Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: A failed midterm
By Rob Olson
The California Aggie (UC-Davis)
11/09/2006

(U-WIRE) DAVIS, Calif. — Forgive me if you're bored to tears by this column. I have terrible writer's block, brought on by a deep depression. Not only did the Republicans lose the House in the midterm elections, they lost it by a lot. Not only did the Republicans lose seats in the Senate, as I predicted last week, but they lost the Senate altogether, pending possible recounts. Democrats control more governorships than the Republicans for the first time since 1994.

Republicans, repent! The end is nigh!

Or is it? What does our future hold with a Democratic Congress? According to Nancy Pelosi, the new Speaker of the House, in the first hundred hours the Democrats will enact new rules against lobbyists, raise the minimum wage and permit the federal government to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies for lower Medicare drug prices. That's not exactly a sweeping package of reforms reminiscent of Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan.

So the Democrats have taken control of Congress, even more strongly than I anticipated last week. But the newly victorious party has a number of hurdles that will slow their momentum.

First, America didn't really vote for the Democrats. It voted against the Republicans. I may be merely a conservative optimist, but I don't think Americans have fundamentally become much more liberal since the 2004 election. I think they became disenchanted with the current crop of politicians, especially the president, and they have grown bitter over the endless war in Iraq. The people heard the Democratic slogan, "A new direction for America," and decided that sounded pretty good. Ask them what that new direction is, and they'd draw a blank. As long as it's new.

Additionally, it is actually possible that the new Congress will be nearly the same ideologically. Many liberal Republicans in blue states, such as Sens. Lincoln Chafee and Mike DeWine, have been defeated, while countless Democratic candidates for the House ran surprisingly conservative campaigns — pro-life, pro-gun, pro-religion. These freshman Democrats will give Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid their majorities, but I doubt they'll fall in neatly behind them. Perhaps the Democratic Party is finally emphasizing their traditional Harry Trumans over their progressive Jimmy Carters.

The small but enduring conservative edge of Americans will forbid the liberal Democratic leadership from carrying out much of their agenda. The impeachment of President Bush, overly aggressive investigations and commissions, the legalization of gay marriage and universal health care would all be too extreme for the electorate. If the Democrats have any eye toward the presidential year of '08, which many of them do, they will have to keep the relatively moderate political landscape in mind.

My guess is that the next two years will be a whole lot of nothing. The Democrats will try to accomplish their inspiring pharmaceutical company agenda, and whether or not they succeed, not much will change. There is a decent chance that they will raise taxes, which would hurt the economy. But again, they couldn't afford to raise them much.

Still in the vein of deadlock, President Bush will probably get nothing more done other than staying in Iraq. One interesting possibility would be the death or retirement of a Supreme Court justice. Filling the position would then be a pitched battle between the executive and the legislative branches.

There is one decision, however, that the new 110th Congress could make that would substantially change U.S. history, a decision that another Congress made in 1975: To de-fund the ongoing war. It is unlikely that the conservative Democrats and the Republicans would allow such a disaster in Iraq, but the consequences would be so severe as to merit an entirely separate column.

It may seem I'm being childish and downplaying the Democratic takeover, but really, how much do you think will be accomplished by this divided government? The Democrats won fair and square, and I respect them for thoroughly trouncing the Republicans. But there may be less change on the horizon than we think.

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