Deliverance for Democrats?

Not so fast. It's going to take a lot more than indictments to defeat the GOP.

By Todd Gitlin

Nov 2, 2005 | George W. Bush's season of defeats does offer the appearance of deliverance for Democrats. The notorious second-term jinx has brought him low in proportion to the heights of power he once scaled. Bush got what he wished for -- unbridled power -- and so succumbed to the ancient curse: May you get what you wish for.

But while Harry Reid's move Tuesday to throw the Senate into closed session to demand answers on Iraq intelligence was a good start, Democrats need a lot more of such fighting spirit to prevail, despite all Bush's troubles.

First the good ship Harriet Miers was torpedoed after movement conservatives rose up in righteous revolt (but for James Dobson, who was whispered who knows which sweet nothings to keep him in line). Then the cleanest of prosecutors galloped in, wearing the whitest of hats and astride the whitest of horses, as investigating judges have done in recent years to take down Italian corruption when political parties were on the take and journalists had more amusing fish to fry. Patrick Fitzgerald alleged numerous lies on the part of Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's "Cheney," and couldn't say whether Cheney himself was culpable in the White House campaign to smear Joseph Wilson, a conscientious objector to their war campaign. In the process, Fitzgerald grazed awfully close to the vice president and simultaneously decided to keep a Washington grand jury in business while he looks into a whole stud farm of Augean stables: Karl Rove's, above all, but also the Italian secret services that in 2002 colluded with who knows whom to circulate forged Nigerien documents that helped Bush ease his way into the calamitous Iraq war. If it wasn't bad enough for Bush that Libby was out, Fitzgerald let it be known that he was not necessarily done cleaning out bad guys. And to add insult to injury, along came Bush's once-staunch ally, Silvio Berlusconi, his own reelection campaign looming nigh, to declare that in 2003 he tried to talk Bush out of going to war against Saddam Hussein. Berlusconi has been telling this story for at least a year. So much for the fervor of Bush's "coalition of the willing."

Meanwhile, Bush had to say farewell to the pliable Alan Greenspan, durable keeper of the Fed and sprinkler of holy water on Bush's immense deficit pileup. The president then decided to go respectable with Ben Bernanke as the replacement rather than go wild on the supply side with somebody else. Bush's dreams of dragging Social Security into the quagmire of privatization and consigning the inheritance tax to eternal hell are blasted.

Piling up in the background were a heap of other October surprises: Tom DeLay's appointments with Dallas prosecutor Ronnie Earle, Bill Frist's appointments with financial investigators, Jack Abramoff's appointments with prosecutors hither and yon (and who knows which of his cronies are facing their own showdowns), and New Orleans' many appointments with preventable misery and loss. Corruption and negligence have become the hallmarks of an administration that promised to install honor and efficiency where Democratic rascality and moral slovenliness governed before. Even senators of his own party have broken with Bush over the White House's laissez-faire policy toward torture.

Non-surprises also served to dash the president's aura of competence. There was that nasty little number: "American Deaths in Iraq Number 2,000." There was Bush's approval rating at least provisionally stuck on the wrong side of 40 percent. If Bush was still doing Bible study, he might have paid close attention to the Pharaonic plague chapters of Exodus.

No surprise, then, that George W. Bush's administration looks, this week, to be held together more by spit than cement. The lame duck quacks like a lame duck and walks like a lame duck so what else could it be? Presidents' second terms have a way of leaving a sick taste in their mouths, not to mention the mouths of many others, but it's hard to recall another administration whose second term has unraveled so far so fast.

Yet Bush is not without resources. His nomination of Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court may prove a stroke of intelligence in winning back offended movement conservatives, pundits and think-tankers who want a reliable judge. In any event, the nomination exhibits Bush striving to get back in charge -- or look as though he's already there. Stubborn as always, he resists with aplomb the calls, even from within Republican ranks, to clean up his inner circle. A man not devoid of cunning, even with Rove distracted, he prides himself on staying his course even when there is no obvious one. Bulldozer steadiness has worked for him before. (Perhaps it's the only thing that's worked for him before.) Blessed with a rock-hard faith in himself and whatever voices stay ringing within his ears as the likes of Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Wilkerson bail out, Bush plunges on.

There is, however, some rational basis for his monumental self-confidence. He has long understood that politics is rarely a contest for ideological preeminence, lasting glory or a dare of the universe. Far more deeply and often it amounts to a crude contest between winners and losers. Politics is a zero-sum game. Schadenfreude may be fun, but it doesn't translate into victory. And victory is the only prize that matters.

Bush must know, in other words, that whatever liberals may wish and however fervently they may wish it, the party in power will not fall of its own weight. Its seams can open up into gulfs -- chiefly between the Christian right and those whose hearts beat loudest for deregulation and tax cuts -- but still the imposing Republican Party machine rolls on, in proud possession of every branch of the national government and the midterm elections a long, long year away. Bush can squander his mandate, can fail to cash in on his claimed accountability moment, but his enemies, the Democrats, cannot win power back by default, or indictments, alone.

Next Page: A rollicking comeback for Democrats?

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