Washington -- All right, so in my sanguine commentary on
Campaign 2002 over the past few weeks I have been proved wrong.
When it came to making a precise prognostication of the outcome in
the Senate, my optimism blurred my vision. It is now incumbent upon
me to be big enough to admit my error. "My hunch is," I mistakenly
wrote two weeks ago, "that enough seats will actually go to the
Republicans to give them a one-seat majority in the Senate." My
mistake -- it now appears Republicans have a two-seat majority in
the Senate. Possibly the Republicans will pick up another Senate
seat in next month's Louisiana run-off. So here I am before you,
eating humble pie; but I am washing it down with champagne, Pol
Roger.
After all, I was right in predicting that President George W.
Bush would gain congressional seats, unlike earlier Presidents who
almost always suffered congressional losses at their first midterm
reckoning. In the past one hundred years the White House's triumph
has been replicated only three times. All television's gabbing
heads the weekend before the election entered into a dirge,
predicting Republican losses and a Democratic majority in the
Senate. Only Larry Kudlow, writing in the Washington Times
(the Good Times), shared my optimism -- hats off,
Larry.
I think I was also right two weeks ago when I laid down my
reasons for the forthcoming Bush victory. I attributed it to the
country's "mood" and to the gentlemanly tone the President set.
Various ominous events have put the American voter in a
"vigilant" mood. We suffered a vile terrorist attack on our shores
on September 11, 2001. It reminded the citizenry of prior terrorist
attacks Americans suffered beyond our shores in the 1990s, attacks
that the government treated lightly. Saddam's truculence, North
Korea's cavalier rebuilding of its nuclear weapons program and the
brutal Washington sniper attacks intensified Americans' growing
sense of vigilance. On November 5 they put their trust in a
President who has demonstrated that he will take more than "wag the
dog" measures to deal with our enemies.
What was equally consequential in Campaign 2002 was the
President's gentlemanly tone. He really was serious when he came to
Washington promising to "change the tone," and the American people
favor the change. As Robert L. Bartley, editor of the Wall
Street Journal, has remarked après the vote,
"As for the Democrats, the big story is that voters have in a big
way repudiated the McAuliffe-Carville-Clinton smash-mouth
politics." The electorate is tired of their bully tactics and
suspicious of their habit of playing fast and loose with ethics and
the law.
These Democrats have lost the electorate's trust. They tried to
make "corporate ethics" an issue, but the electorate understood
that the party of Clinton has no claim on ethics. The corporations
guilty of ethical and legal violations had contributed heavily to
both parties, and the ethical standards the corporate cads followed
were those of Bill Clinton, a man famed for his impudent deceits
and for commissions of perjury and contempt of court. What
credibility could McAuliffe have on "corporate ethics" when he
himself had seen his $100,000 investment in Global Crossing turn
into an $18 million profit? And how much trust can one place in a
party whose national chairman, McAuliffe, the night of his historic
defeat tells Larry King, "Tonight was a good night for the
Democrats"?
Moreover, the American people are famous for their sense of fair
play. With increasing frequency they have witnessed the Democrats
breaking the rules or placing themselves above the law. The
widespread charges of voting fraud immediately before the election
were almost always instances of Democratic voting fraud. The
unedifying spectacle of the New Jersey Supreme Court denying a
Republican candidate certain victory by changing the rules in
mid-contest is another example of a corrupt party in action. In
both New Jersey and Minnesota the Democrats moved from their
proclaimed pieties about campaign finance reform to attempting to
end campaigns altogether or at least shortening them to their
favor.
On November 5 the bullies were routed. One of their most blatant
acts of bully politics has been their treatment of White House
judicial nominees, some of whom have had their good names sullied
for life by charges of racism and perfidy. Now the President's will
have control of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and perhaps his
gentlemanly tone will replace that of the devious Senator Patrick
Leahy, a man who has demonstrated contempt for good manners, good
government, and the Bill of Rights. He in his partisan fevers has
left the federal judiciary enfeebled by vacancies. That dangerous
condition will now end. And now I have to wobble off with my bottle
of Pol Roger and meditate on how I got the election so wrong. I was
almost as far off as McAuliffe and Carville and Clinton -- either
Clinton.
topics:
Bill Clinton, Television, Law, Supreme Court, NATO, Nuclear Weapons
