January 21, 2006
In Search of a Cure, Republicans Must Treat the Symptoms
By David
M. Shribman
Everyone
dwells on the Democrats' problems: They have no discrete platform,
they have no single voice, they have no compelling personalities,
they have no response to the modern scourge of terrorism, they
have no hope of melding their 20th-century commitment to the poor
and the striving to the 21st-century problems of the economy and
globalism.
That's the
situation over there in the left corner. Over there in the right
corner, the difficulties may be even more severe. Indeed, there
may be no time in the past generation when both parties have been
so troubled.
The Republicans
hold the White House and have done so for 25 of the past 37 years.
That's real domination. The Republicans hold both houses of Congress
and have done so for the past 11 years. That means the GOP has
sunk deep roots on Capitol Hill. And yet the party that seems
so firmly anchored in power seems adrift, top to bottom.
That doesn't
mean the Republicans will necessarily be forced to surrender power.
In Ohio, where a hopeless GOP governor, Bob Taft, has presided
over one of the greatest state political scandals of modern times
and where a Republican congressman, Rep. Bob Ney, has been implicated
in the Jack Abramoff Washington lobbying scandal, polls show two
Republican candidates within striking distance of the Democratic
gubernatorial front-runner.
But the Republicans'
confidence has been shattered nationally, and their direction
is unclear. Moreover, President Bush's approval rating fell so
far in the first year of his second term (37 percent, according
to figures from Gallup compiled by the National Journal)
that if he manages to rebound to an average 45 percent for the
remainder of his second term, he will have engineered the greatest
recovery of any modern president.
Six years
into the Bush Era (Part II), the Republicans seem to be suffering
from a classic case of political exhaustion.
These have
been, to be sure, exhausting years, with terrorist attacks, two
wars, economic uncertainty, rising pressures from globalism and
difficult adjustments in a period of transition in the retail,
technological and media sectors. But all periods, even those we
remember as quiet, are busy and exhausting. The Clinton years
included conflicts in central Europe and the horn of Africa, upheavals
over the budget deficit, health care and taxes, and silly distractions
like the president's dalliances that nonetheless raised important
civic questions about the connection between politicians' private
character and their public character.
A physician
might suggest that a respite from office and responsibility might
cure the Republicans' woes, but no party has ever been willing
to step aside from power so as to re-energize itself -- and the
Democrats' prolonged experience out of office offers no suggestion
that such a pause actually refreshes. So the Republicans will
soldier on, seeking to cure themselves even as they struggle with
serious political, policy and moral struggles such as these:
A small war
growing longer, if not larger. Iraq was the first pre-emptive
war (we can argue about Vietnam and the Mexican War another morning),
and its successful start has been followed by a difficult passage.
The president won re-election as a wartime president, but his
constant reiteration of the rationale for that war suggests that
he hasn't yet made the sale. (Weapons of mass destruction having
failed to be found, the Iraq conflict has been transformed from
a quick strike against a rogue nation-state into a long struggle
against irredentists and terrorists.) Lincoln, Wilson and Franklin
Roosevelt needed no such repeat performances. This is Mr. Bush's
war, even more than the War of 1812 was Mr. Madison's war.
Freedoms
at home during a fight for others' freedom abroad. One of the
most difficult parts of America's Cold War experience, never fully
achieved, was to preserve freedom domestically while striving
to extend it internationally. The blacklists and dark hearings
of the McCarthy era remain a blotch on America's complexion. The
Republicans were born as America's party of freedom, and during
the civil rights era many Republicans played indispensable roles
in extending freedoms to African Americans.
Now Republicans
are in danger of reaching for another part of their heritage --
from Alger Hiss to Watergate -- in permitting surveillance, and
sowing suspicion, of American citizens, provoking deep unease
among many in the libertarian wing of the party.
Radio silence
on domestic issues. The challenges abroad are grave (and the cost
to Americans in blood and treasure is great), so it is not unreasonable
to expect that much of Washington's attention should be directed
toward those problems. But since the White House virtually abandoned
its Social Security initiative a half year ago, it has also virtually
abandoned the initiative in domestic affairs. Not that the Democrats
have seized the opening and the opportunity the administration
has presented.
Lobby follies.
In the long history of political scandal -- and here the phrases
Teapot Dome and Watergate come to mind, along with the veritable
leasing of the Lincoln bedroom in the Clinton years -- the Abramoff
scandal sits apart in terms of pure cynicism. Mr. Abramoff and
his colleagues simply sought to bilk Indian tribes and to buy
a good part of Washington. The threat for the Republicans is that
the Abramoff affair may stand as a symbol of the failings of a
party that went to Washington as reformers. The editorial page
of The Wall Street Journal, no pinko rag, chides: "Too
many Republicans are living in a political fantasy that they can
purge the Abramoff taint merely by banishing Tom DeLay and making
it harder for lobbyists to pay their links fees. Voters aren't
as dumb as they think."
The fatigue
factor. The cumulative effect of the elements above is the notion
that the Republicans have run out of steam, run out of ideas,
run out of people. That happens. Republicans in Congress have
less than 10 months to prove it isn't so -- and then Republicans
nationwide have to begin to come to grips with the succession
problem in the White House, and to determine whether they are
in a position to argue that nothing succeeds like success.
Copyright
2006 The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
