“Everything looks bad if you remember it.” – Homer Simpson
As we enter this last year until Bush the Younger becomes a true lame duck, there really isn’t much left to be said, or to do. We appear to be in gridlock. The President vetoes legislation, threatens to veto even more legislation, and whines about a Congress that isn’t as pliant as it once was. The Legislature has largely put a brake on new Executive mistakes but has been unable to correct those previously committed or much advance its own agenda. They are at each other’s throats with press conferences and sound bites, but neither has much power over the other and today is precisely one year until our next federal election. Oh, how time flies.
Eight years ago – Bill Bradley and John McCain were fighting the good fight to try and keep both presidential nominations from going to unchallenged front runners. There was a federal budget surplus and the economy was humming along so well that a book titled “Dow 36,000″ was taken seriously by people who should’ve known better. Bush the Younger had just burst onto the national scene that summer as the prohibitive Republican favorite.
Seven years ago – We were on the precipice of the Florida debacle in what turned out to be one of the most important elections in a long time. Bush the Younger was making campaign stops where he’d raise three fingers in the air as a “W” shape. That he’d once be caught driving drunk (and this man was a well known boozer) was the best the Democrats could do for an October surprise.
Six years ago – We were still raw from trauma and in the early stages of bombing Afghanistan up from the Stone Age. Bush the Younger had never been so popular, Rudy Giuliani was thinking about staying on as mayor past the end of his term and the vaunted newspaper recount of the Florida ballots was quietly neutered and released. Best not to question the president’s legitimacy now, eh?
Five years ago – Democrats were running in fear as Bush and his acolytes beat the drums for war in Iraq. We were quite certain that Saddam Hussein had massive weapons. The very next day the Democrats took a beating and the Senate went back over to the Republicans.
Four years ago – Howard Dean was going to be the savior of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. The hopes of the anti-war crowd were pinned on him and him alone, and conservatives cackled with glee at the idea of running against someone who would dare to publicly say that the war wasn’t going well.
Three years ago – John Kerry had just conceded and it was widely assumed that Republican control of the government would last for the foreseeable future. Bush the Younger had “political capital” and values had decided the election. The Republican Party was licking its chops and sharpening its knives because there was nothing left in their way. Social Security reform would be merely the first in a series of domestically policy dominos.
Two years ago – Harriet Miers’ nomination for the Supreme Court had just gone down in flames and Samuel Alito had become a national figure overnight. Bush was swooning from Katrina and the Miers fiasco and it was hard to believe that a man with his dismal approval ratings had been re-elected only a year before. Social Security reform was long dead and there was very little talk of “political capital” anymore.
One year ago – The Auguries were pointed against the Republicans and the prophecy came true. The Iraq War had finally, at long last, produced a tangible political result to go along with its consistently dismal poll numbers. Rumsfeld resigned a few days later and the byline brigade waited, foolishly and with bated breath, for the Iraq Study Group to save us from Mr. Bush’s war.
What a long, strange Administration it’s been.
