THE BITTER POST-ELECTION OF 2000 IS OVER, AND EVERY POLITICIAN IN AMERICA IS MAKING GRAND, GRACIOUS OVERTURES TO THE OTHER SIDE IN AN ORGY OF CONCILIATORY BLATHER. THEY'RE USING NICE WORDS THAT THE AMERICAN PUBLIC NEEDS TO AND WANTS TO HEAR. BUT ALL THIS KISSY-KISSY SWEET TALK IS SHEER BALONEY. Americans patiently waited out the wild five weeks of trying to sort out who won this most unusual election because, as a whole, the American public is not especially partisan. It was America's political establishment - career politicians, party activists, and the staffs of partisan think tanks and Washington-based interest groups - that went ballistic. They're still angry.
In a larger sense, the episode marked another escalation of a bitter civil war in Washington whose beginnings can be traced to 1987, when Ronald Reagan's nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate after an extensive media campaign by his opponents. The same civil war engulfed the Clinton administration, temporarily closing the US government and featuring Ken Starr's GOP-backed jeremiad against the president and his wife, culminating in Clinton's impeachment.
The war continues. George W. may sincerely want to reach out to congressional Democrats, but the Democrats don't want to reach back. They have a fighting chance of regaining control of one or both houses of Congress in the election of 2002, in which every seat in the House and at least one-third of the Senate will be up for grabs. That election occurs just a bit more than 18 months after Inauguration Day, which means that every bill Congress considers and every issue that claims the national stage will be campaign fodder for 2002.
Expect no better from the Republicans. Despite Bush's sugary "compassionate conservative" rhetoric, the Grand Old Party is now dominated by a virulent right wing that thinks it is finally entitled to have its own way. Republicans haven't had even nominal control of Congress and the presidency (and, some would say, the Supreme Court) for half a century. The intervening years have spawned a generation of uncompromising ideologues like House Whip Tom DeLay and Majority Leader Dick Armey.
When it comes to helping the poor, they're Social Darwinists, but they're government activists when it comes to personal decisions about abortion or sexual orientation. On foreign policy, they're confirmed isolationists who want to spend billions building a highly dubious missile defense shield around the nation. They're eager to do battle on all fronts.
Perhaps Bush would have a small chance of finding a workable middle ground if he came to Washington loaded with experience and political finesse. But he doesn't. Even his father's old hands, like Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, have been out of power for eight years, and a lot has changed in America and the world in the interim.
Recent history suggests that Southern governors turned presidents have a hard time making the transition: Bill Clinton's White House was in chaos for the first two years, and Clinton had been in state politics for more than two decades before he assumed America's highest office. George W. has all of six years in state politics under his belt.
Had the American public given Bush a clear electoral mandate to move forward with one or two initiatives, he might still cobble together a small majority to enact them. But the public did not. According to opinion polls, Bush's signature $1.3 trillion tax cut was never popular, and the Republican speaker of the House has already pronounced it dead. The rest of Bush's platform didn't even register on the public's consciousness. Only about half of eligible voters even bothered going to the voting booths (a tiny fraction higher than in 1996) and the people who did vote were motivated more by their dislike of the candidate they voted against than by enthusiasm for the person they voted in favor of.
So what is the president-elect to do? Keep public expectations low, and pray that at least the economy stays reasonably strong - not to God but to Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
Bush's first and most important overture last week was to Greenspan. But the love-in with Greenspan didn't work. The very next day the Fed refused to lower short-term interest rates. If the Fed keeps them up when it meets in January, there's a better than even chance that the country will be plunged into a recession by late 2001. That will mean a Democratic takeover of Congress in 2002 and a one-term presidency.
George W.'s father lost his presidency in 1992 in large part because the economy was in the doghouse. Alan Greenspan put it there by raising short-term rates. While a good economy cannot guarantee that the party in power remains in power (as evidenced by the election just past), a bad economy guarantees that voters will kick it out. The Democrats, out of power for the first time in almost a half century, will be watching Greenspan's every move with morbid fascination.
