WASHINGTON, 9 November 2006 — By taking the US House of Representatives, Democrats may hasten President George W. Bush’s lame-duck status and pressure him into changing his Iraq policy, analysts say.
But Bush, facing strong opposition in the US Congress for the first time since taking office in 2001, can help himself and his legacy by reaching out to Democrats for some legislative accomplishments as he did when he was Texas governor from 1995 to 2000, they said.
“It makes it possible for him to be more than a lame duck,” said Bruce Buchanan, a University of Texas political scientist who watched Bush work with Democrats in Texas. “If he plays hard ball, he won’t get a thing.” The White House said Bush would call for bipartisan cooperation at a Wednesday news conference. He leaves office in January 2009.
“The president has experience working with parties who have majorities in the legislature. This is not foreign to him. He will make all the appropriate outreach to make clear to the public and to the Democrat Party that he is generally eager to work with them and hopes that they will meet him halfway,” said White House counselor Dan Bartlett.
Experts expect the Democrats’ gains in the House will expose Bush to the same type of congressional investigations that bedeviled President Bill Clinton’s second term, putting his decision-making on Iraq under greater public scrutiny.
Democrats will take command of powerful congressional committees that can issue subpoenas and compel testimony from administration figures. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whom Bush wants to stay in his job for two more years, could be spending a lot of time in hearing rooms.
“I don’t expect Democrats to rally around a specific approach for Iraq,” said Congress-watcher Thomas Mann. “But I do expect them to use their agenda-setting power to subject Bush’s current plan to severe scrutiny and to air alternatives.” Bush spent weeks on the campaign trail defending the war and insisting it is necessary to stay in Iraq to protect the United States.
It was a political gamble that put the spotlight on his biggest weakness and failed to sway Americans wanting to see a shift in strategy from daily reports of bloodshed and rising US casualties.
The election is not expected to prompt Bush to make an immediate change in Iraq. As Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC News last week it will be “full speed ahead” in Iraq whoever wins because, “We’re not running for office, we’re doing what we think is right.”
Norman Ornstein, political expert at the American Enterprise Institute, doubted Democrats would try to cut off funding for Iraq despite their threatening noises because many Americans would oppose such a move as they started to look at presidential candidates for the 2008 election.
“Let’s face it. The fact that Democrats are the majority means they will hold hearings all over the place and make his life more difficult,” Ornstein said. “But they can’t do more than that. They can’t implement policy to make him change what he is doing.” But he said Democratic scrutiny could put pressure on Bush himself to consider a course correction.
This will place more importance on the recommendations on how to change course in Iraq to be sent to the White House in the next few weeks by a bipartisan commission on Iraq led by former Secretary of State James Baker.
Although Bush is insistent that “We’re going to sprint to the finish,” most presidents find their power waning in their last two years in office as Americans look ahead to the next presidential election. Agreeing to negotiate with Democrats would require a different mindset from Bush, who has listened politely to them over the years but relied on Republicans in Congress to get his priorities passed.
Bush sent signals to Capitol Hill last week by saying he wanted to work with both parties to find a way to revive a reform of Social Security and Medicare, two sacrosanct federal entitlement programs for the old and poor facing huge spending deficits in years to come.
Some of Bush’s pet projects will likely suffer: His long-sought proposal to make permanent the tax cuts approved in his first term along with his desire for authority to negotiate foreign trade deals.
However, a possible product of divided government could be a comprehensive immigration plan, including a guest-worker program that Bush pushed this year only to be thwarted by House Republicans who blocked his proposals.
“Immigration is a case where probably more Democrats agree with his proposals than Republicans,” said presidential scholar Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution.
