Is it just me, or has the Washington Post Outlook section gone completely Fox News on me? A couple weeks ago, there was a long article about why a bunch of other people should be "prosecuted" in the Libby debacle, including Fitzgerald and the press. Today, there’s a pair of op-eds under the heading "It’s Uphill for the Democrats." Oh, that liberal mainstream media, constantly spinning.... The lede on the continuation of this article on page B4 was "Winning in '06 Doesn't Guarantee Deocrats the White House . . . Unless They Play it Smart." Put that way, it's not so unreasonable an article, but when you lead off with "The Democrats' road to the White House in 2008 runs through Congress, and it is uphill all the way," and a warning about pandering and pork, it's "uphill all the way" for your credibility.
So, the thesis is: "The last time either party captured the White House two years after wresting control of both House and Senate in midterm elections was in 1920." Slightly less dramatically, the last four times the country's been in this situation, the White House did not come under control of the party controlling the Congress. So it can't happen now! Because politics works just like economics. It’s mathy. Never mind that 3 out of 4 of those contests involved incumbents running for re-election, and the fourth one involved Michael Dukakis. And, at an equivalent point in time, March in the year before the election, those incumbents had approval ratings of 44% (Clinton), 60% (Truman) and 70% (Eisenhower). Bush is at 30%.
And the thing is, there's a reason Bush is at 30 percent. Or, more accurately, a dozen reasons why Bush is at 30%. But the article cites to 1987, when the "Republicans’ prospects looked even bleaker than they do today," citing the deficit and the Iran-contra scandal (emphasis mine). So that one scandal, which at least half the country did not care about at all, made things "even bleaker" for the Republicans in the 1988 election than, lessee, there’s Libby/Plame, widespread Republican corruption, firing US Attorneys for prosecuting widespread Republican corruption, New Orleans, Walter Reed, and that little thing that led to Walter Reed – lying about WMDs in order to get over 3,000 troops killed and hundreds of thousands of troops maimed in Iraq. Yeah, I can see how Iran contra is about the same as that. Oh, wait, my bad. Iran contra was even bleaker! It's kind of ironic, I always thought people did not pay enough attention to Iran Contra, they just admired Ollie North's haircut and square jaw, and decided contras couldn't be so bad if they had a dance named after them.
Then there’s this mobius strip of an argument where pointing out the Republican administration’s failings will make people distrustful of the government and therefore they won’t vote Democrat. Wait, what? Pointing out the failings of the Republican government will make people vote Republican? Okay, I agree that the Democrats in Congress should actually do something in the next two years, like maybe raise the minimum wage. But the authors argue that Dems can't just point out "second-rate appointments," they have to do something. Dems have to fix FEMA. Last I checked, appointments were a presidential function and FEMA was part of the executive branch. Democrats sure will do a better job at executive appointments and managing the executive branch, once they’re actually IN the executive branch. In 2008.
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