Two years after President Obama was swept into office on a message of hope, he faces what may be a historic rebuke from midterm voters, including millions of independents who supported him last time. Four years after California liberal Nancy Pelosi triumphantly claimed the House speaker's gavel for the Democrats, Ohio conservative John Boehner is poised to take it away for the Republicans.
Those reversals reflect continuing dissatisfaction with the country's course and its politics, especially as the nation struggles to recover from a deep recession. In this election, as in the past two, voters have moved toward whichever party promised to shake things up: Democrats in 2006 and 2008, Republicans in 2010.
This time, if Republicans win control of the House and shave the Democratic majority in the Senate, Obama will be forced to forge new working relationships with the GOP.
MIDTERMS: Jobs, economic security top issues
In Congress, a freshman class of Tea Party members is likely to clash not only with Democrats but also with the establishment Republicans who tried to defeat them in GOP primaries. And the capital's agenda increasingly will focus on what political scientist John Pitney calls "the politics of subtraction" — reducing federal spending.
"Part of it is profound unhappiness with how Washington is working," says Matt Bennett, a veteran of the Clinton White House and co-founder of the moderate think tank Third Way. "In '06, it was mostly a reaction to the Iraq war and hair-raising ethics violations in Congress. In '08, it was just people were fed up after eight years of (President) Bush and a stalled economy.
"And this time, there's a sense that America is facing a tougher time than it has in modern memory," Bennett says. With unemployment at 9.6% and a foreclosure crisis that continues to spread, there is "frustration and anger and despair that people here (in Washington) aren't making their lives better."
It's been almost seven years since a majority of Americans in the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll were satisfied with the nation's direction. Now, by an overwhelming 4 to 1, they are unhappy about how things are going. A majority have unfavorable views of the president, the Congress and both major political parties.
Voters are inclined to believe that Tuesday's election will make a difference.
By 49%-44%, those surveyed in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll this month said this year's elections have a better chance than previous ones of bringing major changes to Washington.
That's 10 percentage points higher than in 1994, when Republicans took over Congress after another fierce midterm campaign. The election results that year sparked a revamped White House political strategy, launched a new generation of Republican leaders, ignited a budget showdown that briefly shut down the federal government and fueled investigations that ultimately led to President Clinton's impeachment.
Things in Washington are about to change this time, too, and not always in ways voters expect.
Here are five ways how.
1
Mr. President, meet the GOP
Confront or cooperate?
During his first two years in office, Obama often acted as if he didn't need a working relationship with congressional Republicans. With big Democratic majorities in Congress — at their peaks, 60 votes in the Senate and an 81-seat advantage in the House — he could court a few moderate Republicans such as Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe in hopes of peeling off a GOP vote or two to block a filibuster or give legislation a bipartisan patina.
"The president hasn't had a lot of relations with us," California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, a prospect for a Republican leadership post in the new Congress, said in an interview. "He had big Democratic majorities. It didn't seem as much that they needed us.
"If we were to win the House," McCarthy added, "that would be different."
Republicans need a net gain of 39 seats in the House to win control. Most non-partisan analysts, including those at The Cook Political Report and The Rothenberg Political Report, now project they easily will exceed that number. But they say the GOP is straining to gain the 10 seats it would need to have a majority in the Senate.
The White House promises Republicans what Obama counselor David Axelrod calls "a welcoming hand" after the election.
"The message that voters are going to send and the message that we as elected officials should take is that of working together, of getting things done," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday.
But he also bashed Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for telling National Journal that "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Gibbs called that "a deeply disappointing message" — though hardly a surprising one since the two sides have been engaged in rhetorical warfare for months.
The change on Capitol Hill is likely to be more traumatic for Obama than it was for Clinton in 1994, says Pitney, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in California who has worked for the Republican National Committee.
As governor of Arkansas, Clinton was accustomed to dealing with Republican state legislators. The GOP defeated him in his first bid for re-election.
In contrast, Obama represented a solidly Democratic district in the Illinois State Legislature, was elected to the U.S. Senate in a race in which the Republican opposition imploded, led Republican John McCain through most of the 2008 presidential election and moved into the White House with Democrats in control of Congress.
"This will really be the first time Republicans have ever beaten him in his entire career ... so the question is whether President Obama will be able to find his own path as fast as Bill Clinton found his," Pitney says. Clinton recovered from crushing setbacks in 1994 to win a second term two years later.
If Democratic losses next Tuesday are as big as expected, Obama will have to decide how to respond as he prepares for his re-election campaign in 2012. He could follow the strategy devised by Clinton — who compromised with Republicans to overhaul welfare and balance the federal budget — or adopt a more confrontational style that paints the GOP as extreme.
There is sure to be a pitched battle on one familiar issue. Many Republicans have campaigned on a vow to repeal the new health care law, which Obama claims as a signature achievement of his first two years in office.
2
Broken china at a Tea Party?
The president isn't the only one facing post-election adjustments.
Establishment Republicans will have to accommodate uncompromising newcomers. Some Tea Party champions — including Senate candidates Marco Rubio in Florida, Rand Paul in Kentucky and Mike Lee in Utah — won nominations by vanquishing candidates backed by the GOP leadership. All three now lead in statewide polls.
"You've got a GOP civil war," predicts Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association.
Republican leaders already are trying to cultivate relations and, in some cases, make amends. "I've been to my share of Tea Party events," Boehner told reporters at a breakfast in July. His leadership political action committee has distributed more than $300,000 to Tea Party hopefuls.
But the candidates who rose with support from the Tea Party movement have campaigned on a promise to end politics as usual — that is, the sort of give-and-take usually needed to pass legislation.
