In a 1971 story (“Nora”), Washington novelist Ward Just wrote about a senator in trouble. “If you’re an architect or a lawyer and you get into trouble, you can resign and go practice somewhere else,” Just wrote. “If you’re a politician and get into trouble, that’s the end of it.”
With the sexual harassment scandal in play on Capitol Hill, this phenomenon is as true today as it was 46 years ago. Except there’s a second part, a twist: Those mired in sex scandals don’t see political death as inevitable. They imagine they can escape. And perhaps they can.
Even Representative John Conyers, who at 88-years-old is the longest-serving member of Congress, is maneuvering to hold on. He’s accused by at least two women of some sort of sexual misconduct and of paying a third with government funds to make her complaint go away.
Surely Conyers, now under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, is on the way out. His response so far, besides denying the charges, has been to step down as the top Democrat on the House Judiciary committee. That very small step aims to appease those who would force him out. But it’s worked for the time being with Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader.
On Meet the Press, she adopted the tactic used to defend Bill Clinton from sexual harassment charges in the 1990s—and it worked then. Pelosi said Conyers is an “icon in our country. He’s done a great deal to protect women.” At least three of them don’t think so.
In the case of Senator Al Franken, he’s admitted to being “embarrassed and ashamed” and that’s about it. He says he doesn’t remember groping or touching women inappropriately, though four women recall their encounters with him quite vividly. One said he grabbed her buttocks as they posed for a picture at the Minnesota State Fair.
In a written statement, however, the senator suggested there’s little if anything for him to be embarrassed or ashamed about: “I’m a warm person. I hug people. . . . Some women have found my greetings or embraces for a hug or photo inappropriate, and I respect their feelings about that.” But he confessed to nothing more than making “some woman feel badly and for that I am so sorry.”
Roy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama’s special election, denies a series of charges of harassment (or worse) of teenage girls when he was in his 30s. Moore, now 70, has chosen an unusual target in his campaign: His strongest attacks focus on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has called on him to withdraw from the Senate race.
Conyers, Franken, and Moore have one thing in common besides scandals: They fear Ward Just was right. When a political scandal drives you out of office, you’re dead.
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President Trump had one great obsession with his tax bill, which the House has already passed and the Senate may vote on this week: He didn’t want it to look like he was exploiting the bill to feather his own nest. He’s been adamant about this.
House Speaker Paul Ryan favored a cut in the top rate on individual income from the current 39.6 percent to 35 percent. That would return the rate to where it stood in the George W. Bush era. But Trump wouldn’t yield. So the administration’s bill offers no cut in the top rate—it stays at 39.6 percent.
Or maybe it won’t. Trump has changed his mind. Shortly after he returned from his Asia trip, he tweeted his enthusiasm for reducing the top rate to 35 percent. He didn’t mention that, almost alone in his administration, he’d opposed this earlier.
What should we make of this? That Trump likes to keep congressional Republicans and his own advisers on their toes (or simply drive them crazy)? Maybe. Or that one of the supply-side economists he knows got to him. That’s more likely. Or he’s just fickle. Whatever the case, Trump is right this time. The bill needs to incentivize individuals, not just corporations, in order to spur investment, growth, and jobs. A 35 percent rate would do that.
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A consensus is forming that a wave election is coming in 2018. This view is based on two things: the Democratic sweep in the Virginia election on November 7 and ominous poll numbers for Republicans.
A wave election would hardly be a surprise in next year’s midterm voting. The first midterm of a new administration usually goes poorly for the president’s party. And the Virginia results may be a preview of a political wave in which Republicans lose the House, Senate, governorships, and state legislatures—the reverse of their success in 2010.
Polls show Democrats with a huge advantage on the congressional ballot. The Quinnipiac and Marist surveys have Democrats ahead by 13 to 15 percentage points and the ABC/Washington Post, NBC/Wall Street Journal, and Fox News polls give them a 7 to 15 percentage point lead. “These are political wave numbers,” Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report writes.
I’d add a few notes of caution. The midterm election is a year off. Republicans are more skillful in state elections, at least in my view, than Democrats are. If Trump’s tax cut passes, the economy may be growing at 3 percent. And Democrats have issue problems of their own, notably on immigration.
But Democrats have the biggest issue of all in their grasp—Trump. He’s unpopular even in states he won last year. His unpresidential behavior, more than his generally conservative agenda, stirs fierce opposition and is likely to drive up Democratic turnout. But what if Trump’s style and conduct change over the next year? That could help Republicans prevent a wave election.
But the chance of a New Trump emerging are slim to none. And that’s optimistic.
