Sometimes it’s easy to peer into the crystal ball. For instance, we were watching the news a couple of weeks ago and heard President Bush announce that Donald Rumsfeld would remain as secretary of defense for the remainder of his presidency.
“He’s going to can Rumsfeld,” I told Martha.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“Because any time a politician announces that someone is staying, it means the person is going. Remember back in 1972 when George McGovern said he was one-thousand percent behind Thomas Eagleton, his running mate, and Eagleton walked the plank a few days later?”
“You’re right,” Martha conceded. “I suppose they wouldn’t even be talking about someone’s tenure if they weren’t thinking about how and when to toss him overboard. But you always sound so cynical when you make the prediction and so gleeful when it happens.”
Well, you take your pleasure where you can find it. And I was wrong in one prediction. Election night coincided with the First Tuesday of the Month gathering of an organization so informal that it doesn’t have a name. Call it the “Salida Single-Malt Scotch-Tasting Club.” Since it was election night, we had a TV on, which usually we don’t because it would interfere with informed discussions of sootiness and fruitiness.
The news-channel talking-head announced that the initial Ohio results would come after the commercial break. During that break, I predicted we’d hear something like this: “The exit polls were predicting a 60-40 Democratic edge, but now the first electronic voting machine tallies are in, and the Republicans are ahead 60-40. Why is it that exit polls are so wrong in Ohio these days?”
But that isn’t what happened in Ohio. I don’t think this election represented any great liberal shift in American politics. It did represent revulsion for a Republican Congress that had grown complacent and corrupt, and one that abdicated its constitutional role as an independent body of government to be a rubber stamp for the White House.
If the congressional Republicans had been on the job – investigating no-bid contracts in Iraq, or trying to learn where at least $500 million of Iraqi military money went, or actually supporting a smaller federal government instead of a big one teeming with snoops and pork – they might well have maintained control of one or both houses.
In other words, this was more an anti-Republican election than any Democratic mandate. And Democrats finally learned that they can be competitive in the West by respecting the Second Amendment. I can’t be the only one who liked the attitude of Montana’s new Democratic senator, Jon Tester: Hold on to your guns, and repeal the Patriot Act.
I’ve had a belly full of politicians who tell me they believe in frugal government, and then run up record deficits. They brag on cutting taxes when actually they’re just deferring taxes to our children and grandchildren, and with a straight face they try to tell us they’re acting in a responsible way.
And the same holds for the charlatans who wear their faith on their sleeves and prattle about their “values” at the same time that they support torture. Or how they’re “pro-life” and support capital punishment. Or how they believe in “liberty and freedom” and support our idiotic War on Drugs. Or how they believe in “free trade,” with the curious exception of cheaper prescription medication from Canada.
For some reason, I’m on an e-mail list for press releases from the Republican National Committee, and this big news just came in. Democrats may have captured both houses of Congress, but “Democrats Still Have No Plan for Iraq!”
This is quite probably true. However, it implies that our Republican administration does have a plan for Iraq. Our soldiers would be greeted with flowers by a grateful population; I remember that plan. All the al-Qaeda training bases that Saddam Hussein had supported would be rooted out; I remember that plan. The weapons of mass destruction that had been designed, constructed, and stockpiled throughout the country would be found and demolished; I remember that plan. The Iraqis would write a constitution and elect a government that could produce some domestic tranquility; I remember that plan.
So maybe it’s not such a bad thing not to have a plan. Or as our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, put it: “My policy is to have no policy.”
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
