The Washington Post addresses a theme we’ve discussed repeatedly here: polarization politics. Is it possible the election sent President George Bush and Karl Rove a message?
If Bush was willing to dismiss Rumsfeld, which the president said only a week ago that he had no intention of doing, it was in part because he and his party have so much at risk. Tuesday’s elections proved to be a reaction not only against the war and the corruption scandals that have scarred Congress but also against the kind of base-driven politics that Bush used in 2004 to win a second term.
That model has often elevated policies and tactics designed to energize conservative activists over an appeal to what many GOP strategists saw as a shrinking middle of the electorate. But on Tuesday, the center struck back, voting decisively for Democratic candidates in House races.
The president responded with a renewed call for bipartisan cooperation, saying leaders on both sides should resist the temptation to divide the country into red and blue. “By putting this election and partisanship behind us, we can launch a new era of cooperation and make these next two years productive ones for the American people,” he said.
The Post notes that Iraq is going to be an “acid test” of all the heartening declarations yesterday on both sides of the need to work together. But if the White House and Congressional Democrats are essentially worlds apart on Iraq policy, history does provide the Democrats with a cautionary note:
William A. Galston, a Brookings Institution scholar who served in the Clinton administration, said the experience of the Vietnam War should give Democrats a powerful incentive to cooperate with Republicans to develop a new policy. “This is a matter of great consequence,” he said.
In the early 1970s, he said, Democrats ended up blamed for “ending an unpopular war in the wrong way. We paid a price for decades, and to some extent we’re struggling against that legacy. The very worst thing we could do is repeat that mistake.”
So the stage is set for a new era?
NOT NECESSARILY, reports the AP:
However, Republican strategists who have worked with the White House doubt there will be much progress.
“You’ll have a bare minimum of legislation,” said Ed Rogers, who worked in the White House under Bush’s father. “You’ll have aggressive _ bordering on hostile _ oversight. The Democrats _ they’re not going to be able to do much legislatively that he’s going to sign.”
“He probably won’t get much on entitlement reform (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) if one house is Democratic,” said Charles Black, another Republican consultant with ties to the White House. Ron Kaufman, a GOP strategist who worked in the first Bush White House, predicted “an ugly couple of years with not a ton being accomplished.”
And a new tone? The prediction is: NOT!
Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University who has studied Bush’s political career, said he doubts the president has the patience and accommodation to work with Democrats. He predicted Americans would see gridlock, finger-pointing and a focus on the 2008 presidential race.
“He has governed with what in the military they call a forward lean,” Jillson said. “He’ll have to cure himself of that. He’ll actually have to sit down at the table and listen to people who he doesn’t agree with.“I’m not sure this bipartisan cooperation is going to prevail,” he said. “I’m relatively sure that it’s not.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.