The decision to relieve White House political guru Karl Rove of unspecified policy responsibilities clearly signals another harsh political campaign this fall, as President Bush attempts to stave off serious midterm election setbacks in November.
In freeing up Rove to concentrate on what he does best ? use negative tactics against the Democratic Party and its candidates ? Bush is playing his ace card to salvage the remainder of his presidency by holding onto control of Congress.
A Democratic gain of 15 House and/or six in the Senate, each still a long shot, would at a minimum assure a stalemate in the ill-defined Bush second-term agenda. Democratic takeover of one or both houses would also open the gates to congressional investigations on a range of administration deceptions, misrepresentations, poor judgments and policy disasters.
In some ways, Rove?s task as the resident genius in undoing Democratic aspirations will be more difficult in the off-year congressional elections than it was in engineering of President Bush?s re-election in 2004.
Then, Rove had an easy target in the Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry, who unwittingly cooperated by failing to express a clear and unambiguous position of the war in Iraq. Bush won by simply playing the post-Sept. 11 card of patriotism and fear to a fare-thee-well.
It was a measure of Rove?s diabolic cleverness that he managed to divert the 2004 election from a referendum on the war Bush started in Iraq to a referendum on Kerry?s service in Vietnam four decades earlier. I use the word “diabolic” in, as the late Richard Nixon would say, “the best sense.”
What made the maneuver particularly amazing was that Kerry was a decorated combat veteran in Vietnam while Bush was ensconced in stateside reserve duty from which he took questionable leave to work on a Republican political campaign.
Rove and Co. fortuitously got a helping hand from CBS News in swallowing forged documents to challenge Bush?s service, diverting attention from other investigations that made a strong case that he had indeed cut corners.
In the coming congressional elections, Rove will in some ways have a harder task. His target will not be one Democrat sounding an uncertain trumpet, but a host of Democratic congressional candidates making a time-honored call of the opposition party to throw the rascals out.
It can be comfortably predicted that the Republican political strategy will be to associate Democrats seeking reelection, and Democratic challengers to Republican incumbents, with what the GOP likes to call a policy of cut-and-run in Iraq. Never mind that hardly any Democrats seeking election or re-election in November embrace it.
Democrats need Iraq plan
The challenge for the Democrats therefore is to espouse a clear and responsible position themselves on what to do in Iraq that refutes the broad-brush GOP charge of collective cowardice, and offers a supportable alternative.
The Democratic congressional leadership is moving toward a position already embraced by Kerry and other party leaders: redeploy the bulk of American forces to standby status in Kuwait or other regional state, as a way to reduce local hostility in Iraq and the rationale for much of the insurgency there.
A big question politically is whether the administration?s own policy of staying the course in Iraq, apparently unchanged by any staff shakeup, will sustain Republican attacks on Democratic congressional candidates in the fall. Polls now consistently find a majority of Americans say invading Iraq was a mistake and that the country is on the wrong track, on both foreign and domestic policy.
Incumbent advantage
Working in Rove?s favor should be the fact that most incumbents are insulated from defeat by their fundraising abilities and voter familiarity and loyalty to them.
But 12 years ago, Republican leader Newt Gingrich engineered a GOP takeover of Congress by “nationalizing” the midterm elections, focusing on the problems of President Bill Clinton rather than issues in individual congressional districts.
The Democrats will try to turn the tables in November, making the off-year contests a test of public support for Bush and his national policies. His chances for two last years of political revival may well rest on whether the Rove magic of demonizing the opposition can work one more time.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
