Election leaves Bush to bob on blue wave

Alex Johnson Reporter • Profile

A day after President Bush got what he called a “thumping” at the polls, the president reached across the political divide with a promise to work with Democrats, and the new House leadership returned the favor. But the traditional post-election comity belied inevitable confrontations over any number of hard issues, none more difficult than the course of the war in Iraq.

Almost 6 in 10 voters said in exit polls that they disapproved of the war, and Bush immediately made it plain that he got the message, offering up Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s head to victorious Democrats. That doesn’t mean, however, that he intends to capitulate to their demands for a dramatic change of strategy in Iraq, raising the prospect of two years of tense battles over war policy.

Several times at a news conference Wednesday, Bush declined the opportunity to declare that the nomination of former CIA Director Robert Gates to replace Rumsfeld meant he was taking a new course in Iraq. If confirmed by the Senate, he said, Gates would bring “a fresh perspective” and “great managerial experience” to the Pentagon, but the goal would remain the same.

“It’s very important that the people understand the consequences of failure,” Bush said. “And I have vowed to the country that we’re not going to fail. We’re not going to leave before the job is done.”

That isn’t likely to sit well with newly emboldened Democratic congressional leaders.

“Unfortunately, the course in Iraq cannot be changed solely by changing personnel,” Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who would become majority leader if Democrat Jim Webb’s victory in Virginia survives a possible recount and his party takes over the Senate, said in a statement. “We also need a change in policy.”

Likewise, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., who would become chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement: “Regardless of Vice President Cheney’s ‘full steam ahead’ bravado, it is time for a radical change in course in Iraq.”

The first dramatic clash could come very soon. In an interview with MSNBC-TV on Wednesday, Biden said that as soon as the 110th Congress opened in January, he would convene hearings modeled on the historic examination of the Vietnam War conducted by Sen. William Fulbright, D-Ark., in 1971.

“Right now, we’re in a very deep hole,” Biden told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

Notwithstanding the boldness of their challenge, the Democrats have to navigate a delicate path on Iraq, because while they called for major change during the campaign, very few  —especially the party’s national figures, notably Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York — said what they would do instead.

The otherwise conciliatory-sounding Bush seized on that Wednesday. He challenged Democrats, in essence, to put up or shut up, saying, “The Democrats are going to have to make up their mind about how they’re going to conduct their affairs.”

Here comes Nancy
While Iraq is first on the list, there are many other land mines for Bush, whose only defense against a Democratic agenda could be a veto pen he has wielded but once during his six years in office.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a liberal San Franciscan who is expected to be elected the nation’s first female speaker in January, has promised to take on the president right out of the starting gate with an ambitious “First Hundred Hours” program to overhaul Washington.

The plan includes promises to reform lobbying and enact the recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 commission, but it also includes several ideas that Bush has resisted: raising the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, cutting the interest rate on student loans in half, streamlining Medicare’s prescription drug program and expanding federal funding for stem cell research.

More troubling for the White House is that with control of the House, Democrats will now be in control of the committees with oversight of its operations, a function they accused Republican chairmen of abdicating. Those committees will be led by some of the most senior Democrats hailing from the party’s liberal wing, and they will have subpoena power.

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