Once again, George W. Bush is having a bad August and, again, the question on the table is whether a bad August for the president translates into a good one for Democrats.
Last summer, Democrats believed there was a chance that John Kerry could take Bush down. The news out of Iraq was bad; Kerry was leading in polls in places like West Virginia and Colorado; the Swift Boat vets had only just begun their slow dismemberment of the Democratic nominee; and the Republicans had not yet mauled Kerry the way they would at the GOP convention just before Labor Day.
There was hope that Bush's bad August would turn into a good November for the Democrats. We know how that turned out.
And, of course, there was August 2002, the age of Enron and other cooked books. That, too, appeared to be a perilous time for the president. His friends were getting caught cheating and lying and ruining the lives and fortunes of thousands of average American workers. Democrats could not wait to turn those troubles into votes that fall. Instead the Democrats got crushed, losing Senate seats in Minnesota and Missouri, with Bush taking a lead role in those Senate campaigns.
The polls suggest that public disaffection with the war in Iraq is real and growing, and that the White House is no longer as effective as it had been in selling Americans on the war. And that is why both the president's approval numbers and support for the Iraqi effort are tumbling.
This would seem a golden moment for Democrats, but there is a reason why they have been slow to capitalize. Except for DNC Chairman Howard Dean, most prominent Democrats, while they have challenged the conduct of the war, are on record as supporting the effort. As a result, they are not well-positioned to take advantage of the deepening public concern about what is going on in Iraq. Like Kerry, who was for the war before he was against it last summer, Democrats are hugely compromised on what may turn out to be their best weapon against the White House.
Any question about the political pitfalls Iraq will present for the president and his GOP allies was answered last week in the Ohio special election to replace former Representative Rob Portman, chosen by Bush last spring to be the U.S. trade representative. In an overwhelmingly Republican district, Democrat Paul Hackett, a Marine reservist and veteran of the Iraq War, came close to winning the seat, hammering Bush for his handling of the war. Former GOP State Representative Jean Schmidt beat Hackett 52 percent to 48 percent, a margin of fewer than 5,000 votes out of more than 112,000 cast. The most-quoted assessment of the results came from former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who said that the GOP ought to regard it as a “wake-up call.”
Democrats are hoping it serves a rallying cry for their troops.
“Even though we didn't win last week,” says one Hill operative, “a lot of members are treating it like a huge win.”
Which, for the record, it was not.
Keenly aware of the White House's turnaround capabilities, Democrats say they don't want to peak 16 months before the next election. They will have a few chances before then, however, to test themselves at the polls. In November voters in two states, Virginia and New Jersey, will chose new governors. More than 900 New Jersey residents perished on September 11, and with state property taxes in 2004 averaging just over $5,500, the Bush agenda of fighting terror and cutting taxes has some poignancy in the Garden State. It also gives underdog Republican Doug Forrester a chance against the Democratic favorite, Senator Jon Corzine. Yet if Corzine wins, as expected, it will, if nothing else, give Democrats something to cheer about in an otherwise quiet season.
A Democratic win in Virginia would be more telling. A conservative Democrat, Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine, is facing former Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, a traditionally conservative southern Republican, in the kind of race that Republicans in the South have won lately just by showing up. But Governor Mark Warner, a Democrat, defied the odds four years ago, and his success has placed him on many a short list for the 2008 presidential nomination. If Kaine wins, it could be interpreted as bad news for the GOP -- in the same way that Christie Todd Whitman's victory over Jim Florio in New Jersey in 1993 seemed to foretell doom for the Democrats in 1994.
But Bush in August is almost never the same as Bush in November, especially when November -- the important one, that is -- is 15 months away.
Terence Samuel is the chief congressional correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. His column about politics appears each week in the Prospect's online edition.
