From the WSJ Opinion Archives
FROM THE HEARTLAND
GOP: Covering the Spread
Republicans should be losing big. Here's why they aren't.
Desperate to get back to electioneering as usual, the Democratic leadership has handed President Bush authority to use force against Iraq if Saddam Hussein doesn't promptly disarm. Thus, from Maine to California, fright TV already is in full swing: A vote for Republicans, we are told, is a vote to send Granny off a cliff in her wheelchair, strip-mine Yellowstone Park, let corporate felons run loose in the streets and steal the votes of minorities.
On the face of things, the Democratic strategy makes sense. Polls consistently show that the No. 1 voter concern is the economy. The stock-market slump is creating a huge pit in the stomach of the investor class. Job layoffs are rippling through industrial America. Real estate, the last refuge of the middle class, is said to be next to go.
And even though Mr. Bush has managed to get his way with Congress on Iraq, there is bound to be considerable foreboding. Not that a clear majority of Americans don't favor doing away with Saddam Hussein. But at what cost, and what comes after?
So why are polls also showing that the midterm elections are a toss-up, indeed that Republicans might eke out some gains in both the House and Senate? If true, this election may return control of both houses of Congress to Republican hands. A close election would defy history; the party that controls the White House almost always loses seats in Congress in midterm elections. What we have here isn't the status quo. Even a draw in the midterm election would be a major victory for the GOP.
The reason voters appear reluctant to punish the GOP, one suspects, is not just a rally-round-the-president effect. The first Iraq war didn't help the first President Bush, who also had weather a severe economic malaise.
More likely, what has stuck in voters' minds is the way the Democrats conducted the Iraq debate. They came away seeming hollow; the debate underlining their cynicism and mean-spiritedness. Democrats, in other words, are in danger of becoming what they accuse their opponents of. Because the media suffer from almost total myopia on this point--preferring always and everywhere to attach the words cynical and mean-spirited only to the "right wing"--they may be missing an important political phenomenon.
It's not just a matter of the Democrats having been on the wrong side. I persist in believing that there are some good arguments against going abroad in search of monsters to slay. But the Democrats utterly failed to confront these issues honestly. Instead, they caviled, whined, played for time and tried to arrange things so that they can start yelling "I told you so" as soon as something goes wrong--even while trying to insulate themselves from having their fingerprints on the decision for war or peace. Michigan's Sen. Carl Levin--chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, no less--wanted to duck the issue by putting the United Nations in charge of the decision.
At least Mr. Levin stuck by his position. The Democratic leaders in the Senate and House, after demanding for months that President Bush make his case, folded like a cheap suit when he did so--even though the case was no different than it was back in August, or June, or even Sept. 12, 2001. Rather than counter Mr. Bush with a clear argument for containment and deterrence, which would have required acknowledging the risks of trying to wait out Saddam, Democrats cravenly accepted "regime change" under the guise of "arms control."
You might love what Mr. Bush and the Republicans are doing. You might even suspect that politics are involved in some of the timing. You might reserve the right to exercise a massive backlash if things don't work out as planned. But at least Mr. Bush and the Republicans appear to be serious folks conducting a serious strategy in defense of serious American interests. In calling the bluff of both the United Nations and Congress, Mr. Bush once again reminded the country that he is not just an accidental president, and that Republicans are capable of acting like adults--something one can't say with certainty about the other party.
Some of this feeling may be slopping over into domestic affairs. Yes, there might be reasons not to privatize Social Security. The Dow Jones Industrial Average at 7000, or even 5000, is a shock--at least to those who don't remember that only 20 years ago it was barely 1000. But, again, the Democrats seem unserious about Social Security. They don't seem to be proposing any alternatives beyond implying that Republicans hate their own grandmothers and hoping that the giant Ponzi scheme will somehow work out.
Then there is the return of deficits. We told you the tax cuts were irresponsible, trills Al Gore. But then he blithely ignores the logic of his position, which would be to call for a repeal of the tax cuts or even a tax increase. Even the media were forced to admit that he didn't seem very serious about the issue.
And so on down the line. True, the Bush administration has been a very uncertain trumpet on the economy. But it's not too late for Mr. Bush to show the moral clarity he briefly exhibited after the Waco, Texas, summit on the pressing need to get the country moving again (to borrow an old Democratic phrase). Let the Democrats argue for yet another hike in the minimum wage. Republicans should stand for something larger.
As the Wall Street Journal's Bob Bartley and others have noted, what George W. Bush has done is use Sept. 11 to remind people that politics is a truly serious business. The party of Bill Clinton, having perfected the art of small-bore politics--we feel your pain, so take your family leave and vote for us--suddenly finds itself looking, well, small. As always, most politics is still local, which may keep the elections close this fall. But in a midterm election cycle, close is a victory for an incumbent president. And that is very much within the grasp of this "accidental" president.
Mr. Bray is a staff columnist at the Detroit News. His OpinionJournal.com column appears Tuesdays.
