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WHITE HOUSE WATCH
Future Tense
by Ryan Lizza
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Post date 08.23.02 | Issue date 09.02.02 E-mail this article
If there is one lesson President George W. Bush is supposed to have learned from his father's presidency, it is that political capital disappears if it is not spent. George H. W. Bush's great mistake, the thinking goes, was that he failed to use his post-Gulf-war popularity to attack the domestic problems that concerned voters in 1992. So when Bush's approval ratings soared after September 11, White House aides promised that 43 would not repeat the mistakes of 41. Speaking to reporters last December, Bush Senior Adviser Karl Rove explained, "This president understands the perishability of [political] capital. You build up capital through right action, and you spend it. If you don't spend it, it's not like treasure stuck away at a storehouse someplace. It is perishable. It dwindles away."
Conservatives had hoped that Bush would spend his capital pushing the right's agenda through Congress. But there is scant evidence Bush ever intended to do so. Long before Enron, the White House decided against promoting Bush's Social Security plan in 2002. Bush hasn't wasted much energy fighting for his judicial nominees--51 are still pending before the Senate. And though the president opposed much of the important legislation passed by Congress this year--the farm bill, campaign finance reform, corporate accountability--he signed all of it into law. He hasn't issued a single veto.
What Bush has spent his political capital on is the 2002 midterm elections. Through August he will have visited 35 states, attended almost 50 fund-raisers, and raised about $110 million this year in support of dozens of Republican House, Senate, and gubernatorial candidates--a record that dwarfs Bill Clinton's 1994 politicking. And it's not just Bush. Vice President Dick Cheney has headlined some 50 separate Republican fund-raisers. The administration has tinkered with national policies and redirected federal resources to assist politically important areas of the country. Cabinet secretaries have fanned out to campaign in states and districts with competitive races. And long before the election season began, Bush and his aides personally recruited the strongest Republican candidates (like John Thune in the South Dakota Senate race) and stopped the weaker ones from running (like Tim Pawlenty in the Minnesota Senate race). In other words, Bush has spent a lot more time, energy, and political capital trying to elect a new Congress than he has spent working with the current one.
By injecting himself into almost every key race in the United States, Bush is--White House denials notwithstanding--turning himself into this election's major issue. Which has its dangers. For example, in South Dakota last week, Bush's failure to provide new drought relief for the state dominated coverage of his trip and hurt Thune, who had hoped having Bush at his side would gain him points with voters. And in California this week Bush's support for the doomed gubernatorial campaign of Bill Simon will become a widely covered liability for the president. It's true that midterms are always interpreted as a barometer of the country's happiness with the commander in chief; but by making the elections its top domestic priority, and by lending the president's credibility to so many candidates, the White House risks turning the election into a referendum on Bush.
few months ago tying Bush to Republican success seemed like a good bet. In a June 4 presentation, Rove cited several factors making the "midterm political landscape more favorable to Republicans": a "recovering economy," "increased importance of national security issues," and, most of all, an "extremely popular president." Today the first two are no longer operative: The economy is stagnant, consumer confidence is shaky, and a majority of voters are pessimistic about the economy's near-term prospects. On national security, polls show that voters are not inclined to cast their ballots based on the issue; worse, according to National Journal's Charlie Cook, the recent debate over attacking Iraq may have hurt Bush's approval rating. Which leads to Rove's third factor: "extremely popular president." At its current rate of decline, Bush's job approval on Election Day will be around 55 percent (it is currently in the mid-60s). As Rove himself noted in a slide titled "PRESIDENTS' STANDING MATTERS," historically in midterm elections when a president's approval rating is 50 percent to 59 percent, his party loses an average of 20 House seats.
The other fact that places Bush at the uncomfortable center of this fall's campaign is that it is taking place in red America. Most of the races that matter are being contested in states and districts Bush won in 2000. In the fight for control of the House, for example, Cook lists 39 races as truly competitive. Bush carried 23 of these in 2000. Of the twelve open seats (i.e., where there is no incumbent) that congressional handicapper Stuart Rothenberg identifies as the best opportunities for Democrats, Bush won nine. The battle for the Senate is also being waged in Bush territory. He won 13 of the 18 states with competitive Senate races. This raises expectations for Bush and his party. The better Democrats do in these red areas, the more the midterms will be seen as a personal defeat for Bush.
hich is why Bush is so closely linking his 2002 activity with his 2004 reelection strategy. There are 16 states where the margin of victory for Al Gore or Bush was five points or fewer. If you consider the combined votes of Gore and Ralph Nader, this list of close states expands to 20. Bush and Gore split these states eleven to nine in 2000, while Bill Clinton won every one at least once and 17 of them twice. This is where the 2004 election will be fought, and it is where Bush has concentrated the majority of his efforts this year. By The New Republic's count, 46 of his 75 political trips this year have been to these states, and almost half of his fund-raisers have been for candidates in them--even when there's little at stake in 2002. For example, Bush has traveled four times to Ohio this year and held one fund-raiser for incumbent Governor Bob Taft--even though there is no Senate race in Ohio this year and just one competitive House race, and Taft is one of the safest Republican gubernatorial candidates in the country. But Bush won Ohio by just 3.5 points, and the state is essential to his reelection.
The danger for Bush is that the more time he spends politicking out in the country, the more the 2002 election results will be interpreted as about him. This has already happened in the gubernatorial race in Florida, where Bush's brother is running for reelection; in the Senate race in South Dakota, considered a proxy battle between Bush and his Senate tormentor Tom Daschle; and in the gubernatorial and Senate races in Texas. Since these are all states Bush carried or where his candidates enjoy incumbency, he has already lost the expectations game in these races. If Republicans win all of them it will be a significant victory for him, but losing any one will be considered a giant defeat. And the number of races where Bush himself is the key issue is increasing. In Mississippi, Representative Charles Pickering, son of the Bush judicial nominee rejected by Senate Democrats, is in danger of losing. Hoping to avenge this defeat, Bush and Cheney have made the race a White House priority.
What's more, Bush has spent a great deal of energy wooing a set of special interests and religious and ethnic groups. He proposed a pro-coal energy plan, slapped tariffs on steel imports, signed an expensive farm bill, and tried to court Catholics and Hispanics with his faith-based initiative and immigration proposals. How these targeted groups treat Bush's favored candidates this year will give us the first indications of Bush's own prospects for 2004. The West Virginia race of Republican incumbent Shelley Moore Capito will be a referendum on Bush's coal policy. In Pennsylvania's fifteenth district, vulnerable Republican Patrick Toomey will find out how effective steel tariffs have been for the GOP. The competitive Senate races of Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri, and Minnesota will test his farm policy, while the two competitive House races in New Mexico that the White House has targeted will test Bush's wooing of Hispanics. Bush is spending his political capital alright, but if the GOP loses at the polls this fall he may find it has bought him nothing but trouble.
Ryan Lizza is an associate editor at TNR. |
