A Tale Of Three Houses

Imagine that you are a political Goldilocks. But instead of finding a house inhabited by three bears, you instead encounter three separate houses instead. And just like the Goldilocks of old, you are overcome with an insatiable curiosity about the condition, and contents, of each one.

Let the exploration begin.

You pick one of the three houses at random and open the front door. Inside this one you find American Spectator contributing editor Jed Babbin, who welcomes you with a grunt. You ask him what's the matter, and he grumbles in return, "This is the ostensibly Republican-controlled U.S. Senate, that's what! Would you like to hear what an utter and complete mess these !#$%^&*ed elephants have made of this place? Would you?" You reply with a wary, "Oooooookay...."

Mr. Babbin launches into a long, rambling, dismal rant that quickly douses your previous cheerful mood and you begin to tune him out and wait for his frustrated soliloquoy to run out of steam. But your conscious mind does snag some lowlights here and there:

There are those who want to prevent Iraq from becoming another Vietnam. There are those who don't care if it does, and those who are doing their level best to ensure it will be before the 2006 congressional election. After their act of political pusillanimity last week, it is still clear that Senate Republicans fall within one of the first two categories. But as to which we are entitled to wonder. When Churchill described some of his opponents as "decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent," he might have had the Senate Republicans in mind.

The Senate reached a new low when it passed a Republican-sponsored resolution distancing the President's party from his position that the war in Iraq must be won before American troops are withdrawn. To understand this thoroughly, it must be placed in the context of the political Chernobyl the Senate has become.

As the Thanksgiving recess came upon it, the Senate had reached an impasse on the renewal of the soon-to-expire Patriot Act. It punted the Alito nomination to next year, and still failed to confirm other urgent presidential nominations such as Deputy Defense Secretary-nominee Gordon England. It failed to enact tax cuts or even the minuscule $50 billion (over five years) in budget cuts proposed as their fainthearted attempt to reduce federal spending. There has been nothing done about Social Security, illegal immigration, and just about everything else the country needs it to accomplish. (Surely, this is not all the Senate's fault. But the White House can't take all the blame for the utter failure of the Senate leadership to get things done). The Senate did, however, manage to allow an automatic pay raise for members to take effect - another $3,100, raising to $165,200 the pay scale for rank-and-file members. It's labeled a cost-of-living increase because none of the congressional leaders on either side of the hill have the chutzpah to call it a merit pay raise....

You start to zone out, wishing that you had stumbled upon the gingerbread house instead. Your stomach, as if on cue, rumbles. Heck, even some bear steak starts sounding good right about now.

Then, political animal that you are, your ears perk back up at something they catch in Mr. Babbin's unfolding lament:

The Senate Republicans' desperate maneuver to distance themselves from the Iraq war leaves them in the position to do more next year if the Iraq situation isn't as perfect as they'd like it to be, or if they see losses in the coming election (or both). The president needs to veto this legislation. If he doesn't, he can expect no better from the Senate next year. Those who have accomplished this retreat, and paved the way for the next, are helping accumulate a defeat.

This isn't what you were looking for at all when you came upon those three houses, so you get up, thank Mr. Babbin for his time, and exit the first house as quickly as ettiquete and decorum allow. Noticing a mercifully placed Twinkie tree nearby, you pick a few and take the edge off your snacking urge, all the while trying to shake the eery impression of an inability to recall any time when a Twinkie tree wasn't without its spongy fruit.

Before you can be weirded out any further, you knock on the front door of house #2. It promptly opens to reveal boyish National Review editor Rich Lowry, who hospitatiously invites you in and offers you a "Happy 80th birthday, WFB!" bumper sticker. Not wanting to spoil his apparent good cheer after your Babbin experience by mentioning that you don't own a car and couldn't navigate one through the forest anyway, you accept the bumper sticker and hope that this encounter proves to be a little more buoyant.

"Where am I, Mr. Lowry," you begin.

"Why, Goldilocks, you're in the U.S. House of Representatives," Lowry replies.

Leaving aside the matter of how he knew your name, but taking care not to go any further into the house and making a mental note not to let him get between you and the door, you ask, "Is this house in any better shape than the U.S. Senate?"

