Warham
01-18-2006, 11:58 AM
The recipe for winning Congress seems simple enough: Take a president with plummeting popularity; add a prosecutor probing and indicting White House officials; mix in ethics investigations on Capitol Hill; and top it all off with a catchy national platform. It worked for the Republicans in 1994, and coming off last week's gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats believe that the same formula can work for them. House Democrats are even reported to be putting the finishing touches on their own version of the Contract With America.
But before Nancy Pelosi (or Rahm Emanuel for that matter) starts measuring for drapes in the speaker's office, Democrats need to stop trying to reverse engineer what happened in 1994. The Republican victory that year was the product of a confluence of unique events in American political history--from changes in campaign finance law to long-term partisan shifts--that are impossible to replicate. President Bush's sinking popularity may hurt his party next fall but, unlike Bill Clinton's disappointing first two years in office, it probably won't be enough to spark a full-fledged takeover by the opposition party.
To understand what happened in 1994, one needs to look at the congressional elections of 1992. The first election after the redistricting process, which takes place at the start of every decade, always tends to be volatile: New district lines create more open seats in growing states and pit incumbents against each other in stagnant states. In 1992, this volatility was compounded by a small, but important, change in the campaign finance laws. A decade earlier, Congress had forbidden candidates from converting campaign funds to personal use but exempted sitting members of Congress from the prohibition. In 1989, Congress voted to remove this grandfather clause effective in January 1993, making the 1992 election the last chance for congressmen to retire with their golden parachutes. Unsurprisingly, many took this early retirement package. The result was a postwar record of 67 congressmen who did not seek reelection.
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At the same time, the House bank scandal hit. The scandal had three key features: It was pervasive, understandable, and timely. In April 1992, the House Ethics Committee released a report that revealed 269 sitting congressmen had overdrafts at the taxpayer-subsidized House bank. This year's shenanigans--Congressmen Don Sherwood allegedly beating his girlfriend; Randy "Duke" Cunningham allegedly taking bribes from a defense contractor--appear by contrast to be isolated cases of bad behavior. Plus, while the misuse of federal campaign funds in state races--which Tom DeLay stands accused of--is a complex matter, all voters understand what it means to bounce a check. Finally, coming on the heels of the Keating Five investigation, the House Post Office scandal that took down Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, and Iran-Contra before that, the House bank scandal looked like more of the same from a broken, corrupt system. While voters' approval of Congress now may seem low (37 percent in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll), in April 1992 it was a paltry 17 percent.
Taken together, the stench of scandal and the new retirement rules helped produce an election year in 1992 that would have left a bigger mark on history if not for the seismic changes two years later. In 1992, the GOP enjoyed a nine-seat gain, and Clinton was elected with the largest loss of House seats for a winning president's party since 1960. More importantly, 110 new members were elected (the biggest number since 1948) and, of those reelected, 111 members won by 55 percent or less (the cut-off strategists use to judge competitiveness). In 1994, those freshmen--especially the 64 Democrats--were vulnerable, since the toughest reelection that any member of Congress usually faces is his or her first. And those congressmen who had just squeaked by in 1992 (including then-Speaker Tom Foley) had big targets on their backs for 1994.
Below all of this was the culmination of a tectonic shift in American politics: the realignment of the South. During the previous decade the "boll weevils" (conservative Southern Democrats) had played a critical role in passing major pieces of the Reagan agenda. Indeed, conservative Democrats were a large part of the Democratic caucus for the better part of the century, and the lack of any real Republican opposition kept them in office virtually for life. But throughout the 1980s, the South slowly drifted toward the GOP. Redistricting in 1990 (which created majority-minority districts that diluted Democratic strength in districts represented by Southern whites) combined with Clinton's lurches to the left in his first two years in office to finally push these conservative areas into their natural home: the Republican Party. By the time the ballots were counted in 1994, the South's congressional delegation was, for the first time since Reconstruction, majority Republican.
The ideological divisions that separate Republicans from Democrats have only become more deeply entrenched in the years since. As Mark Schmitt pointed out last week in The American Prospect Online, there are now only 18 districts that are mismatched in Democrats' favor--that is, were taken by John Kerry in 2004 and sent a Republican to Congress. In 1994, there were 53 districts mismatched in the other direction, meaning they had supported President Bush in 1992 while sending a Democrat to Congress. In addition, last year's freshman class was the third-smallest since 1913. And there's nothing pushing members of Congress to retire before 2006.
That doesn't mean it's impossible for Democrats to win back the House next November. More indictments in either the Valerie Plame leak case or the Abramoff scandal could taint the entire Republican Party. And Bush's stubbornness could finally catch up with him if the situation in Iraq and our nation's finances continue to grow worse.
But if Democrats want to win, they should stop fetishizing the 1994 Republican takeover. It resulted from a once-in-a-lifetime convergence of institutional changes, historical trends, and some blind luck. With the ground less fertile in 2006, a new Contract with America containing simple, poll-tested nostrums won't be enough (and, in fact, most studies show that the 1994 Contract contributed little to the GOP win). What's needed is a coherent agenda, built around deeply held principles, that speaks to the challenges Americans face today: Islamo-fascist terrorism, a global and interdependent economy, underperforming schools, an inefficient and increasingly ineffective health care system, and a looming fiscal crisis. Put answers to these problems in a contract, and voters will readily sign.
