Republican:
With the White House, Senate and House solidly in Republican hands, the party has a heavy load to carry.
1) The biggest agenda item is getting out of Iraq. Assuming the January 30 election comes off reasonably well, the debate within the administration will concern how quickly to disengage U.S. troops. The situation on the ground will not have to be perfect to disengage.
2) President George W. Bush has to decide whether to buy into the Kyoto protocol on combating global warming. He is being pressed hard by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's staunchest foreign ally on Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney is the staunchest anti-Kyoto force in the administration.
3) Advocates of Social Security private accounts feel the U.S. must act quickly, but the administration does not even have a hard plan yet. Bush wants to accomplish this without higher taxes, but it will not be easy.
4) House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R.-Calif.) wants to tie tax reform and Social Security reform into one '05 package. That almost surely will mean a less ambitious tax package than is desired by Bush, whose procedure of a citizens committee on tax reform looks toward a bill being passed no sooner than '06.
5) Since Bush has renominated the same federal appellate judges stalled by Democrats the past four years and there is no sign of Senate Democrats' yielding, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R.-Tenn.) may push the "nuclear option" of recognizing just a majority vote for confirmation.
Democrats:
The overriding question is how the party can reverse a decade of steady decline.
1) The symbol of Democratic decision is the absence of a clear front-runner to be the new Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman. A clear majority of DNC members do not want the nominal front-runner, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, but they do not know who they do want.
2) Former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D.-Neb.)-a man out of office and nearly out of politics-is the only one who will voice what many Democrats say in private: Dean as DNC chairman could be disastrous and should be avoided. Others do not want to offend Dean's passionate supporters and hope instead that a white knight will suddenly emerge and lay claim to the position.
3) The fact that Democrats would even consider picking the furthest-left 2004 presidential candidate-a man who was soundly repudiated by Democratic voters in the primaries-suggests an inability to cope with political reality.
4) The party seems totally divided on how much it should move rightward toward the center-for example, taking a more flexible attitude on abortion. If there is any consensus, it is that Democrats should challenge Bush's economic conservatism while easing up on social questions.
