by Donald Devine
Published: 07-10-08
Both candidates are predicting an election of “change.” Strangely they both are correct--but the change will be almost the exact opposite of what either expects. The law of unintended consequences is one of the most important in political science and America is headed for a dozy.
It all has been so predictable. Red state conservatives supporting limited government traditional values and strong defense battle blue state liberals for big new government programs government-guaranteed libertine lifestyles and diplomacy over military force.
President George W. Bush has mixed things up a bit with his spending spree but the political divide of red and blue states has seemed so normal for so long we ignore it. Anyway the Bush tenure adds to the reasons why everyone is for change.
Predicting the future is hazardous of course. Even assuming that either John McCain or Barack Obama will be formally nominated is not one hundred percent since either could die or be incapacitated and the conventions do not take place until later in the summer. We do not even know the vice presidential selections—and they will be very important this year. Still the future looks very clear to these old political science eyes and like the reaction to Cassandra’s bad news no one is going to like it one little bit.
The incumbent president sits with among the lowest approval ratings ever collected for a chief executive in the midst of a recession people at least partially blame on him with rising inflation including out of sight energy prices and in a war that most Americans say was his mistake--and which they want to end sooner rather than later. The people tell pollsters by large majorities that things are going in the wrong direction and they are a foul mood generally. Republicans have lost a string of off-year elections in normally safe GOP districts. Under these circumstances Barak Obama should win in a landslide.
Even under these horrific conditions the polls still find Sen. McCain within a few points of the Democrat. State-by-state it looks even better for McCain to run a close race. Indeed my gut tells me McCain will win narrowly. But conservatives should hold the champagne. It will be a disaster for their philosophy and their party over the long run. Why? It is even more obvious that Democrats will increase their majorities in both houses of Congress in this election. And afterwards liberals will be so angry flubbing the White House for the third slam-dunk election in a row they will make a President McCain pay dearly.
Democrats already have the most effective House of Representatives majority in years obvious in the American Conservative Union congressional voting scores for last year. The Democratic leadership there has not lost a single important vote since regaining control in the 2006 election. If not for the Senate the GOP would be out of the legislative game altogether.
They will be out after the 2008 election results even if McCain wins maybe especially if he wins. It is even very likely the Democrat victory will produce a filibuster-proof Senate in 2009 with the support of a few weak-kneed Republicans it is a virtually certainty.
Well a President McCain would have the veto. But he would be trapped by the same dynamics as George W. Bush. To get anything accomplished ultimately he needs Congress.
Legislators—former and current--are congenitally unable to get along without “results” so they typically give in to a determined majority. The Democrats will be unwavering in their determination to make McCain fail to prepare the way for veto-proof majorities in 2010. Presidents almost always lose seats in the off-years and a frustrated McCain and a quietly reactive Congress will make it inevitable. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Leader Harry Reid have already demonstrated in the last two years that they know how keep a low profile and play legislative defense learning from the disastrous tenure of Newt Gingrich.
So the cost of a McCain victory would be overwhelming Democratic control of Congress and the inability of the president to overcome it with even constant vetoes—in the unlikely event he would pursue them in the first place. Two years later a “do-nothing” Republican president is easy pickings even for your typically hapless “progressive” Democratic presidential nominee. But the liberals should hold the bubbly too. What if they win in 2008? It is all undone! And as we have noted all the objective evidence says the Democrats should prevail.
What happens if Sen. Obama wins? Here he comes into office with all his ideas of reforming Washington and adopting an agenda of change to save the American people. The only problem is that he only offers the same old liberal programs the Democrats have been pushing in Congress for generations. There was not a sliver of difference between the 2008 Democratic contestants on the issues. They have no other ideas. So what happens? He submits all his new ideas and the Democrats in Congress immediately recognize them. But they know one thing he does not. These cunning politicians really never wanted to pay for them!
There are no geniuses in Congress but there are few fools either especially in the Democratic leadership and on the key committees. They pushed all of these expensive programs when they knew the Republicans and their president would defeat them. That way the Democrats got credit for passing the great programs and the GOP received the blame for killing them.
With an Obama the Democrats would have to come up with the money—and it isn’t there and they know it better than anyone. The entitlements are ready for bankruptcy now and there are even bigger bills to be paid a few years further down the road—and do not forget about inflation. This is how the Democrats lost control of the House for the first time in forty years in 1994--after big plans and controls for health care and big taxes to pay for them.
These wily pols are not about to let a president even a Democratic one turn them out of leadership again. Ask Jimmy Carter. Why do you think Bill Clinton had to “triangulate” by proposing big liberal programs that cost and amounted to almost nothing? Only the Republicans could get away with a big prescription drug plan and it was President Bush who did the big discretionary spending—twice Clinton’s levels. It might even occur to Obama as it did to Clinton before him that to have funds for his favorite programs much less for any new ones it might be necessary for the Democrats to begin reforming entitlements.
And forget about getting out of Iraq too quickly. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is not going to let Republicans blame him for last minute helicopter exits and American soldiers dying in a precipitous troop withdrawal. Obama’s advisors are already whispering that withdrawal will take years. Sen. Obama himself has already retreated on gun control campaign finance supporting telecommunications firms’ immunity from prosecution for assisting the government in eavesdropping on terrorism suspects and even abortion!
Q.E.D. Conservatives will be annihilated by a McCain victory and liberals will be enraged by an Obama win. The only rational solution is for red conservatives to vote for the Democrat and blue liberals for the Republican. Conservative columnist Bruce Bartley has already collected a short list of conservatives who are for Obama. Perhaps it is the beginning of a trend. Or perhaps it is another political science law at work first set by the Marquis de Condorcet—for which he was guillotined by the Paris mob--that elections based upon opportunistic stands on individual issues rather than coherent philosophies are only incidentally related to voting rationality. Maybe we can get it right the next time.
Donald Devine the editor of Conservative Battleline Online was the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 and is the director of the Federalist Leadership Center at Bellevue University.
