From the WSJ Opinion Archives
THE WESTERN FRONT
It's 1952--or 1954
Will the new Democratic majority endure?
In making his case to be elected to the top Republican post in the House in the next Congress--that of minority leader--Rep. John Boehner sounds this hopeful note: "Our ability to recover our majority is in our hands."
There is historical precedent for the optimistic view that a party repudiated at the ballot box can regain voters' confidence in just two years. In 1952 Democrats lost control of the White House and Congress as Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president. Two years later, Democrats retook Congress and then proceeded to hold the House for the next 40 years even as Republicans won six presidential elections.
What many Republicans are wondering now is whether this is 1952 in reverse, a momentary setback for the GOP before it comes roaring back to take lasting congressional majorities. Or is this a replay of 1954, the beginning of a near-permanent Democratic majority?
History offers a few clues. Republicans captured control of Congress in 1994 thanks in large part to a rebellion against President Clinton's attempt to nationalize the country's health care system. The GOP then held on to the House for 12 years (and the Senate for most of that time) through the power of incumbency and by following through on a handful of far-reaching reforms, overhaul of the welfare system being the most notable.
This year Democrats benefited from a voter rebellion against the GOP. But the party did not win a mandate for its legislative agenda, for the simple reason that Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi and others did not lay out their own Contract With America. Instead in recent years Democrats voted in near lockstep against nearly every piece of Republican legislation that came up for a vote. The lack of a voter endorsement of a party's animating ideas may seem like a handicap, but it hasn't always been. The last time Democrats won back control of Congress by stymieing the Republican agenda without also offering a broad vision for the country was . . . 1954.
Following that defeat, Republicans were able to hold the White House in 1956 as President Eisenhower won re-election, and in 1960 Richard Nixon nearly extended the GOP's hold on the executive branch for another four years. But Democrat John F. Kennedy emerged the victor in a very close election and his party went on to run the political tables for much of the rest of the decade. With its monopoly on elective power in Washington, the Democratic Party spent the 1960s implementing the Great Society--the most far-reaching (and destructive) domestic program since the Depression. Elections, even those that leave the ruling party with no mandate, can prove to be watershed political moments.
Whether 2006 will prove to be a similarly pivotal year in the long term depends on Rep. Pelosi. Many Republicans believe that after she becomes speaker, she will quickly become a polarizing political figure. This belief lives on the assumption (or hope) that she will attempt to enact the very ideas voters rejected in 1994. But the assumption that Ms. Pelosi will quickly overreach and destroy her new majority isn't a safe one to make. Democrats are mindful that the 2008 presidential elections could prove to be even more beneficial for the party than the gains made this year, if only they don't scare voters back into the arms of the GOP in the meantime. And with Hillary Clinton along with Barack Obama and other presidential hopefuls in the Senate, it's safe to assume that any legislation that would endanger a Democratic presidential candidate will be off the table.
Earlier this year, independent pollster Scott Rasmussen stopped by the offices of The Wall Street Journal and sketched out his view of the long-term political landscape. He noted that the nation had just experienced two close presidential elections and that the country was now evenly split between the two political parties. The U.S. has experienced similar periods of a nearly evenly divided electorate in the past, he said, but such periods tend not to last long. Eventually, one party or the other maneuvers itself to be in line with a sizable majority of voters and gains a near lock on the policy agenda for a generation or more.
President Bush hoped to guide his party into that position with the "ownership society"--federal policy built around the idea of creating private property rights within federal entitlement programs. But congressional Republicans balked and killed his centerpiece proposal by not voting on whether to create private Social Security accounts. The ownership society has since withered into obscurity and with it the Republican majority. Now, with Democratic majorities to deal with the president will be under intense pressure to break sharply left to strike a deal on, say, Social Security reform.
The fate of each political party is always, to some degree, in its own hands. Unfortunately for the GOP, the Democrats' fate now rests with Ms. Pelosi and incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid either moving President Bush to the left or passing nothing of consequence that would alienate a significant number of voters. And Congress, regardless of which party is in control, can always manage to do nothing for awhile.
Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays.
