Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (310403)	10/23/2002 12:25:03 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

OUTSIDE THE BOX URL: opinionjournal.com Plus Ça Change At a time of uncertainty, voters won't throw the bums out. BY PETE DU PONT Wednesday, October 23, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT In less than two weeks Americans will go to the polls to decide whether to change the political balance of our government. Historically the party controlling the White House usually loses legislative seats in its first midterm election; the political parties of the last six presidents (LBJ through Bill Clinton) have lost an average of 27 House and two Senate seats. In their first midterm elections the three Democratic presidents averaged a loss of 38 House and five Senate seats; the three Republicans averaged minus 15 House seats and plus one Senate seat. In only one of the 14 midterm elections since World War II--in 1998--has the party of an incumbent president gained seats in the House. So what will happen on Nov. 5? My guess is that the voters will choose to keep the balance pretty much as it is, a Republican majority in the House and a slim Democratic edge in the Senate, because the public's instinct to reduce an incumbent president's power in the legislative branch of government has been overwhelmed by the extraordinary events of the past year. Significant events produce political and policy changes. The 1930s depression elected Franklin Roosevelt and dramatically changed America's political philosophy. The economic downturn and the ineptitude of President Carter's handling of the economy and the Iran hostage crisis led to Ronald Reagan's supply-side economic policies and the prosperity of the '80s, just as the 1990s recession ("It's the economy stupid") replaced the first President Bush with Bill Clinton. But such directional changes in American government seldom happen, because people are inherently cautious and there needs to be a strong and obvious reason for significant political change. One such reason in 2002 might be the worsening performance of the economy. The loss of two million jobs and the rise in unemployment, weak economic growth, and the sharp decline in the investment markets and the values of IRAs and 401(k)s are valid reasons for voters to seek a change in government policies. The Bush administration's economic team has not been effective, just the kind of situation that historically has created the climate for political change. But militating against that pressure for change is the widely felt uneasiness about America's security and the challenges thrust on us by a new and different international reality. There is also an understanding that the Bush administration has significantly changed the course of U.S. security policy and that the new policy is a work in progress. The external realities that are shaping American thinking as the midterm elections approach start with Iraq's attitude and actions. Iraq is a continuing threat to America's security, it is still creating weapons of mass destruction, still lying to the United Nations, is still a dangerous nation and will continue to be such until someone does something about it. As we have seen in the past week, North Korea has not changed since it invaded South Korea half a century ago. It is still a Stalinist dictatorship, has a massive and aggressive military, is still deceiving the U.S., still wants to control South Korea, and is aggressively seeking nuclear weapons, which would be a significant threat to Asia and the U.S. The terrorist massacres that began in Beirut in 1983 have continued through the Pan Am 103 bombing in 1988, the World Trade Center in 1993, the two U.S. embassy bombings in 1998, the USS Cole attack in 2000, Sept. 11 and the French tanker and the Bali nightclub bombings of the past few weeks. With the exception of President Reagan's retaliatory bombing of Libya following the Berlin nightclub bombing in 1986 (in which two American soldiers died), the Afghan military action was America's only significant response to all these aggressions. It was a success, but terrorist acts will threaten us for many years to come. Finally, continental Europe's attitude toward international aggression is still what it was in the 1930s: Appease the dictators and they will go away, or at least be nicer. As historian Paul Johnson observed last week in The Wall Street Journal, "the dispirited democratic societies of the 1930s were similarly reluctant to take arms against the growing dictators of the period." These realities have led Americans to conclude that if there is to be any lessening of the threat that terrorism and nations like Iraq and North Korea pose, it will have to come from us. Thus the new national-security policies of the Bush administration make some sense. For the past decade or so America has shrugged off terrorist violence, but the events of Sept. 11 motivated President Bush to change that policy. He rejected the idea that a military response to violence against us is wrong, said that shrugging off terrorist attacks would only encourage them and so action must be taken. Beginning in Afghanistan and continuing now in Iraq, America would aggressively protect our interests by pre-empting serious threats to our security. As pretty much everyone in the country agrees--whichever side of the argument you might be on--this is a fundamental change in direction for U.S. policy, a decisive doctrine new to our thinking and very different from the passivity of the past. This election season Americans are thinking through these changes. We recognize the new world order we are in, threatened now not by the broad military might of the Soviet Union but by the narrow menace of intrusive terrorist acts. We understand that there must be a different policy to reflect the different circumstances we are facing. And so, instead of elections following the pattern of the past 50 years with the president's party losing seats in the midterm congressional elections, on Nov. 5 there will be little change. The Republicans will surely control the House, the Democrats most likely the Senate; and the debate about how America should proceed regarding threats to our national security will go on apace. Things change slowly in politics and policy, and in the midst of one change--from multilateralism and containment to aggressive self-defense against terrorism--the voters are unlikely to reverse course. The threats to our security have been proven real, and so we must have a real response; the Bush administration has created one, and the voters are unlikely to change it so soon after its beginning. Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is policy chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears Wednesdays.