Thursday, December 16, 2004
(6:47 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Republican Rebellion
Republicans have been asserting some independence from the Bush administration ever since the election -- see, for instance, the controversy over the intelligence reform bill, the calls for Kofi Annan and more importantly Rumsfeld to resign (and not just from McCain, who's been marketing himself as the Rebellious Republican for quite a while now). Here's one possible take on the whole thing: the legislative discipline of the first Bush Jr. term was likely due precisely to the president's tenuous legitimacy. Republicans fell in line, even when they normally would have balked at the details, because it wasn't worth the risk to do anything to undermine a president who had assumed office under questionable conditions. After 9/11, there was probably also some hope to ride on the coattails of the unsustainable Bush Popularity Bubble -- and a recognition that it was very much a bubble, which might have burst at the slightest display of political weakness on Bush's part. The whole schtick was that Bush was not going to let anyone stand in the way of our country's security -- and if his own damn party stood in his way, then that schtick wouldn't have worked nearly as well.Now, however, something interesting happened. Yes, Bush won the popular vote, but the effective Republican control of Congress is far greater than the 51% that Bush eked out. They've walked the narrow line of loyalty to Bush necessary to bring them to this point -- now at least some Republicans are starting to see that sticking with a strict "Bush Brand Republicans" line is not going to work in the long term. The question becomes whether this will be a Bush victory--a vindication of Bush as a person--or a Republican victory, which would mean cultivating independent centers of power that are not completely reliant on one man who is going to be gone in four years, and none of whose underlings are viable candidates for president in 2008.
That's just my political analysis; I have no opinion on whether this is good or bad for the country -- although, almost by default, any situation that ends up taking some of the decision-making power out of the current White House is better than what we've had for the last four years. If you think I'm partially or totally wrong, feel free to let me know -- I'll be here all night, writing about Benjamin in little one-page spurts, followed by long periods of apparent dormancy. My paper-writing technique is reminiscent of Douglas Adams's novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
