This is supposed to be a lousy year for Republicans.
After eight years of President Bush, the country is in a sour mood.
Energy prices are soaring. The economy is almost as bad as we nattering nabobs of negativity in the media claim it to be. We’re still mired in two wars, and let’s not forget the ever-growing national debt that won’t be paid off for years and years, long after the last iceberg has melted.
Oh, we’re sour all right. Welcome to malaise, 21st-century style.
A poll last week suggested that fewer than a quarter of all Americans think the country is moving in the right direction. Only 24 percent of Americans have a positive outlook for the country, while 76 percent say things are on the wrong track, according to a CNN/ap Research Corp. poll.
That 24 percent is the lowest since 1980, during our last malaise period, and it’s only the third time in four decades the number has sunk that low. Think Watergate, the Iranian hostage crisis and 1992’s economic downturn.
When that “national mood” number dropped below 30 percent four previous times, during the presidencies of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush, their parties all lost the White House in the next presidential election.
Yet John McCain, the Republican who should be taking it on the chin, just pulled even with Barack Obama in one major national opinion poll and just edged ahead of the Boy Wonder in Colorado. The race is even tightening in pivotal Florida and Ohio.
How can that be?
It’s not like McCain is inspiring downbeat voters with visions of America “as a shining city on a hill” during his town hall meetings.
Something is happening.
Pundits spent the better part of last week speculating. It could be, some suggested, that independent voters are looking at Obama in a different light now that the primaries are over and questioning whether he has the experience to serve. It could be that McCain, who still brandishes some of that old “maverick” image, is more palatable to moderate, independent voters than an otherwise far-right conservative heir to the Bush throne might be.
It could be that Americans weren’t as impressed with Obama’s World Tour 2008 as the media and many Europeans were.
Or it could just come down to our gas pains.
Republicans, for now, have the best strategy for dealing with the one thing, besides this ridiculously hot weather, that we can’t stop talking about: $4 a gallon gas.
Democrats have tried to blame Bush’s failed energy policies for high fuel prices, but it’s not working. No one wants finger pointing, they want solutions.
So Republicans say drill here, drill now.
It won’t significantly lower gas prices any time soon, as the Democrats constantly counter, but as a political strategy it’s simple and tangible.
Bush and McCain recently flip-flopped on their previous stance against off-shore drilling, as polls show more Americans in favor of bolstering our domestic oil supply. Even former Sen. Gary Hart last week in a Denver Post webcast said that the politics of $4 gas could conceivably convince Obama to reverse his stance on off-shore drilling. He wasn’t speaking with inside information from the candidate but rather was offering a blunt political assessment: People want relief, and they see drilling as a remedy.
As political strategy, drill here, drill now seems to be working. Of course, it could backfire just as quickly when the off-shore drilling starts and there’s still no relief at the pumps.
Talk about malaise.
Editorial page editor Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com.
