SIX years the Republicans dominated Washington. In 2000, President George W. Bush took the White House with an overwhelming political mandate. Republicans yesterday were counting the devastating electoral cost of their president’s Iraq policies and their own corruption and sexual scandals. The lesson is already being drawn that arrogance and unwillingness to listen represent the political price to be paid for the absolute ascendancy of any one party. Without the efficient working of the checks and balances in the relationship between Congress and the White House, an incumbent can wreak havoc and disaster.
The Democrat’s capture of the House of Representatives may signal a return to some form of consensual politics. Presidents of one party have often had to horse-trade with a House controlled by the other. The House can block presidential plans but equally the president can veto legislation its legislation.
Though the new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a liberal Democrat, most of the 30 new Democrat faces in the chamber are conservative leaning. They were chosen precisely so they could challenge Republican incumbents on much of their own territory. Therefore the House of Representatives may well be ready to work with the president, at least to find a way out of the Iraq disaster. The question however if Bush prepared to work with them?
Foreign policy rests primarily with the White House. Legislators have little control. Bush has signaled that he does not intend to change course in Iraq, even though it is clear he is no more sure than anyone else precisely what that course is any more. Bush has never shown himself to be either subtle nor emollient. He may reason that he now has two uninterrupted years in which to try and win some sort of victory out of the Iraq debacle. When America decided to cut its losses in South Vietnam, it launched massive air strikes on the North and Cambodia and Laos. Might Bush try a similar spectacular last devastating fling, another Fallujah or assault on the Mehdi Army as happened in Kerbala ?
How would the Democrats react to being ignored? Talk of impeaching the president for falsifying the evidence that took American into Iraq is still faint. But would attitudes harden fast enough to initiative such a serious measure? Would not the fact that Americans were still fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan stave off any indictment of their commander in chief? Democrat chiefs want to win the White House in 2008 and know that a political imbroglio of the magnitude of an impeachment might have unpredictable and damaging consequences for their chances.
When US arms seemed to be triumphant, Bush enjoyed his highest poll ratings. But Americans don’t like losers. That is why they delivered their devastating verdict on the administration and the Republicans who once backed it so enthusiastically. There was however little reference in all the campaign rhetoric to the horrors Bush has brought to Iraqis, proving that even now, Americans can only see this disaster in their own insular terms.
