idea that Yemen would give
permission to blow up a car traveling through its territories, that
Pakistan would crack down on Al Qaeda, that Arab governments would back us
in the U.N. against Iraq ... Bush has an unprecedented opportunity to
remake the world-I don't want to say in our image-but to realign it in our
favor. I hope he seizes it. It's not clear he will, but the signs are
good."


If his drive against Iraq is successful, it will enhance his reputation.
"In foreign policy, nothing succeeds like success," says Michael
Krepon, president of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a think tank devoted to
reducing the threat of nuclear war. Asked to assess the odds Bush would
prevail in Iraq, Krepon ventured, "I'm an optimist. I'd say more than
50-50."


Bush's strong showing as a wartime president and a commander in chief is
also helping him build consensus for himself and his party at home. Linda
DiVall found in one of her recent polls that on questions ranging from
"Shows leadership in time of crisis" to "Provides solutions
to today's problems," Americans overwhelmingly express more
confidence in Republicans than in Democrats. Noting that Congress in
general still has tepid approval ratings, DiVall says the GOP can thank
one man for its standing. "The president has fundamentally shaped the
image of the Republican Party," she says. "He has defined the
brand."


A Gallup Poll released on November 12, seven days after the election,
showed that 57 percent of respondents favored privatizing Social Security,
that 59 percent would support military action against Iraq, and that
two-thirds of Americans backed making last year's tax cuts permanent.
These are Bush's positions, all of them, and they help explain why he does
better with voters than with media or political elites, and why Democrats
came up short on Election Day.


"People want to go to the `daddy party' when there is a threat to the
nation," said Bob Mason, a vice president of the Republican
consulting firm of Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates. Mason has
circulated a five-page post-election memo to other Republicans. It is
titled: "The slow-motion implosion of the Democratic Party has
begun."


That may be an overstatement, but several factors are likely working in
the GOP's favor for the upcoming election cycle. In 2004, when Bush and
Vice President Cheney will be on the ticket, Senate Democrats must defend
19 seats, compared with the Republicans' 15. Many are in the South, tough
territory for Democrats this year. "The Democrats hold a number of
Senate seats in inherently conservative states, where they are effectively
anomalies," said Mitch Bainwol, executive director of the National
Republican Senatorial Committee.


House Republicans are already taking aim at several moderate Democrats in
Bush-leaning states such as Kansas, Kentucky, Texas, and Utah. A prime
target will be Texas, where the GOP this year swept all the statewide
offices and gained complete control of the Legislature for the first time
in a century. With Democrats retaining a bare 17-15 majority of Texas's
House delegation, Republicans in Austin are contemplating a new round of
congressional redistricting to replace the current court-drawn
map.


What's Next?


Ultimately, however, a lasting legacy, let alone realignment, cannot be
sustained with such tactical machinations-as Democrats learned this year.
So what should Bush and his complicit Republican lawmakers do to make
their mark? For starters, it's clear from the election results that the
voting public wants results, not gridlock. This is why committee chairmen
hit the ground running on November 6 and why Bush pushed Senate Republican
Leader Trent Lott so hard to extract a compromise on homeland security
legislation from this week's lame-duck session. It's also why the White
House will be pushing for action in the new Congress on a host of
administration initiatives, including faith-based initiatives, further tax
cuts, and a sweeping energy policy.


But just as with the judicial appointments, how those bills are put
together may ultimately be as important as exactly what's in them. The
template for success is last year's bipartisan education bill, not the
party-line vote on tax cuts. The first example stamps Bush as a consensus
builder; the other as a hardball politician willing to exploit a
statistically insignificant advantage for temporal partisan victories. A
truer test of leadership for this White House and the Republican leaders
in the 108th Congress will come when they seek compromise with Democrats
even when they have the votes. That is, when they eschew a one-vote
victory for a broader, bipartisan one.


One Republican who understands this is Bill Frist, one of the architects
of the party's November 5 successes: As head of the National Republican
Senatorial Committee, he personally recruited as candidates several of the
new Republican senators. Asked whether the 2002 elections could result in
a lasting majority for his party, Frist said, "Oh, yeah.


"It would require a radical departure from where we were in 1994 and
1996," he added. "It comes from the president. He has introduced
`compassion'-I wish we had a better word for it-but that's where I come
from as a physician, and that's what we need. We have to find a long-term
fix to Medicare and do it by working together and finding bipartisan
compromise, not just taking advantage of our majority to get more tax cuts
through."


Frist said that his party must address such massive and complex social
issues as the problem of Americans without medical insurance and the
global HIV/AIDS crisis. "These are issues that have not been
Republican agenda items," he said. "But if you can lead on big
issues in a way people trust and respect, you can keep your majorities for
more than two years. And if you can't, what's the point of having
them?"


Carl M. Cannon and Richard E. Cohen

National Journal