Oh, how the winds have shifted and how ill they blow for the majority.
Tom DeLay is under indictment, Bill Frist is under subpoena, Harriet Miers is under attack, and George W. Bush is under 40. "President George W. Bush's job approval rating has fallen to a new low of 39 percent in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday." That was the news, as reported by the Associated Press, that the White House had to go to bed with on Wednesday night. Frankly, it's a wonder anyone over there is getting any sleep at all: The poll also found that only 28 percent of the sample thinks the country is going in the right direction, suggesting the easy conclusion that almost three-quarters of Americans believe that the Bush crowd is taking us under.
But the president, who has yet to recover from his post-Katrina dunking, is dealing with a storm surge of his own. This time, it's from the right wing of his party, which is howling about his choice of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. To the far right, she's not enough of a confirmed right-winger. (Which seems a little like questioning whether James Brown has enough soul.) The White House response to the far right's concerns was to transmit secret messages to the right through his medium, Karl Rove. Rove called James Dobson to let him know that Miers was an evangelical Christian who attended a very conservative church in Texas and was either a member of, or active in, the Texas Right to Life movement. Then the president himself saw fit to inform us on Wednesday that, "Part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion." Which is fine until her religion becomes part of our lives.
The church lady revelations were an attempt to mollify the right, and they may quell the uprisings in those ranks, but they will do little to solve the president's approval problems. They're mounting so fast, a levee must be broken somewhere.
When Bush surprised everybody with John Roberts's nomination, even skeptical Democrats were forced, in the end, to concede that Roberts seemed as ready as was possible to be chief justice of the United States. It was something of a departure for the president: He did not choose someone he knew well, but someone well known and well qualified. But, apparently swelled by the success of that strategy, he ditched it and retreated to his comfortable universe, where friendships and loyalty seem to be the highest qualifications for everything from chief economic advisor to FEMA director. Now Harriet Miers, accomplished in many ways, is under fire from partisans on the left and the right who think she got chosen thanks to cronyism. But those poll numbers show that regular folks think the whole thing is a little rancid, too: In the NBC poll, less than 30 percent thought Miers was sufficiently qualified for the job. Turning that perception around, when gas is $4 a gallon and the death toll Iraq is soaring, will be tough. One has to wonder whether the Miers nomination is going under. That may seem premature, but the only thing keeping her nomination afloat now is the president's habitual determination to never admit that he's wrong. Expect nastiness in buckets when and if those hearings begin.
The good news for Miers is that the Roberts hearings proved once again that rigorous preparation, a dazzling legal intellect, and a sense of humor can be enough to get you where you want to be. Especially if you don't answer the important questions.
The swirl of bad news for the GOP raises some important questions: What does this mean for Democrats? Are they sufficiently organized, motivated, and prepared to take advantage of the Republicans' misfortune? Can they roll up all the missteps, stumbles, distrusts, and disasters in a single coherent response -- one that both defines their values and sinks the GOP at the same time? The answer to this question is usually whispered, because so far, it's either "no" or "not yet." Two weeks ago, in a column gravely headlined "Democrats in Disarray," Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne captured the bittersweet quality of the moment: "Over the past several weeks, it was impossible not to run into Bush critics who would shake their heads and complain: 'Yes, but where are the Democrats? Who are our leaders? What do they have to say?'"
Good questions all, but for now, Democrats are going to have to take Rilke's advice and learn to "love the questions themselves." At the moment the answers are tentative. Still, there is reason for Democrats to take heart.
First, there is the odd fact that the first person to publicly mention Harriet Miers' name as a potential court nominee was Harry Reid, Democratic leader of the Senate. His office insists that there was "no Machiavellian plot to sow dissension in the Republican ranks." But that was after a long hearty laugh.
Also heartening is that, according to the NBC poll, 48 percent of people said they wanted Democrats in control of the Congress, while 39 percent said they would prefer to see the GOP remain in control. And November 2006 is only a few disasters away.
But most interestingly was Rahm Emanuel's turn on Meet The Press. Emanuel, chair of the House Democrats' campaign committee, laid out "five quick ideas" to address "the future of the country" on the program two weeks ago. Their value will be debated at length for months, but that almost doesn't matter right now. Because what was most telling was the response Emanuel's ideas elicited from his GOP counterpart, Tom Reynolds, chair of the National Republican Campaign Committee. "Those," Reynolds said, "are the first solutions that have come out of anyone's mouth … that you at least put on the table."
This notion of the mere existence of Democratic ideas -- and on national television at that -- has to be regarded as a crucial step forward, because even with Bush under pressure, it'll take ideas on the table for the Democrats to get their heads off the chopping block.
Terence Samuel is the former chief congressional correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. His column about politics appears each week in the Prospect's online edition.
