Bob Michel may be the unluckiest man in American politics. By
all accounts a decent and affable fellow, he was elected to the
House of Representatives the year after Joseph Martin surrendered the speaker’s gavel to
Sam Rayburn for the final time. The Peoria Republican
went on to suffer 38 years of humiliation in the minority. Michel
retired in 1994, the year his party took control of the House for
the first time in four decades.
“In the House, while we’re still in the minority where I’ve
always been, we’re pulling together and making the most of our
numbers,” Michel, then the House minority leader, said when he
announced his retirement in October 1993. “And even though I
believe the prospects are excellent for our winning big in the
House next year, I’m not sure it will be enough to make me the
speaker.” Michel’s successor as House Republican leader, Newt
Gingrich, became the next speaker.
Then again, in politics you have to make your own luck and it
was no coincidence that Republicans recaptured Congress as Michel
was leaving town. Although he would usually lead his party in
dutifully opposing the Democratic legislative agenda, the outcome
seldom varied. After a bit of Gandhian passive resistance, Michel
and his troops would lose graciously. That’s just what Republicans
did during Michel’s time in Washington.
As it turns out, he should have stuck around. Bob Michel
Republicanism is making a comeback. President Bush backed off his
initial veto threat and capitulated on a Democratic housing bill
that would extend as much as $300 billion in new loan guarantees
through the Federal Housing Administration. The measure then sailed
through the House, with 45 Republicans backing Speaker Nancy Pelosi
and the president, though more than enough held firm that a veto
could have been sustained. Heeding Gingrich’s advice to oppose the
bill, House Minority Leader John Boehner told the Politico, “I am very disappointed,”
after learning that Bush was on the other side.
Boehner isn’t entirely in Michel territory yet. He and ten of
his GOP colleagues recently came back from an American energy tour,
where they intended to highlight Democratic opposition to increased
domestic production in the face of rising prices at the pump.
Finally, some leading Republicans have taken a position that is
both reasonably popular and reasonably conservative
on an issue of great importance to many voters.
That’s one salient issue — high energy costs — down and
several more to go if the Republicans are going to overcome
Democratic domestic-policy advantages in the 2008 campaign. But
even Boehner seems to have mostly given up on the idea of retaking
the House anytime soon. At an American Spectator lunch earlier this week, he repeatedly said the GOP was
not going to nationalize the fall congressional elections. “It’s a
political decision, and frankly, one that I’m comfortable with,” he
insisted.
Your humble servant asked Boehner if there was any strategy to
regain the majority or at least mitigate this year’s losses. I
don’t think I am being unfair in saying that his answer was
basically, “No.” Unless you consider saying the word “drill,”
hoping that John McCain will win the presidential election (with
coattails, no less), and letting individual members do their own
thing in their own districts a sufficient winning strategy. An
every man for himself approach to congressional campaigns is fine
for a majority party pleased with the status quo. Or Bob Michel
Republicans who are happy being in the minority.
IT DIDN’T HAVE TO be this way. The Democrats did not win
overwhelming congressional majorities in 2006. They barely, but for
the grace of Conrad Burns and “Macaca,” took the Senate. And even
their margin in the House was hardly insurmountable. If Republicans
had simply won back the red congressional districts they lost due
to scandal, which ought to have been doable even in a
still-Democratic climate, they would have been nearly a third of
the way back to the majority.
Instead Republicans lagged in fundraising and candidate
recruitment while the Democrats scored three special election
victories in red House districts just this year. Senior House
Republicans headed for the exits, with upwards of thirty
retirements. If Republican numbers tumble to pre-1994 levels, it
will take another 1994 for them to reclaim the speaker’s gavel. And
the less that is said about the GOP’s 2008 Senate prospects, the
better.
Even now, Michelization is not inevitable. The Democratic
Congress’s approval ratings hover around the single digits. Despite all the advantages and favorable
media coverage, Barack Obama is struggling with a 2-to-4 point lead
in national tracking polls. The American people’s dyspepsia with
the Republicans hasn’t yet led them to embrace the Democrats.
Yet Republicans seem to be suffering their own version of what
Phil Gramm might call a mental recession. Bob Michel is a good man and
there are certainly far worse politicians for today’s GOP
leadership to emulate. But another good-natured Republican leader
used to say, “There is no substitute for victory.”
