A VERY Bold Prediction From Yours Truly
Hi Kossacks,
I'm enjoying my lengthy winter break from Drew University, where I'm a freshman, and in a week will be traveling to London for the first time for 10 days (Among other things, I'll get to see what our cousins across the Atlantic really think about us). I want to wish a belated Happy New Year to all of you, and I hope that regardless of your opinion of this diary that you, the reader will comment on it.
With that in mind, I'd like to make a (very) bold prediction on American politics in the next two years: the War in Iraq and its continuation through 2009 will sink the Republican Party's chances of victory in 2008, both in the Presidential and Congressional races.
Why am I saying this? Moreover, why make such a bold prediction with more than two years (16 more days, to be precise on top of that)to go before the next President is sworn in? After all, almost anything can happen between now and Election Day 2008, with all kinds of events that could result in a Republican President or Congress in 2009. The answer to these two questions lies, sadly enough, in my firm belief that George Walker Bush will continue to run this country into the ground until the last day he has as President of our beloved country. This is due to five reasons:
1)Bush's Nixonesque stubborness not to "lose" the Iraq War on his watch;
2)The ability of any President under the current power system in America to entirely control foreign policy decisions, without having to consult Congress or the people;
3)The inability of the incoming Democratic Congress to change the course of events in Iraq due to both political reality and institutional intertia;
4)The American public's support for the incumbent's political party in a Presidential election closely matching that incumbent's popularity;
5)The American public's increasingly rapid disenchantment with the Iraq War, of which Bush is identified with almost entirely.
I will go through each one by one.
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1)Bush = Nixon
The parallels couldn't be more startling. A President finds himself embroiled in an unpopular war, one in which he is unwilling to get out of for reasons unknown to the Ameriacn people. The war, the President says, is directly tied into a larger conflict that Americans must fight together. He promises eventual peace, but that peace will come only when he says so. And he publically attempts to bring the two rival groups together again, whilst his policies simply drive the groups further apart.
Is that Vietnam or Iraq? It's hard to say, really. Perhaps the only difference between Richard Nixon and George Bush in this regard is that Nixon faced a Democratic Congress for his entire administration, whereas Bush faced a divided Congress at worst until this year. Oh, and Nixon had more brains than our current President (which only makes Nixon more evil for his actions).
For Nixon, "losing" Vietnam meant losing ground to Communism (never mind that the USSR and China were at loggerheads anyway); for Bush, "losing" Iraq means losing ground to Terrorism (never mind that our continued presence in Iraq is creating more terrorists than before).
For Nixon, "losing" Vietnam would result in him appearing weak to his own party, the rest of the world and inside himself. For Bush, "losing" Iraq would lead to the same results. Never mind that while Nixon capitulated and got out of Vietnam (and therefore strengthed America's international position in the long run), Bush has shown no interest in doing so, and has thus already "lost" in the eyes of the world.
For Nixon, ending Vietnam required "peace with honor"; for Bush, it requires the Iraqi people to be "free and democratic". Never mind that both terms are deliberately vague and can easily be used in different ways to continue a war.
For Nixon, ending Vietnam meant bringing together two groups: Vietnamese who supported Communism and those who didn't; for Bush, ending Iraq will mean reconciling Iraqis who are Shiites with those (Sunnis and Kurds) who are not. Never mind that in each case the groups are irrevocably pitted against each other, meaning that only brute force from the larger group over the smaller group can lead to peace.
In all this, it must be made clear that Iraq is Bush's legacy. Nixon had to worry about reelection in 1972, and so he began to concede defeat and pull out of Vietnam; together with a skillfull campaign and the temporary squashing of Watergate, he won in a landslide. But Bush doesn't have to worry about reelection anymore; his "accountability" moment was in 2004, and he won reelection (albeit with the smallest victory of any incumbent since Woodrow Wilson in 1916). Since Bush no longer needs the American public to give him the opportunity to "win" Iraq, he will continue to ruin the situation there with his stubborn, ignorant policy of "stay the course". After all, as he said in 2005, Iraq will be dealt with by "the next President" who succeeds him. And that leads into...
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2)The "Imperial" Presidency, redux
Whoever places their hand on the Bible (unless Keith Ellison or another minority religious group member is elected President) on January 20, 2009 will be facing enormous challenges in foreign policy. The new President will have to fight hard to bring our troops home from Iraq without further debacles, as well as to restore America's reputation abroad. Luckily for him (or Hillary), the Bush Presidency had shown just how far a President can go in foreign policy implementation without being checked. The Constitution as interpreted by Bush's policymakers gives him broad, unitary powers that far surpass anything Congress, the Supreme Court or the American people hold for themselves.
This belief - the "Imperial Presidency" that was supposedly cut down after Watergate - is rooted in a few key clauses in Article Two of the Constitution:
1)"The executive power shall be vested in a President"
2)"The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States"
3)"The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session."
Using these three vague principles in ways that the Founders never intended them to be used, the Bush Administration has repeatedly ignored Congress and the American people in its foreign policy actions. The recess appointment of John Bolton is a case in point, as is the unilateral "blank check" approach to the Iraq situation in 2002. Bush has been helped in some of this by a lap-dog Congress controlled by the Republicans; however, we should not forget that the US Senate had a Democratic Majority Leader when it voted to support the Iraq War resolution in 2002. As the Democrats look to investigate the Administration in the new Congress, you should also expect the White House to claim the Nixonian "executive privilege" mantle as their own.
