The mid-term elections approach with the prospect of a Democratic victory for the House of Representatives. And whilst they will likely fall just short of winning a majority in the Senate, they will be close enough to make it difficult for George W Bush to push his agenda – such as it is – rather than simply play defence as a lamer than usual lame-duck president.
This is all to the good but we must all recognize the limitations of the situation for Democrats. The party will not be able to push much of its agenda through either; a couple of obvious examples of what it may get are an increase in the minimum wage (but don’t forget the earned income tax credit, please!) and legislation to empower Medicare to employ its heft to negotiate prices on drugs with the pharmaceutical companies. A Democratic House will also enforce long overdue accountability on the Bush administration and, I think we can safely say, will ensure that Congress as a whole belatedly exercises its crucial oversight role.
However, there are two things Democrats in Congress (if they do indeed win the House) can do to remind voters why it was a good idea to make the Republicans share power in Washington and why it may be an even better idea to remove it from them altogether in 2008.
The first is to assume the mantle of reform. Not the phoney sort that the GOP half-heartedly offered (and which was watered down to virtual nothingness when they finally presented a bill) after their dubious ethics in money-raising were exposed (Tom Delay’s “K Street Project”, the Jack Abramoff scandals to name just two). No, I’m talking about genuine reform to the rules governing such things as transparency in dealings with special interest lobbyists, strict limitations on accepting junkets and favours and, critically, severe restrictions on the ability of individual House members to add earmarks to appropriations bills to benefit their district – a practice that, whilst bad enough under the Democrats of old, has become an epidemic of gargantuan proportions under the GOP leadership. In this way Democrats can show that it will not be business as usual, whilst also demonstrating a serious commitment to fiscal probity even at the cost of their own political interests.
In this same vein, the Democratic leadership of the House should eschew the abominable methods employed by the GOP to marginalize the minority party. For years Delay, Hastert and the rest of that cabal abused House rules by excluding the Democrats from exercising any meaningful role in shaping legislation that was pushed through. The effect was to essentially disenfranchise millions of Americans who were represented by Democrats in the House. Republicans have said that this was simply payback for when the Democrats did the same to them in the days of Tip O’Neil et al. The fact is that the GOP took it much, much further, to the point where, during the Bush presidency, the House has operated more like a parliamentary majority than a United States House of Representatives (and having grown up in a parliamentary system, I know one when I see one). Democrats should not emulate their opponents and abuse their power. They need to show they are, indeed, different.
The second thing the Democrats need to do is to demonstrate why it is better for the country to be led by a party of pragmatists who seek to solve problems, than by one blinded by ideology.
When it departs, this administration’s primary legacy will be a country enmeshed in a brutal and largely un-winnable war in Iraq, combined with a huge budget deficit that has grown alarmingly in the last six years.
On Iraq it will not be too early for the Democrats to start laying the groundwork for the only outcome that makes any sense, but one which Mr Bush will never countenance whilst he is the White House: orderly withdrawal.
The Democrats must also act as a break on the GOP’s reckless fiscal policies, which have combined huge tax breaks for the rich with a complete failure to make compensating cuts to expenditures. They must begin the long, difficult and arduous task of bringing the country’s finances into balance so as to prepare for the looming crises in Medicare and Social Security. These essential tasks can only be accomplished by a bi-partisan consensus – something that will, admittedly, be impossible whist the no-holds-barred, smear-your-enemies, party-before-country, divide and conquer philosophy of Karl Rove and the current GOP leadership holds sway.
By using their acquisition of the House and increased presence in the Senate to push genuine institutional reform and to demonstrate a willingness to reach across the aisle to find solutions to pressing national challenges that have grown formidably over the last six years, Democrats may yet prove that, however inept as the opposition party, they are the true party of governance.
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