GOP congressional leaders are getting ready for the new session of Congress by spending a few days at the Tides Inn, a beautiful place at the mouth of the Rappahannock in the Northern Neck of Virginia. Meanwhile, House Democrats will convene next week in a windowless conference room in the basement of the Capitol to hammer out a strategy for dealing with the newly re-elected Republican president and his expanded majorities in Congress. Guess which event will be more fun. (Hint: Go with the golf course.)
Whether they're at Tides Inn or in the conference room, though, the attendees will have something in common: Each party will begin strategizing for a reordered political landscape that will be Washington in 2005, and each must confront its image and role as an opposition party.
Simply put: Democrats need to embrace it; Republicans need to get over it. One huge explanation for the gridlock in Washington over the last decade is the inability, or unwillingness, of each side to embrace its intended role. Everybody is off script. After 50 years in the minority, Republicans seemed unable to make the switch and become a party that governs. And even after 10 years in the majority, their image of revolutionaries and agitators persists. Democrats, on the other hand, have continued to act like a government in exile, even as their grasp on power continues to slip. They've always acted like they're going to be returned to the majority status any minute now, and GOP control is nothing more that a weird historical anomaly.
The result has been no real governing majority willing enough, or secure enough, to do the work of legislating -- cutting the deals and making the compromises, taking half a loaf when a whole one is not available, pushing the rock a little way up the hill until the next time you get to push it a little farther. At the same time, there was has been no loyal opposition forcefully making a case for a different way. Democrats, after all, nominated a presidential ticket with two guys who voted for the Iraq War to oppose a president who was most vulnerable for having started the war. In the end, John Kerry had to run against a war he voted for. And Democrats, clobbered once again at the polls, may finally have embraced the idea that they are the minority opposition party. And maybe for a while.
“They [Republicans] are the ones who control everything in Washington,” says Harry Reid, the new Senate Democratic leader. “They are the ones with both oars in the water.”
These days, the government seems to be composed of two opposition parties. Republicans, still opposed to the size and scope of the government, often have to spend a lot of time being against much of what they control. That's whey there's no transportation bill. They were also forced to again bundle much of the appropriations legislation to fund the government for next year. And the landmark legislation intended as a key congressional response to September 11 is dead in the water because of Republican opposition to a bipartisan bill supported by the White House. The GOP leadership won't bring it to a vote because it doesn't want it to pass with Democratic help. That might hurt the image of Republican control and unity. But is this strategy a way of running the country or maintaining a political machine?
By definition, the GOP gathering at the Tides Inn has to be scored as a celebration. Victory makes everything sweeter. I bet the drinks are colder, the tee shots longer and straighter. Leaders of both chambers have been taking stock, figuring out how to take advantage of this moment when they control all the levers of power in Washington. And the White House involvement makes it even more festive. Among the attendees is none other than “the architect” himself, Karl Rove. There is, after all, all that political capital to spend. But before they get to that they might want to figure how to run the place better -- maybe how to pass a highway or energy bill, maybe get the appropriations done in time, and a little intelligence reform wouldn't hurt, either.
The Democrats, meanwhile, say their meeting is not another postmortem of the election. “It's more about the future,” says one senior aide.
Just like wakes are about the living, not the dead. To their credit, Democrats understand that the White House intends to overhaul Social Security and reform the tax code, and they are pretty sure they're not going to like it. So they're getting ready to tweak their message and their message machine and maybe fight back. Among those scheduled to address the gathering is University of California, Berkeley professor George Lakoff, an expert on cognitive linguistics who believes that the key to better communication is the development of better metaphors.
But sticking with some old metaphors for the moment, Reid is setting up a “war room” and has hired some gunslingers -- Jim Manley, from Ted Kennedy's press staff, and Phil Singer, from Chuck Schumer's shop and just off the Kerry campaign -- to run it. Reid has given every indication that he doesn't expect relations to improve with the GOP, and he seems to be assembling some kind of public-relations militia in response. He's taking control of every piece of the message apparatus he can put his hands on -- the Democratic Policy Committee, the Democratic Steering Committee, and the Democratic Communications Committee. And he's told the Senate historians that he'll no longer give a brief history lesson every Tuesday before the Democratic caucus lunch. He's decided it's about the future. And that's not a metaphor.
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.