Kenneth Baer , former Senior Speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore and author of Reinventing Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton, runs Baer Communications, a Democratic consulting firm.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w051114&s=baer111405
But before Nancy Pelosi (or Rahm Emanuel for that matter) starts measuring for drapes in the speaker's office, Democrats need to stop trying to reverse engineer what happened in 1994. The Republican victory that year was the product of a confluence of unique events in American political history--from changes in campaign finance law to long-term partisan shifts--that are impossible to replicate. President Bush's sinking popularity may hurt his party next fall but, unlike Bill Clinton's disappointing first two years in office, it probably won't be enough to spark a full-fledged takeover by the opposition party.
To understand what happened in 1994, one needs to look at the congressional elections of 1992. The first election after the redistricting process, which takes place at the start of every decade, always tends to be volatile: New district lines create more open seats in growing states and pit incumbents against each other in stagnant states. In 1992, this volatility was compounded by a small, but important, change in the campaign finance laws. A decade earlier, Congress had forbidden candidates from converting campaign funds to personal use but exempted sitting members of Congress from the prohibition. In 1989, Congress voted to remove this grandfather clause effective in January 1993, making the 1992 election the last chance for congressmen to retire with their golden parachutes. Unsurprisingly, many took this early retirement package. The result was a postwar record of 67 congressmen who did not seek reelection.
advertisement
At the same time, the House bank scandal hit. The scandal had three key features: It was pervasive, understandable, and timely. In April 1992, the House Ethics Committee released a report that revealed 269 sitting congressmen had overdrafts at the taxpayer-subsidized House bank. This year's shenanigans--Congressmen Don Sherwood allegedly beating his girlfriend; Randy "Duke" Cunningham allegedly taking bribes from a defense contractor--appear by contrast to be isolated cases of bad behavior. Plus, while the misuse of federal campaign funds in state races--which Tom DeLay stands accused of--is a complex matter, all voters understand what it means to bounce a check. Finally, coming on the heels of the Keating Five investigation, the House Post Office scandal that took down Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, and Iran-Contra before that, the House bank scandal looked like more of the same from a broken, corrupt system. While voters' approval of Congress now may seem low (37 percent in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll), in April 1992 it was a paltry 17 percent.
Taken together, the stench of scandal and the new retirement rules helped produce an election year in 1992 that would have left a bigger mark on history if not for the seismic changes two years later. In 1992, the GOP enjoyed a nine-seat gain, and Clinton was elected with the largest loss of House seats for a winning president's party since 1960. More importantly, 110 new members were elected (the biggest number since 1948) and, of those reelected, 111 members won by 55 percent or less (the cut-off strategists use to judge competitiveness). In 1994, those freshmen--especially the 64 Democrats--were vulnerable, since the toughest reelection that any member of Congress usually faces is his or her first. And those congressmen who had just squeaked by in 1992 (including then-Speaker Tom Foley) had big targets on their backs for 1994.
Below all of this was the culmination of a tectonic shift in American politics: the realignment of the South. During the previous decade the "boll weevils" (conservative Southern Democrats) had played a critical role in passing major pieces of the Reagan agenda. Indeed, conservative Democrats were a large part of the Democratic caucus for the better part of the century, and the lack of any real Republican opposition kept them in office virtually for life. But throughout the 1980s, the South slowly drifted toward the GOP. Redistricting in 1990 (which created majority-minority districts that diluted Democratic strength in districts represented by Southern whites) combined with Clinton's lurches to the left in his first two years in office to finally push these conservative areas into their natural home: the Republican Party. By the time the ballots were counted in 1994, the South's congressional delegation was, for the first time since Reconstruction, majority Republican.
The ideological divisions that separate Republicans from Democrats have only become more deeply entrenched in the years since. As Mark Schmitt pointed out last week in The American Prospect Online, there are now only 18 districts that are mismatched in Democrats' favor--that is, were taken by John Kerry in 2004 and sent a Republican to Congress. In 1994, there were 53 districts mismatched in the other direction, meaning they had supported President Bush in 1992 while sending a Democrat to Congress. In addition, last year's freshman class was the third-smallest since 1913. And there's nothing pushing members of Congress to retire before 2006.
That doesn't mean it's impossible for Democrats to win back the House next November. More indictments in either the Valerie Plame leak case or the Abramoff scandal could taint the entire Republican Party. And Bush's stubbornness could finally catch up with him if the situation in Iraq and our nation's finances continue to grow worse.
But if Democrats want to win, they should stop fetishizing the 1994 Republican takeover. It resulted from a once-in-a-lifetime convergence of institutional changes, historical trends, and some blind luck. With the ground less fertile in 2006, a new Contract with America containing simple, poll-tested nostrums won't be enough (and, in fact, most studies show that the 1994 Contract contributed little to the GOP win). What's needed is a coherent agenda, built around deeply held principles, that speaks to the challenges Americans face today: Islamo-fascist terrorism, a global and interdependent economy, underperforming schools, an inefficient and increasingly ineffective health care system, and a looming fiscal crisis. Put answers to these problems in a contract, and voters will readily sign.
Kenneth Baer , former Senior Speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore and author of Reinventing Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton, runs Baer Communications, a Democratic consulting firm.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w051114&s=baer111405