Posted on: Saturday, June 4, 2005
COMMENTARY
Political unrest breaking out in Washington
By Marie Cocco
Three more years. And more than a half.
That is about how long George W. Bush has left in his presidency, a second term nearly full in its length if not yet clear in its direction.
Six months after a momentous election that returned Bush to the White House and strengthened the Republican hold on Capitol Hill, this morning in America is dreary.
Is the country on the right track or the wrong track? A clear majority now tells pollsters we're heading in the wrong direction. Do they approve of the president's handling of the economy? No. Of foreign affairs? No. The situation in Iraq? No. And Social Security? Heck no.
Democrats are feeling good. "Washington is in deep difficulty with the American people," says pollster Stan Greenberg, who has advised Bill Clinton and Britain's Tony Blair and who just released a poll for the liberal Campaign For America's Future. It depicts overflowing public bile.
"If I could only take my British experience and dissolve Parliament, I would do it right now," adds Greenberg.
Sorry, no do-overs. We do not have a parliamentary system in which we can call an early election. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we must govern with the government we have.
Bush is unlikely to change course just because a majority of Americans wish he would. It's not his style.
But three years and eight months are a terrible thing to waste. And we don't have the luxury of wasting them. Certainly not in Iraq, where a sectarian civil war is breaking out and where America's military men and women die every day. Our overstretched Army faces a recruiting crisis in the midst of this first protracted war fought by all-volunteer forces. We don't have the luxury of time to allow the armed forces to deteriorate, or to deal with Iranian intentions, or to salve the bitterness that rises in the Muslim world over our foreign policy and our treatment of hundreds detained as alleged terrorists.
At home, middle-class life continues to shrivel under pressure from stagnant wages, staggering health costs and retirement prospects that grow dimmer as the supposedly golden years approach.
The president sees all this as a public relations problem, nothing that can't be solved with catchier marketing or a smashing tour of the Middle East by the first lady. Laura Bush is indeed an outstanding political ambassador, an asset so valuable that her public profile rises ever higher as her husband's standing sinks lower.
But the fallacy behind this facade is obvious: Bush and the Republicans aren't in trouble because they have a perception problem. They have policy problems. The Iraq War, the anger directed at the United States from abroad, the deficits and fatten-the-rich tax cuts, the inattention to the crisis in healthcare — all are the result of deliberate choices. The consequences of the first Bush term are becoming apparent in the second.
Political unrest brews even among Republicans. This became clear in the House vote last week on expanding federal funding for stem-cell research beyond the tight strictures the White House imposed in 2001. Many Republicans defected from the president either because they disagree, or they understand the popular appeal of the scientific research, or they face pressure from home-state technology interests.
In any case, the vote was extraordinary — not because the House mustered enough votes to override the expected presidential veto; it didn't. But this may well represent the first step toward governing for the next three and a half years. So does the defection of seven Senate Republicans to diffuse temporarily the threatened explosion over judicial appointments.
Hopes for progress lie not in the White House, which digs in its spurs on the stem-cell issue, on controversial nominations, on taxes and all else. Hopes lie among those congressional Republicans who are becoming emboldened to break free and work for their constituents, not their president or party. As for congressional Democrats, there's scant evidence their party is benefiting much from the growing dissatisfaction with the Republicans. Yet they can lead by offering initiatives on healthcare, on protecting pensions, on the minimum wage, on formulating a reasonable plan for eventual withdrawal from Iraq.
It is hard to lead as an opposition party on Capitol Hill, but some Republicans may just follow on appealing Democratic issues. It is, at least, worth spending the next few years trying.
Marie Cocco is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group.
