The Washington Times

This has been a good year for taking stock of the state of the political system. The reason is that this has been a year of major political change, as drastic as our politics gets, with the Democrats taking charge of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

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The Washington Times 

Not that they are in any other respect comparable, but Iraq and the Clinton health care reform effort of 1993-94 are politically comparable in that each precipitated the loss of control of Congress by the party of the president. Politically speaking, they were both the product of great ambition, the repository of the fondest hopes of each administration for fundamental policy change that would remake their respective policy areas in a fundamental way, and thus provide a lasting legacy for the administration.

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The Washington Times 

A literary agent once told me that when you are trying to sell a book to a publisher, you should always keep in mind that it’s not really the book you’re selling; it’s the idea of the book. Your objective is to get people excited about what’s to come. The finished book, even if it’s a very good book, ought to be almost anti-climactic. Otherwise, you haven’t managed to get people as excited as you should have in the first place.    

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The Washington Times 

RIGA, Latvia. –At the Riga airport on the way to a German Marshall Fund-sponsored conference running parallel to the biannual NATO summit, a German friend asked me what I thought George W. Bush would say in the speech he was scheduled to give. I said I thought he had better give a “values” speech. My interlocutor replied, “then we’re in big trouble.” 

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The Washington Times

When people look back on the 2006 elections 10 years later, what will they see? A turning point ushering in a new era of Democratic congressional dominance? Or an Iraq-induced bump in the otherwise smooth road of Republican dominance that reflects the center-right character of the American electorate?    

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The Washington Times

As we mull the implications of the November elections for what comes next in Iraq, it’s worth keeping in mind that this was, in fact, the third time voters have had an opportunity to weigh in on the subject. I think that there are some reasonable conclusions to be drawn from the electoral judgments voters have rendered. But if people fail to look at all three and concentrate exclusively on the most recent, they are going miss some important aspects of our current predicament.  The first thing to note is that the surprising midterm Republican pickup of seats in 2002 took place against the backdrop of a rather one-sided debate about going to war in Iraq. True, some House and Senate Democrats voted against the congressional authorization of the war. For this, they have earned the lasting gratitude of their party’s left wing. But many Democrats joined most Republicans in support of the use of force against Saddam Hussein if he failed to comply with U.N. resolutions.    

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The Washington Times

Generally speaking, elections are about comparative judgments. It’s not so much a matter of “What do you think of Mr. A?” and “What do you think of Mrs. B?” It’s “What do you think of Mr. A compared to Mrs. B?” Whom do you choose between the two?     

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The Washington Times

Beginning a little less than a year ago, Democrats set expectations for today’s elections at levels ranging from high to highest: They were going to win back control of the House for the first time since 1995 and the Senate as well. The reasons for this coming victory were an increasingly unpopular war undermining the Republicans’ key advantage on national security issues; a Republican-controlled Congress that, in their telling, was a slough of corruption and complacency; and the alternative program playing to their own strengths on domestic policy they were going to offer voters.    

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The Washington Times

Here’s an observation for one week before the midterm: Throughout the Bush administration, Democrats have generally believed that they are poised on the brink of victory, which makes sense to them as a matter of right: They deserve to win because Republicans deserve to lose. Republicans, for their part, have generally believed that Democrats have it about right: The Republican Party fears defeat is at hand, and that, in truth, the party has it coming.    

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The Washington Times

Is the GOP position in collapse, freefall, meltdown? For such is the impression you could get. For example, in Virginia, a reliably Republican state in presidential voting, a once-popular incumbent senator, once expected to be a credible candidate for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination following his easy re-election this year, is in trouble, or such is the impression you could get. A major newspaper (not this one) has gotten into the habit of referring to the race as a “virtual tie.” If the Virginia seat goes Democratic, it’s hard to see how Republicans won’t be losing their Senate majority.    

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