The conventional wisdom (how often does it prove wrong?) is that the 2006 midterm elections will be 1994 in reverse. The Republican tsunami of that year will be replicated this year by a Democratic wave that will wrest control of the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate, too, from the GOP.
That may happen. Certainly the polls suggest a dismal night Nov. 7 for the Republicans.
And yet, there is one especially startling difference between the 1994 GOP blowout and the apparently pending Democratic sweep this year.
In 1994, Republicans nationalized the midterm congressional elections by uniting around a national agenda, Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, endorsed by 370 Republican congressional candidates. In stark contrast, the Democrats this year have no agreed-upon national agenda.
The Democrats' strategy, to the extent they have one, is to make the 2006 midterms a referendum on an unpopular president and an unpopular war. That may be enough to get them elected, but then what?
Here is where the 1994 analogy breaks down completely. Gingrich and the new Republican majorities in the House and Senate went on to pull Bill Clinton's erratic presidency back toward the center from its liberal excesses of 1993-94. Welfare reform, spending restraint, and a balanced-budget compact followed by successive years of budget surpluses were all products of the Gingrich revolution in Congress.
What, pray tell, would Congress' new Democratic majorities offer on the morning after Nov. 7?
A solution to the Iraq war? The Democrats don't have one.
Fiscal conservatism as an antidote to Republican overspending in the Bush era? Surely you jest.
A better economy? Thanks in part to the Bush tax cuts that many Democrats favor repealing, it's already humming along quite nicely. The Bush economy boasts record-low unemployment, 6 million new jobs, steady growth, the Dow at a historic high of 12,000 and a booming revenue stream that cut the deficit by 22 percent in just the last 12 months.
Reform of the entitlement programs that threaten a fiscal train wreck sometime after 2020? Democrats wouldn't even agree last year to discuss Bush's pilot program for a very limited partial privatization of Social Security.
Clean up corruption in Congress? The Democrats did nothing this year on lobbying reform and ending the wholesale abuse of pork-barrel spending earmarks.
Fix immigration? Divided Republicans at least agreed on a lot more border enforcement. Democrats were just divided.
Well, then, you say, maybe we can expect a more effective prosecution of the war on terrorism. Fat chance.
Two-thirds of the House Democrats voted against renewing the counterterrorism Patriot Act. Many Democrats then opposed the Bush-McCain compromise on standards for terrorist interrogations. Speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi represents the Democrats' left-leaning, MoveOn.org wing that would hobble U.S. intelligence monitoring and give captured terrorists unfettered access to American courts.
The fact is that, unlike the Republicans in 1994, congressional Democrats in 2006 have no coherent governing agenda.
If they win Nov. 7, we'll have divided government and potential gridlock. Bush will discover his veto power and Democrats will revel in the unaccustomed luxury of opposition "oversight" and investigations. Odds are, overwhelmingly, that nothing much will get done.
Americans are said to be tired of the partisan warfare in Washington. They'll get more of it, not less, if Nov. 7 produces a Democratic Congress determined to hamstring Bush.
If giddy Democrats overplay their hand, they will hurt their party's chances to regain the White House in 2008. Impeach Bush hearings in the House, a John Conyers fantasy, would likely mean a President McCain or Giuliani in 2008. Americans may have soured on Bush and a frustrating war in Iraq but they won't embrace the specter of banana republic government.
The Democrats' lack of a governing agenda allows the Republicans an opening they can yet exploit. It's never a plus in politics if you can tell voters what you're against but not what you're for.
Beyond the Democrats' missing agenda, Bush strategist Karl Rove and Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman have one last ace to play. In the final 72 hours before this election, they will implement the most sophisticated and best-financed plan ever devised for mobilizing the GOP base and getting its voters to the polls. Democrats have nothing like it.
Facile comparisons with 1994 miss key differences in 2006. One wonders if the Democrats have noticed.
