By Karl Rove
Obamas plan to nationalize the midterm elections may backfire.
Republican victories in New Jersey and Virginia governors races last weekdespite eight campaign appearances in the two states by President Barack Obamahave unnerved Democrats.
Over the weekend White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod tried to calm jittery Democrats who might go wobbly on the presidents ambitious agenda by telling NBCs Chuck Todd that next years congressional elections will be nationalized. Because they will be a referendum on this White House he said voters will turn out for Mr. Obama. Mr. Todd summed up Mr. Axelrods plans by saying Its almost like a page from the Bush playbook of 2002.
I appreciate the reference. Only two presidents have picked up seats in both houses of Congress for their party in their first midterm elections. One was FDR in 1934. The other was George W. Bush in 2002 whose party gained House seats and won back control of the Senate.
But those midterm elections might not be a favorable comparison for this White House. The congressional elections were nationalized seven years ago largely because national security was an overriding issue and Democrats put themselves on the wrong side of it by among other things catering to Big Labor.
At the time there was a bipartisan agreement to create the new Department of Homeland Security. Democrats insisted that every inch of the department be subject to collective bargaining. They pushed for this even though sections of every other department can be declared off-limits to unionization for national security reasons. What Democrats wanted was shortsighted and dangerous. Voters pounded them for it.
Mr. Bush also had a record of bipartisanship that included winning passage of the No Child Left Behind Act with the support of Democrats Sen. Ted Kennedy and Rep. George Miller. And he had a popular agenda of tax cuts regulatory reform and sound leadership in the wake of 9/11 that the GOP could run on. Mr. Obama lacks a comparable foundation.
Instead the narrative Obama White House officials are writing about themselves is that they are uncompromising ungracious and ready to run roughshod over popular opinion. They have mastered the Chicago way of politics: reward friends punish enemies and jam the opposition. Voters have a tendency to quickly grow tired of pugnacious governance.
Thats only the beginning of Mr. Axelrods problems. If the 2010 midterms are nationalized they will be a referendum on Mr. Obamas increasingly unpopular policies. For example in the newest Gallup survey released on Monday only 29 say theyd advise their congressman to vote for the health-care bill. This is down from 40 last month. A Rasmussen poll out this week shows that 42 of Americans strongly oppose the bill while only 25 strongly favor it.
Mr. Obama is increasingly seen as governing from the leftthe latest Gallup poll shows that 54 of Americans say the presidents policies have been mostly liberal and only 34 say they are mostly moderate. Thats a risky position to be in when the country leans to the right.
High unemployment and the presidents low approval on jobs and the economy (which is at 46 in a CNN/Opinion Research poll released last week) wont by themselves sink Democrats. But what will hurt are the beliefs that Mr. Obamas $787 billion stimulus bill was a flop and that he doesnt know how to speed up the economic recovery.
Mr. Obamas approval on handling the deficit in the CNN/Opinion Research survey is now 39. The presidents plans to triple the deficit over the next decade is causing a level of angst among independents that we havent seen since Ross Perot ran for president in the 1990s. This angst has given Republicans a four-point lead in Gallups generic ballot (48 to 44) putting the party in a better position than it was in spring 1994 just a few months before its historic takeover of Congress.
Democrats increasingly recognize their vulnerability. Of the 80 House Democrats whose districts were carried by Mr. Bush or John McCain nine voted against the stimulus 21 against a budget resolution that called for doubling the national debt in four years 36 against cap and trade and 36 against health care. Defections will grow. Nothing concentrates a troubled centrists mind like a coming election.
Maybe the Obama inner sanctum realizes that its agenda is unpopular and will cost many Democrats their seats next year but calculates that enough will survive to keep the party in control of Congress. Perhaps they have decided that Mr. Obamas goal of turning America into a European-style social democracy is worth risking a voter revolt.
Many Democrats who will be on the ballot next year may come to a different conclusion. Nationalizing the elections over an unpopular agenda isnt likely to repeat Mr. Bushs feat of picking up congressional seats. It is however likely to lead to more Republican congressmen than are there now.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
