White House Week
The Fault, Dear Brutus, Is Not in Our Stars but in Ourselves
The big Democratic election wins have punctured the image of Karl Rove, President Bush's senior political adviser. Rove had been a legendary figure in American politics, the "architect" of Bush's two presidential victories, and much feared in Democratic circles for his polarizing brand of politics. But his strategy of relying on the conservative base and his advice that all politics is local didn't work last week, and Bush already seems more willing to try compromising with the Democrats. Whether Rove will resign soon, in step with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and GOP national chairman Ken Mehlman, is not clear. But a new tone seemed to be set at Bush's news conference, as when Bush was asked if he could describe the status of his who-can-read-the-most-books contest with Rove. "I'm losing," Bush said unhappily. "I obviously was working harder in the campaign than he was."
The High That Didn't Last Long Enough
Democrats, while elated at winning 28 House and six Senate seats, are already turning a flinty eye to the midterm results as they begin to handicap their expectations for the next presidential cycle. Privately, some are saying that the results could even be interpreted as disappointing. "It's a real testament to the power of incumbency," says one strategist. "There's no way Virginia and Montana [Senate elections] should have been that close." Their thinking: Many of the House seats won by Democrats already had strong blue tendencies, and vulnerable districts were targeted hard by the Democratic machine. "We expanded our playing field this year," says one insider. But, he admits, the party mainly picked the low-hanging fruit.
And You Thought Big Labor Was Dead?
Big Labor, once buried by the media and many political pundits, apparently came back to life in the nick of time to help Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts in Tuesday's election. Party leaders said that the AFL-CIO and other, unaffiliated unions pumped thousands of volunteers into key battleground states, including Maryland, Ohio, and Wisconsin, where Democrats saw gains. The bulk of the help came in the final four days, offsetting the GOP's so-called 72-hour program. Democratic Party officials said the midterms proved that labor has been revitalized as a key political arm, and they expect the major unions to play an even bigger role in the 2008 presidential primaries.
Bipartisanship? Hold On, Not So Fast
To the delight of cynics, the new bipartisanship got off to a sputtering start last week, when President Bush sent John Bolton's name to the Hill, asking that he be confirmed as ambassador to the United Nations. Bush knows that Democrats, who blocked Bolton's nomination last year and forced Bush to make him a recess appointment, will never approve Bolton's nomination when they take over in January. Yet even with the GOP still in control, Bolton will face a steep uphill fight. A key Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, opposed Bolton's nomination the first time and said he would do it again. And if Bolton's name were to make it out of committee, the newly energized party of the donkey would most likely once again obstruct it with a filibuster.
With Kenneth T. Walsh, Paul Bedard and Bret Schulte
This story appears in the November 20, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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