There was, a long time ago, a TV ad for the ABC network's election coverage, or maybe its newscasts. It featured the late Harry Reasoner, so "long time" must mean well over 20 years. In the ad, he was trying to make a point about the fickle nature of the American electorate, saying that the same electorate had voted for Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. "If there is a pattern," he noted, "I fail to discern it."
Perhaps he didn't exercise his discernment hard enough. I think there is a pattern, although it is a bit variable. The pattern, such as it is, is a kind of herd mentality that derives from the wearing out of one's welcome. It becomes the conventional wisdom over time, that President X, who was once the darling, or at least enough to get voted in, is no longer capable, or has lost his mojo, or had to deal with an unplanned crisis and was not successful at it -- whether or not it was even possible to succeed (think Katrina, a losing battle with no possible good outcome). Every 2-4 years, we allow the prevailing narrative to push us from right to left and back again.
I believe that the electorate's basic individual predilection doesn't really change, especially given the fact that our tendency toward liberalism or conservatism is a very environmentally-driven thing. We're not going to become liberal (or conservative) suddenly tomorrow, although we might choose to vote for one in a certain situation. But the prevailing narrative can very well make us do that, and the prevailing narrative changes in long arcs.
Two weeks from last night, we will go to the polls, produce our IDs and vote, likely for a very different direction from the one the USA took two years ago. Is it a good thing?
It appears likely that the Republicans will capture the Senate, by however small a margin, but in any respect large enough to become the majority party and, thereby, dictate what bills get voted on. The House, under Republican control since the famous 2010 "shellacking", has passed numerous bills, dozens really, including actual budgets, which have festered on the desk of the current majority leader, Harry Reid and never presented to the Senate for a vote, without a peep from the press.
If indeed the Republicans were to define their electoral goal, it would be to avoid anything bad happening between now and Election Day 2016, and to persuade the USA to vote for a Republican president and maintain both houses of Congress at that time. If that indeed is the goal, then how valuable will it be actually to win the Senate next month?
I ask, because while the USA is decidedly not supporting Obama at the moment, and his poll numbers are pretty poor, he is not running again in 2016. Will the back-and-forth wave of national feeling be sufficiently conservative in 2016?
The answer is this -- it all depends on the actions of a Republican Congress in 2015-16 and their success at managing the narrative from the legislative side. The situation is different from the 1994 shocking Republican congressional wins, in that they ran then on the Contract with America, a clear platform of what they said the USA needed and what legislation was to be passed. The expected upcoming 2014 "win", like the 2010 one, will be a backlash against the incumbent president, rather than a specific request by the USA for direction.
So if it is to be a good thing for America that the Republicans take over the whole Congress, they must manage Congress, not just change offices. They must develop and promote a vision of the country early, despite a challenging press and an expected obstructionist, veto-wielding president, and then control the narrative of why their legislative agenda is good for the USA and should have been signed by the president. As I noted in an earlier piece, the economic ice doesn't break until business starts hiring and people feel better about their jobs. The next Congress needs to show its ability to present legislative vision that will break that ice and encourage the trust business needs to invest in capital expenditures and long-term hiring -- and then get credit.
The clearest path to another Democratic president in 2016 will be if a Republican majority in Congress is not united in its legislating and looks just as impotent as the current gridlocked one. Promulgating ideas, developing good legislation and passing it as a unit is the clearest way to elevating Congress's stature and that of the conservative policy it will promote. If Obama chooses to veto everything and the economy is just as stalled in 2016 as it is now, the electorate will be very willing to seek a Republican candidate to lead as president.
The leaders in Congress need to be seen as leaders. They need to go to the USA repeatedly and explain what they're doing and why. They need to get more new faces seen, not just the Mitch McConnells and John Boehners and the like; the agenda they'll be presenting needs to look new and have new names associated with it. [BTW ... getting leaders to speak who are not heavy smokers or come from tobacco states will be more helpful than you think. There's an image to deal with there.]
Election Day 2014 is a timing situation. Republicans can win the Senate but then lose the country, and history tells us the arcs time for that to happen. It is up to a new Republican Senate to seize the narrative in step with the House and ride it for two years, lest the fickle sine wave of public allegiance go the other way.
Copyright 2014 by Robert Sutton
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