WASHINGTON -- The approval ratings of the Democratic Congress
continue their swoon. When Senator Harry Reid and Congresswoman
Nancy Pelosi led their enlightened hordes onto Capitol Hill early
this year, they promised liberation and progress. They would raise
the minimum wage. Homeland security was to be made foolproof.
Medicare's drug prices would be lowered by congressional writ.
Moreover, they had a scheme to lower interest rates on college
loans. Finally something vast and ingenious was going to be done
about the war in Iraq. Possibly the congressional Democrats were
going to yank our military from that inhospitable country and
replace it with the Peace Corps or perhaps the Good Humor Man.
Of course, the fulminating Democrats have accomplished none of
the above. They continue to shriek about Republican mendacity and
corruption -- though such misdemeanors were winked at during the
Clinton years. They continue their ongoing investigations, and in
the case of Attorney Alberto Gonzales they may undertake the
capital's first exorcism. But as to their aforementioned early
promises, they remain inert. The term "Do Nothing Congress" is
being heard among good government types and concerned
lobbyists.
According to the Gallup Poll, the Democratic Congress's approval
rating has declined from 37% to 33% in mid-April, thence to 29% in
mid-May. That rating places the Democrats below the approval rating
of the hellish President George W. Bush, and at least he has
invested some of his political capital in large things, for
instance Social Security reform and two wars. The Democratic
leaders have achieved nothing other than raising a cloud of gloom
over Capitol Hill.
Frankly I would like to know more about the lingering 29% of the
electorate that approves of the Democratic Congress. Are these the
remnants of the Angry Left we heard so much from last fall? Or are
these actually Republicans who want the Democrats to continue on a
road that might well lead to oblivion. In recent weeks, Senator
Reid and Congresswoman Pelosi appear to have been seized by an
impulse to suicide. Perhaps al Qaeda will sign them up as
drivers.
Consider their recent antics. Just weeks ago House Speaker
Pelosi brought the full majesty of her office to the Middle East
where she visited Syria's hereditary dictator, President Bashar
Assad, wearing a babushka in public deference to local misogynist
customs. She shopped in a Damascus bazaar and did not even dicker
over prices. Then she trilled to an agape press corps, "We came in
friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a
road to peace." Whereupon she claimed that she was conveying
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's message that "Israel was ready
to engage in peace talks." What is more she insisted that President
Assad was ready to "resume the peace process." That got her plenty
of attention. Olmert scrambled to his feet and delivered a
correction. Pelosi was misrepresenting him. Pelosi's visit to the
Middle East was widely adjudged a bust, or in the words of a
Washington Post editorial, "ludicrous."
Consider too Senate Majority Leader Reid. Some politicians speak
in sound bites He speaks in bumper stickers. His latest is this
defeatist yawp: "This war is lost. Put that on your Volvo right
next to your Kerry Edwards sticker.
Observers of the Democratic majority on Capitol Hill will tell
you that the Democrats have made a cool decision to use the present
war as a political gambit. They calculate that by opposing it they
will win the support of a majority of the electorate in 2008. Their
position on the war may indeed be a political calculation, but it
might also reflect something deeper. Their defeatism is very
similar to the defeatism the Democratic congressional majority
displayed in 1973 when it reneged on Washington's promise to
support the South Vietnamese under attack. It is similar to the
defeatism the Democratic majority manifested in 1986 over assisting
the anti-communists in Nicaragua.
This defeatism is, I would wager, now part of the Democratic
Party's DNA. At some point over the last three decades it came to
be called the Democrats' Vietnam Syndrome. It is why for years the
Democrats have not been trusted on matters of national security.
The 2008 election will be decided on just this matter--national
security.
topics:
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Social Security, Military, Iraq, Israel, NATO, Medicare
