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7-11-2002 Scotsman Republicans are in total control of Washington for first time in 50 years By Gethin Chamberlain FOR a man who is normally tucked under the covers by 10pm, George Bush was up late. It was proving to be an exciting night. As the results flooded in, it became clear that what had looked like an election too difficult to call had been transformed into a resounding endorsement of his personal standing. The man who once observed that "if we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure" had come good. Shortly after midnight, as he contemplated his powerful new mandate, the President paused from a round of telephone calls to successful candidates. He stepped outside, despite the pouring rain, to walk the dogs, Spot and Barney. It was an act typical of the homespun Bush, who had bucked the trend for the presidential party to lose ground in the mid-term elections. He made history by becoming only the third president in a century to gain seats in the House of Representatives in a mid-term election - after Democrats Franklin Roosevelt in 1934 and Bill Clinton in 1998 - and the first to gain seats in the Senate for two decades. Elizabeth Dole, the Republican challenger to Hillary Clinton's mantle as the most powerful female politician in America, summed up her party's euphoria. "Oh, wow," she said after her election as one of seven new Republican senators, "what a night!" The party of the incumbent president had lost seats in the House in every midterm election except three in the past century, an average of 30 seats, and the average midterm loss of Senate seats was four. Putting so much of his own reputation on the line was a gamble, but Bush's decision to throw himself wholeheartedly into the campaign was one which paid off handsomely. He campaigned hard for the Election Day triumph, visiting 23 states over the final five weeks of the campaign, and the Democrats were among the first to admit that the Republicans owed much of their victory to the President's own standing in the country. "I think I pin a lot of it on that this is a president who has had very high approval ratings. He's had the longest sustained approval ratings of any president in modern history," said Terry McAuliffe, Democratic chairman and no fan of the president. Bush's own people were beside themselves with glee. "I think it was a referendum on his leadership and he really showed that he was committed - that he was willing to put his prestige on the line," said Trent Lott, the Republican Senator for Mississippi who will become Senate majority leader. "The American people said, 'Yes, we trust this man and we want to have a Congress that will work with him and will get some things done'." Their campaign fuelled by an unprecedented White House fund-raising effort that channelled more than £135 million to Republican candidates, Bush's party won race after race in the states where he had personally campaigned. Each time a result came in, the president - who was also celebrating his 25th wedding anniversary with Laura - was on the phone congratulating the winner and savouring their success. Midnight came and went. The dogs had been walked and still he was making calls, urging the successful candidates to keep their supporters mobilised and never to forget that 24 months down the line, it would be their turn to return the favour. "Two years from now, he wants you all on his team," said Saxby Chambliss, the new senator for Georgia. The White House was quick to point out Bush's active campaigning, especially in the final days before the election. "I think it's very fair to say that a good portion of the results and history being made is attributable to the president's popularity and his hard work," said Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman. "The president played a very constructive role in helping to break history." The Republicans owed much to the advantage of a political landscape transformed by the terrorist attacks of 11 September last year and a president whose approval ratings remained at enviable levels despite a sputtering economy. They also enjoyed financial superiority, raising an estimated £118 million more than their Democratic counterparts. But nothing could take away the sweetness of the victory for Bush, and by far the sweetest of all the individual victories came in Florida, where his brother Jeb successfully fought off the challenge of Democrat Bill McBride to secure re-election as governor of Florida. Billed as a grudge match between the Bushes and the Clinton-Gore team, which ousted their father from the White House and nearly denied George W. Bush the presidency in 2000, the fight for Florida was crucial to any analysis of how far Bush had come since the nail-biting recounts of two years earlier. The president raised £6 million for his brother and for the Florida Republicans, help that Jeb Bush readily acknowledged was vital in pushing him past McBride. He told his supporters: "I want to thank our great president of the United States for coming down and lending a hand to his little brother." The Democrats, he said, had raised a lot of money to fight him, but he held the trump card in his hand. "The good news is we also had a lot of support here, and the president of the United States, George W. Bush, came down and campaigned, and I think that made a big difference." There were other high-profile victories for his brother to appreciate. In Minnesota, Norm Coleman took the Republicans' 51st Senate seat with a narrow win over former vice president Walter Mondale, who stepped in to fight the seat after the incumbent, Democrat Paul Wellstone, was killed in a plane crash 11 days before the election. There was victory, too, for former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris - Republican heroine for her role in the presidential recount - who coasted to election for a House seat and in North Carolina for Elizabeth Dole. The Democrats certainly entertained few doubts about the reasons for their defeat. Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, glumly acknowledged that the war on terrorism and the prospect of conflict with Iraq had drowned out anything his party had to say about the fragility of the economy. "The president made that (the war on terror) his drumbeat," he said. "It resonated." Back at the White House, not even the cold, soaking rain could dampen the enthusiasm within. Bush watched results on television as the advisers gave him independent data and analysis. What he could only have dreamed of in the days running up to the election had come true; the political landscape of the United States had been transformed in the space of a few hours. Capturing control of the Senate as well as the House of Representatives opens the door for legislation on tax cuts, homeland security and filling judicial vacancies. The midterm victory also casts a long shadow over the 2004 presidential campaign, further enhancing Bush's already high popularity and muddling the prospects of the Democratic field. Both Tom Daschle and House Leader Richard Gephardt had been considered major contenders but neither's reputation was aided by Tuesday's results and both could face challenges over their congressional leadership. Already, Bush advisers have been at work on a possible set of new tax cuts whose centrepiece would be the permanent extension of his ten-year reduction in income and inheritance taxes. He is also keen to bulldoze objections by Senate Democrats and labour unions to parts of his plan for a new Department of Homeland Security and to push through the huge backlog of judicial appointments. So far, the Senate has confirmed only 15 of 32 appeals court nominees submitted by Mr Bush. The Democrats' only snippet of power will be the ability to force procedural delays in the Senate but with their slender margin of control, Senate Republicans will command committees and decide which bills the chamber will debate. White House advisers, boasting about a new mandate, were planning for the president to make a triumphal appearance today and to beckon Democrats to fall in line. When the new Congress is sworn in January, it will be the first time in 50 years that Republicans take outright control of the White House, Senate and House. Republicans will hold at least 51 Senate seats - plus Vice President Dick Cheney's tie-breaking vote - while in the House, the voting boosted their majority by at least two votes. Buoyed by their electoral successes, Republicans appear in no mood to compromise: "We need pension reform, welfare reform," said Trent Lott. "We need to do more in education. Let's quit talking about doing something for low-income elderly that need prescription drugs. Let's look at what we can do to target some tax cuts that would help the economy. Let's have fiscal restraint. Let's begin to get control on spending." Business lobbyists expect more tax cuts to help the economy. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the US Chamber of Commerce, said he expected to see a revival of efforts to pass tax cuts to encourage business investment and relief for stock investors as well as a push to accelerate tax cuts that were part of Bush's ten-year tax cut enacted last year. The only check on Republican power will be the occasional need to secure the 60 votes required to push legislation over the procedural hurdles that a determined Democratic minority could set up. Tax cuts will face those hurdles and go up against the needs of financing other popular measures. The Democrats could take a little consolation from the state governor elections, where they achieved key gains in the industrial north, taking the states of Illinois, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Tom Daschle said they had no intention of making life easy for their political opponents. Asked whether the Republicans would be able to make the tax cuts permanent, he replied: "Not if we have anything to do with it." Rising health care costs and the growing ranks of the uninsured could make health care a priority and there is also likely to be debate over social security reform and Bush's plan to create private investment accounts. Widely anticipated technical problems with new electronic equipment amounted to little more than a few hiccups, but as George Bush celebrated last night, there was less to smile about for those concerned with the vitality of the electoral system. Barely a third of eligible Americans voted in the elections. As Bush himself once said: "I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy, but that could change."
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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