And on some issues, the Republican establishment and the Tea Party reinforcements seem destined to clash.
While Republicans traditionally support free-trade deals, for example, many Tea Party candidates oppose them. Establishment Republicans have held on-and-off negotiations with the White House for an energy bill that would promote alternative energy sources, among other things, but almost all of the Tea Party candidates question the science behind the idea of global climate change.
Tea Party candidates say they are determined not to be co-opted by Washington, even if that means battles with fellow Republicans.
"Republicans are every bit as much to blame as Democrats for the mess we're in," Senate nominee Ken Buck of Colorado said in an interview this summer. "We are so sick of the establishment. It's not the Democrats who are the enemy. It's the Republicans who go back and spend more because they want to get re-elected; they want to bring goodies back to their state."
Former congressman Dick Armey, who became majority leader when Republicans won the House in 1994, says the Tea Party has the upper hand.
"The Tea Party activists are transforming the Republican Party," Armey, who now heads a Tea Party-aligned group called FreedomWorks, said in an interview. "The establishment types that are too 'sophisticated' for this work, let them cast their votes. They are well aware of the fact this grass-roots movement is out there.
"It's alive; it's well, and it's going to be active in the next election."
3
'The politics of subtraction'
No issue has ignited Tea Party passions more than a conviction that federal spending is out of control.
Many Americans agree. Asked in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll to name the most important problem facing the nation today, the federal budget deficit and public debt ranked among the top five issues.
Actually reining in the deficit is going to be harder than talking about it, though. Republicans who have pledged to cut the budget by $100 billion haven't specified exactly how.
"The next two years are going to be about the politics of subtraction," Pitney says. Shrinking the government in any meaningful way is likely to mean raising taxes, curtailing Medicare and Social Security benefits and taking other painful steps.
A bipartisan commission is due to report Dec. 1 on recommendations to curb the deficit, though it's not clear whether even the 18-member panel will be able to command the 14 votes it needs to send a plan to Congress for a vote.
And in Congress, both sides may be less open to compromise than before. Six of the 54 moderate "Blue Dog" Democrats who have pushed fiscal discipline are leaving the House; most of those who are running are in competitive contests. Losses in their ranks would leave a more liberal Democratic caucus that would be deeply resistant to cuts in social programs.
On the Republican side, too, opposition to tax hikes is likely to be intensified by the Tea Party.
"The people gone are the middle ones, the centrists in both parties," says political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. With the ranks of moderates thinned, "I don't think they could agree on the wording of a Mother's Day resolution."
The first fiscal tests loom in the lame-duck session of Congress just after the election. On the table: Spending bills to fund the government and extension of the Bush-era tax cuts.
4
Regulator in chief
White House officials say it may be possible to reach bipartisan agreement on a few major pieces of legislation — for instance, to renew the No Child Left Behind law, which ties federal funds to accountability standards for school districts.
By and large, though, without muscular Democratic majorities in Congress Obama will have to turn from negotiating grand deals on Capitol Hill to taking smaller steps on policy by issuing executive orders and regulations.
"Trying to get big legislative initiatives done is going to be exceedingly difficult," John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff for President Clinton, said in an interview. He ran Obama's transition operation after the 2008 election. Instead, "what he's got to do is utilize all the tremendous authority he has as president."
Podesta cited events such as a White House forum this month that spotlighted the value of community colleges. Even so, that reflects a considerable downsizing in ambition from the past two years, when the administration focused on bailing out automakers, overhauling health care and devising a new regulatory structure for financial institutions.
In some cases, though, regulatory agencies can move on issues when Congress won't. The Environmental Protection Agency already has said it would take steps to address climate change if Congress does not act.
Republicans are wary.
"One thing I'm particular concerned about — even if we have legislative gridlock, we will not have regulatory gridlock," Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the Republican leadership, said in an interview.
He predicts the Obama administration will try to pursue policies through regulations that it has been unable to pass in Congress — among them, prohibiting tiered pricing by Internet providers, capping emissions of greenhouse gases and making it easier for unions to organize in the workplace.
"That causes a lot of concern," he says. "We'll see an attempt to do net-neutrality at the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), cap-and-trade at the EPA and card-check" at the National Labor Relations Board.
In response, Republicans are ready to oversee the agencies aggressively, he said, and in some cases refuse to appropriate money to implement regulations in dispute.
5
A spate of investigations
California Rep. Darrell Issa is ready to take over.
If Republicans win control of the House, he would chair the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. As chairman, he would be able to convene hearings, issue subpoenas and pursue investigations.
Issa already refers to himself as the Obama administration's "annoyer in chief." Among his first targets, according to spokesman Kurt Bardella, will be spending in the government bailouts, the stimulus bill and the new health care law. He wants to investigate problems in mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and look at food safety, too.
Then there's his outrage at the practice of clearing a primary field for a candidate by offering challengers another job. This year, the Obama White House reached out to Rep. Joe Sestak, now the Democratic Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, in hopes he would withdraw from the primary in favor of Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter.
"If the Republicans do take control of one or both houses, I'm sure they'll unleash a ton of investigations," said Podesta, who was at the Clinton White House when it dealt with a flurry of investigations pressed by then-committee chairman Dan Burton.
Podesta's advice: " 'Isolate' the White House response to the counsel's office and just keep going.
"They're going to inflict a certain amount of pain and annoyance on the White House through the exercise of their investigative function, but the worst thing is for the president to be distracted by that, to have his policy shop distracted by it," he said.
"You have to treat it as a chronic disease, not a life-threatening ailment."
(source:usatoday.com)
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