 |
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
 |
Get ready for a tough battle, as anything can happen on Nov. 5
© St. Petersburg Times WASHINGTON -- Summer is winding down. The president is threating a pre-emptive military strike on a nasty Mideastern nation. The stock market is down, and many people older than 55 are frantic about their retirement security. So how does that make you feel? As we head into the biennial election season, which traditionally begins on Labor Day, the feelings of the American people can best be described as nervous -- very nervous. It is as if we have collectively fallen into a dark hole, and now we're anxiously waiting for whatever it is that's going to come crashing down on us. The experts say this makes for a volatile political situation in which anything can happen on Nov. 5. The election's outcome is up for grabs. No one knows whether voters will be too afraid to make a change in their government or so distressed that they will be looking for ways to punish the incumbents who brought us to this juncture. In the congressional contest, I'm guessing it's going to be a good year for Democrats. I have three reasons: Americans prefer divided government, particularly in troubled times, and thus the party that holds the White House usually always loses the midterm congressional contest. The Republican majority in the House is so narrow that Democrats do not have to do too much to win a majority and put Rep. Dick Gephardt into the speaker's chair. Even many Republicans will acknowledge that Democrats seem to have the issues working in their favor. Republicans expect to suffer a backlash from the corporate accountability scandals. And Republicans fear they will be blamed for Congress' failure to enact a Medicare prescription drug program, even though it was the GOP-controlled House that passed a bill and the Democratic-controlled Senate that did not. Despite all of this, I probably would have said just a few months ago that the Republicans were going to sweep the congressional elections. But that was when President Bush was riding high on a wave of war-related patriotism after last year's terrorist attacks and the United States' sweep through the terrorist strongholds in Afghanistan. That was before people started to lose confidence in the economy and in the United States' ability to vanquish the enemy. The wave of good feelings for Republicans might have continued if the stock market hadn't plummeted, if Enron and WorldCom were operating in the black and if the military had captured terrorist Osama bin Laden. A new poll by Peter D. Hart Research for the AFL-CIO found 38 percent of Americans were satisfied with the economy, compared with 63 percent just a year ago. Of course, Republicans have time to reverse the trend. Many people think the president will use a "wag the dog" strategy to get the American people to rally around him again. But a U.S. attack on Iraq will not accomplish that goal. The "wag the dog" strategy, popularized by the 1997 movie of the same name in which a president's advisers promoted military action to mask domestic problems, will not work unless the United States, or one of its allies, is attacked in a way that prompts us to fight back. A pre-emptive strike on Baghdad, such as Bush is said to be considering, might have the opposite effect, especially since many leading Republican foreign policy experts seem to oppose it. If you doubt an attack on Iraq might hurt the Republicans, ask yourself: Why are Democrats not speaking out against it? It seems even the most antiwar Democrats are ignoring the whole debate. Democrats in Congress have been toying with the idea of drafting a document similar to the Contract with America that helped the GOP take control of the House in 1994. Among other things, the Democrats would pledge to keep corporate wrongdoers in check and to create prescription drug coverage for seniors under the existing Medicare program. Gephardt favors the idea, but Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle seems to believe it is unnecessary. Daschle apparently thinks the Democrats can coast to victory. No matter what develops in the next two months, there's no question the congressional election will be unusually hard-fought on both sides. So if you are getting tired of partisan bickering, you had best turn off your television and close your newspaper. It's going to be more intense than usual. -- Sara Fritz can be reached by e-mail at fritz@sptimes.com and by telephone at 202-463-0576.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
|
Times columns today Ernest Hooper Sara Fritz |
