It seems that despite his misguided public optimism, George Bush has already set the mood for a post-election Beltway in which Democrats control at least one chamber of Congress.
From Time's latest cover story, "It's Lonely at the Top," posted this morning:
In fact, when it comes to deploying its Executive power, which is dear to Bush's understanding of the presidency, the President's team has been planning for what one strategist describes as "a cataclysmic fight to the death" over the balance between Congress and the White House if confronted with congressional subpoenas it deems inappropriate. The strategist says the Bush team is "going to assert that power, and they're going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court on every issue, every time, no compromise, no discussion, no negotiation."
Five words jumped off the page and grabbed me by the throat:
"Bush's understanding of the presidency". As if the rules that govern presidential leadership are so nuanced as to be open to individual interpretation.
But the article, which dwells heavily on Bush's plague-like effect on GOP candidates this election cycle, also puts into perfect perspective what we're playing for in the next 9 days:
Pelosi needs 15 seats to become the next Speaker, but if her majority is only a vote or two, she's not likely to get much further than her 100-hour plan. More conservative Democrats, many of them newly elected from Republican-leaning districts, would hold the balance of power. If the Democrats have a more comfortable majority, however, the party's edgier, angrier side could emerge, especially on the question of whether or how quickly to withdraw from Iraq.
The issue has evolved from "just winning" to "smacking down," 1994-style. And rightfully so.
DemfromCT has frontpaged an overview of election predictions this morning. And lest we get all giddy about a razor-thin majority, Time reminds us that in order to really exert some level of Congressional oversight in the next two years, we need to do much better than just win. We need to win big.
Clearly, and somewhat surprisingly, the DCCC gets that. Having put a dent in first-tier races, they're now creating impact in second and third-tier contests that were previously considered untouchable for the thugs.
Stop me if you've heard this one before: it all depends on our GOTV effort.
As a marketer, I believe that empassioning the left requires that we continue to hammer on the negative consequences of the "stay the course" stubbornness that BushCo is now trying to run away from. From Time:
"Stay the course" is a time-honored rallying cry in politics. But it has always been more a slogan than a strategy, meant to show the steadfastness of the person who shouts it rather than what he actually intends to do. More telling is when staying the course turns into "constantly changing tactics to meet the situation on the ground." That is how President Bush is now describing the battle plan in Iraq. It also pretty neatly sums up what his presidency has come to as he reaches the eve of a midterm congressional election that has turned into a referendum on Bush himself--and on a policy in Iraq that has left him more isolated than at any other point in his presidency.
Read the bold line again. It's poetic.
Bush and Rove figured out (too late) that "stay the course" flies in the face of voter sentiment this cycle, and so it's no wonder that they've now unstayed the course. But like the administration's previous political strategy of embracing the war, which I diaried about extensively in late August, this newfound illusion of flexibility won't play.
Why? Mostly because of inconsistent messaging. In an effort to throw shit against the wall to see what sticks, we get an insincere glimpse of conscience ("constantly changing the course") all in the same breath with the patented BushCo "understanding of the presidency."
No compromise, no discussion, no negotiation.
Therein lie the stakes of the next 9 days, and the implications of too small a victory on November 7th.