In short, Bush has been able to continue the Iraq War because the current American political structure allows the Chief Executive to exercise total foreign policy control if he (or Hillary in 2009) wishes. Unless future Presidents are willing to give up power to Congress, the states and the Judiciary (and why would they ever want to do that?), that power will remain unchecked. This power was dormant from 1974 to 2001, due to weaker Presidents and a stronger Congress, but as a "strong" President Bush has easily bypassed Congress in foreign policy. Which leads me to my next point:
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3)Come meet the new Congress, same as the old Congress (but it's not their fault)
Since the Democratic Party captured Congress in November, many Kossacks have been looking forward to a greater check on the Presidency. Already, many activists have called for the Democrats in Congress (starting tomorrow) to push for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, or at least cutting off future funding for the war. Others hope that Congressional investigations will produce evidence sufficient to impeach President Bush, as well as Vice President Cheney. While I would happily support such a removal if the evidence became clear, I sadly believe that neither withdrawal nor impeachment will occur. I say this for two reasons:
- It is not politically realistic for the Democrats to end the war from Congress alone, due to the Presidential power structure described above;
- To impeach the President and/or Cheney, the Democrats would still need 67 votes in the Senate, which in today's polarized landscape is virtually impossible, even with sufficient evidence.
In short, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are realists through and through. They are fully prepared to ram through progressive legislation on domestic issues, thus pleasing most of their base. But when it comes to foreign policy, or checking Bush's power on that front, they are helpless - and they know it. That's why Congressional leaders have already ruled out impeachment, with Pelosi saying it is "off the table" last month. We, the people may push for withdrawal and/or impeachment as much as we wish, and that is a good thing; as Americans, we have a patriotic duty to make our voices heard.
But having our voices heard does not necessarily mean having our voices obeyed. If we want to give the Democrats the power to end the war, we must vote to elect a Democratic President in 2008 - it's that simple. Only then can the will of the people be obeyed. Which leads me to my next point...
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4)The outgoing President influences the election of his successor
In most elections, the approval rating of the incumbent can prove to be a good indicator of the final results. In 1988, for example, Ronald Reagan had a 53% approval rating on Election Day, according to the exit polls. That same day, 53.4% of the country backed his Vice-President, George H.W. Bush over Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee. In 1980, Jimmy Carter had a 40% approval rating around Election Day, and finished with 41% against Reagan. And in 2004, Bush himself had a 51% approval rating (on average) going into November 2nd. The result? Bush got 50.7% of the national vote!
This system does not always hold true. If it were 100% accurate, then Al Gore would have won easily in 2000 (Bill Clinton had a sky-high approval rating) and Richard Nixon would have beaten John F. Kennedy in 1960 (the same with Dwight Eisenhower). In both counterexamples, however there were reasons why Kennedy and Bush prevailed, most important being the country's willingess to "revert to form" in electing its President. Kennedy had the New Deal Coalition as a natural voting base, and Bush had the Nixon/Reagan "Southern Strategy" as his natural voting base. In short, both Eisenhower and Clinton bucked national trends by being elected and reelected. However, their unique popularity failed to help their chosen successors.
So, how does this relate to 2008? True, Dick Cheney will not be on the ballot - but in a sense, his boss will. Assuming that the Republican nominee does not defy his party's leader and comes out in favor of ending the Iraq debacle, then the American public will once again be voting just as much on Bush's eight years than on the Democratic and Republican candidates themselves. This was true in 1968 of LBJ and Hubert Humphrey (when Humphrey came close only due to George Wallace draining votes from Nixon's right), and will surely be true again in 2008.
And if Bush's approval rating remains as low as it is now, then the Republican nominee will have to deal with "Bush's War", as the public sees it, as an anchor dragging down his chances. Which leads me to...
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5)"I want out": America's disenchantment with Iraq (and Bush in general)
Americans clearly want to leave Iraq sooner rather than later; the divides that exist are over when to leave, not if. A general consensus exists, according to most public polling, that our troops should leave Iraq within a year or less; as I have said before, with Bush running our foreign policy that is simply not going to happen. Should this stalemate continue, the public is even more likely to call for withdrawal, with Republicans joining Democrats and Independents in this regard. We have already seen Gordon Smith of Oregon call for our troops to leave last month, and I expect other Republican Senators to join him in the next two years. Some may do so for political reasons, but the result is the same; strong public discontent with Bush and his Republican label, which has led to the current debacle in Iraq. "The Buck Stops Here", said Harry Truman's sign in the Oval Office, and it will stay with Bush in terms of Iraq as his terrible legacy.
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CONCLUSION: MY BOLD PREDICTION
Having laid out in detail my reasons for this prediction, I can state with sad surety that the Iraq War will continue through 2009, and (on the good side) will cost the Republican Party the White House in 2008. Furthermore, the GOP will likely lose futher seats in Congress, as states with blue and "tossup" leanings will vote Democratic on more levels than previously. The next - Democratic - President (whoever it is) will thus face a terrible burden indeed, but with unlimited ability to fulfill that burden. If the next President is willing, he (or Hillary) will be able to bring our troops home from Iraq, and end what will by then be six years of strife, sorrow and struggle at home and abroad.
Until then, we can only work to make peace and the Presidency possible.