Chris Lehman, writing in the National Observer, may have written the epitaph of the110th Congress.
Gullible voters keen to treat the onset of the 2008 primary season as a hale sign of life in the American democratic system had best avert their gaze from Capitol Hill this week. For as Congress winds down the year’s business with earmark-laden appropriations bills and unsightly cave-ins to Bush prerogative after Bush prerogative, the governing metaphor is not the campaign scene’s notorious horse race—something that, for all its by-the-numbers familiarity, at least connotes forward motion. The most fitting template for Congress, rather, is the La Brea Tar Pits—a place where doomed life-forms absently topple into the sticky abyss, with only their outward frames preserved for puzzled generations centuries down the line.
When the party you prefer fails to enact all your preferences, it is always tempting to see it as a failure of democracy. However, while there is something a bit swamp-like in the plight of Speaker Pelosi's majority, George W. seems to skate over it like it was smooth ice and he were Brian Boitano. He has just gotten nearly everything he wanted from Congress, including full war funding with no strings attached. Not bad for an inarticulate, regressive, alpha male. The Washington Post forgoes the tar pit metaphor for that of a wounded warriors.
The first Democratic-led Congress in a dozen years limped out of Washington last night with a lengthy list of accomplishments... But Democrats' failure to address the central issues that swept them to power left even the most partisan of them dissatisfied and Congress mired at a historic low in public esteem.
I think that the word "even" above should read "especially."
Partisan Democrats are disgusted with the failure of Congress to reign in the President and put an end to the war in Iraq. That is supposedly what the people were voting for when they ousted the regressives. But this ignores two important things. One is that the United States is not, strictly speaking, a democracy. It is a Republic, in which popular will is translated into policy by means of a system of institutions. The other is that policy being made now has to be tailored to present conditions, not those that were present during the last election.
For better or worse, Bush is still Commander-in-Chief, and that carries weight. Moreover, the Republicans control almost half of both Houses of Congress. Those are both examples of the Republic thing. But most important of all, Republican party losses in 2006 finally forced the Bush Administration to change its military policy, and that new policy, under General Petraeus, so far appears spectacularly successful. I suppose this is official, now that the MSM has finally stopped blasting Bush for sticking to a failed policy and started blasting him (rightly) for not switching to the new and successful policy sooner. USAToday has the story of the change in strategy in rich detail.
A USA TODAY investigation shows that the strategy now used to defeat the bombmaking networks and stabilize Iraq was ignored or rejected for years by key decision-makers. As early as 2004, when roadside bombs already were killing scores of troops, a top military consultant invited to address two dozen generals offered a "strategic alternative" for beating the insurgency and IEDs.
Republican control of Congress, not to mention thousands of lives, might have been saved if the Administration had made this decision earlier. This is a real blight on the Administration's record. But the Democrats are unlikely to exploit it effectively. They are too severely addicted to the rhetoric of defeat. And so Bush is defeating them on the floors of Congress. Most Americans think that the war was a mistake, but given a choice between winning or losing, they would prefer the former. The recent successes in Iraq are the ice on which Bush is now skating.
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