THE ELECTIONS ARE OVER, but the analysis has just begun. In case you didn’t get your fill last week, the Sunday morning talk shows were full of folks filling us in on why the elections turned out the way they did, and what the next two years have in store.
Face the Nation scored Senate majority leader to be Harry Reid for an exclusive interview. He used his time with Bob Schieffer to criticize the Republican Congress for not doing enough over the last several years. “There has been, for the last six years, a Republican-dominated Congress, has not exercised its prerogative constitutionally and had hearings on Iraq; had hearings on the Medicare program, it isn’t working as well as it should; education; what’s going on with health care in this country, generally? Why are we having these staggering deficits?” He emphasized that there will not necessarily be criminal repercussions: “Oversight is not investigations. There will be times, rare occasions, when these committees will have to offer subpoenas, but that will happen very infrequently.”
Schieffer also interviewed Bush’s chief of staff, Josh Bolten, who said that the next few years for Republicans are going to be about getting back to basics, including a focus on “a robust national security, limited government, fiscal responsibility, and moving forward on some of the priorities of the country, like immigration reform, energy independence.” The possibility of these things being passed, he said, “may, today, have a better prospect of making progress than we did before, because Democrats are now in–in a difficult position”–the position of having to do something other than obstruct.
Meet the Press featured an interview with Senator John McCain that was dominated by two topics: McCain’s presidential aspirations (“Are we doing the things organizationally and legally that need to be done to prepare for [a run]? Yes.”), and what the future holds in Iraq (“I believe that a withdrawal, or a date for withdrawal, will lead to chaos in the region, and most military experts think the same thing.”). Tim Russert also made it clear that the days of McCain being a “bipartisan” media darling are over. He’s now just another Republican hawk out of synch with public opinion. As Russert made sure to point out, “our exit polls [said this]: Send more troops, 18 percent of the American people, 23 percent say maintain current level, 28 say withdraw some, 31 percent say withdraw all. Eighty-two percent have a different position than McCain.”
Joe Lieberman was also on Meet the Press and he used his time to reaffirm the fact that he plans on caucusing with the Democrats. He now wishes to be identified as an “Independent Democrat,” and pointed out that “in the late ’70s Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia listed himself as an Independent Democrat. You got to go back to the mid-19th century to find the last Independent Democrat.” Russert closed with Maureen Dowd and David Gregory. Dowd contributed a gem, saying that the president’s father is just like the parent of a child who has been kidnapped by a religious cult and that he is “trying to get W back away from the cult of the neocons, as they see it, and reprogram him in the family tradition of internationalism, diplomacy, nuance. And [Jim] Baker’s the deprogrammer.”
This Week began with a pair of newly powerful Democratic senators, Carl Levin and Joe Biden. They spent most of their time calling for a withdrawal from Iraq. Levin wants to get started with a “phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months.” Senator Biden called on Bush to withdraw his nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations: “Send someone new up, Mr. President. . . . We’re going to have a hearing on him, have a vote on him, and he’s going to lose.”
Josh Bolten also appeared on This Week to defend the decision to delay the firing of Donald Rumsfeld until after the election: “The president correctly decided that this decision does not belong in the political realm. A decision as important as your secretary of Defense should not be made based on some partisan political advantage.”
On the roundtable George Will dismissed Karl Rove’s statement that the election was less about Iraq than corruption, saying, “It seems to be clear that were we not at war in Iraq, Republicans probably would still be in the majority in both houses.” Sam Donaldson concurred, saying the elections were “a repudiation of George W. Bush and his Iraqi policy.” Cokie Roberts reminded people not to play down Republican improprieties: “Corruption was an issue, however, and a lot of the Republicans who lost were corrupt. . . . a bunch of the other Republicans that lost were sitting in very Democratic seats.”
Fox News Sunday featured triumphant DNC chairman Howard Dean, who emphasized that the Democrats “think we’ve been given an opportunity . . . to show that yes, we can govern. We have an opportunity to show that we’re tough on defense.” He also took on taxes, stating that Democrats are committed to not raising taxes on the middle class, choosing to raise revenues by “rolling back special tax breaks that Republicans gave to oil companies and HMOs and so forth.”
The Fox panel focused first on Rumsfeld: “This resignation of Rumsfeld is almost entirely, purely political,” said Brit Hume. William Kristol added that “he was a failure as Defense secretary, though a very impressive man and a patriot. But I think he put transformation [of the military] ahead of winning the war in Iraq which was a mistake.” Talking about new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, Mara Liasson pointed out she has already “put the kibosh on the idea of John Conyers impeaching the president. She’s laid down that marker.”
Sonny Bunch is assistant editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