Lowry replies, "No, not really. But that doesn't matter, because the GOP here has a better ground game."

If Babbin had you depressed, Lowry threatened to put you to sleep with an insatiable dose of minutia:

After ten years in the majority, House Republicans have become master electoral mechanics; they know the advantages of incumbency the way your plumber knows your sink. The chairman of the House Republican Campaign Committee, Representative Tom Reynolds of New York, calls it fundamental “block and tackle” politics. It is an unglamorous, uninspiring formula, but one that makes it very likely that even after suffering a year that could hardly be more dreadful, the House Republican majority will live to fight another day....

[A]s writer Ken Baer pointed out in The New Republic, an ideological mismatch that had existed for decades in the South — a conservative region, but represented by Democrats in Congress — passed forever from the scene in 1994. Now, congressmen tend to be good fits for their districts, so the playing field for Democrats will be uncomfortably tight.

Congressional expert Charles Cook sees only 30 competitive races so far, 18 of them for seats held by Republicans. In 1994, there were 106 competitive races, 95 of them in seats held by Democrats. In 1992, 56 Democrats won their seats with less than 55% of the vote, a sign of a shaky hold on their districts for the 1994 elections. Last year only 19 Republicans won by similarly slim margins.

This means Democrats have a tough standard to reach to take back the House if the current landscape holds — namely, perfection. They would have to win every one of their competitive districts, then win nearly every one — 15 out of 18 — of the Republican ones.

It may have been dull, but that does buck you up some, since you recall from encounters elsewhere in the forest that as unpopular as congressional Republicans allegedly are, Democrats are even more reviled by the voters.

Passing on Mr. Lowry's offer of a guided tour, you take your leave and move on to the third house, which, as fortune would have it, is dazzlingly white. You knock on the door, but nobody answers. Testing the knob and finding it unlocked, you open the door and peer inside. On a near table is a note that says: "Am out defending the war. Be back in a few. W."

Sorry that you missed the President, you notice a newspaper clipping nearby with parts highlighted in magic marker. Picking it up you read the following:

While 27% think the nation is going in the right direction, 63% say it is on the wrong track, including six out of 10 of those who live in red states and four out of 10 Republicans. President Bush’s 42 percent favorability rating is countered by the 55% who view him unfavorably.

You search for info on the survey sample and snort derisively - "501 'adults'". Immediately your mind adjusts those margins ten percentage points in the President's favor to reflect what a sample of "likely voters" would have said. Still no great shakes for him, but not nearly as dire as this paper is trying to depict.

Then you notice the highlighted portion:

But despite this dissatisfaction, if a presidential recall election were possible, only 42% would vote to fire President Bush, while 53% would vote to have him remain in office.

Making the same mental adjustment, you see that a hypothetical recall would go down by over twenty percentage points. That's damn near a landslide.

Leaving behind a "Sorry I missed you" note, you exit the third and last house, sit down on a nearby log to munch on some more Twinkies, and pause to reflect. The Senate is in horrible shape and getting worse, the House isn't much better but will get by, and the President is in better shape than most people believe. Given that the sixth year of a presidency is typically disastrous for the party in power, these developments aren't, historically, all that remarkable. And the President and his party are, belatedly, pushing back against their "critics." If it's too late to repair the damage their previous passivity caused, they can at least prevent it from getting any worse, and preserve a hold on the power they finally attained a year ago.

A vulture's cry rouses you from your maunderings, and you notice, off in the distance, a house you haven't seen before. Black and gnarled, swaddled in darkness with lightning-flecked storm clouds over it, an instinct tells you precisely what it is and where you are - "Chappaqua, New York!" you exclaim. But then you shrug and turn away. That house is three years away, and besides, you're Goldilocks, not Snow White.

As heartburn begins to rise in your esophagus, you resolve to trick Hansel and Grettle, the two fat little monsters who you realize planted these bogus tobasco-laced Twinkie trees, into exploring that house of darkness. "I'll just tell 'em it's an Old Country Buffet that is chronically late paying its power bill," you mutter to yourself.

A cackle suddenly burbles up from your innards, but you resolutely squash it. No sense bringing out the heavy 2008 artillery too soon, after all.

[HT: B4B]