First through the east, then to the big midwestern industrial centres, next to the farm belt and finally to the west, the wave rolled on, bringing profound change to American politics, wiping out the historic transformation that Barack Obama brought to the United States on a dramatic election night only 24 months earlier.
And when the ballots were counted, Congress was remade, the Obama program was endangered, the nascent health-care overhaul faced new challenges, the Washington political calculus was altered, the President’s second-term prospects were reshaped, the Democrats were thrust into disarray and despair, and the Republican Party – so full of triumph this week, so full of determination and defiance – was presented with serious new fissures that must be resolved before the 2012 election.
This was not an ordinary midterm congressional election. This time, the American people pushed the “shift” key and left almost nothing unchanged. They did more than replace many of the Democrats they elected in such great numbers in 2008, more than send to the political pasture many of the old warhorses that have ruled Washington for decades. They produced a massive repudiation of the past two years – the Obama stimulus program, the yawning deficits, the Wall Street, bank and automobile bailouts, and more.
With the Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, with the Senate divided nearly evenly, with old Washington hands in disrepute (if not in full retreat), and with new insurgents only months from taking office, the voters have added a new uncertainty to American politics.
Among the questions: Will the embattled President reach out to the Republicans beyond Wednesday’s overture to the new House hierarchy, especially presumptive Speaker John Boehner? Will the Republican regulars pacify the Tea Party insurgents, or will the insurrectionists push veteran conservatives further to the right? Will there be a confrontation between the last insurgent entrants into the Republican Party (the religious conservatives) and the new insurgents (economic conservatives)? Will the Democrats seek to obstruct the Republicans on Capitol Hill the way their rivals did the past two years? Or will they follow the Republican lead on such potentially popular measures as the extension of the Bush tax cuts, which are to expire at the end of next month?
And while Congress is a big prize, the presidency is the biggest prize in American politics, and so in the very week in which the Republicans reasserted themselves in the legislative branch, the 2012 election suddenly came into sharp new focus.
On the surface, the Republicans now hold the whip hand, and they clearly seem to be on the ascendant.
But they looked that way 16 years ago, when, for the first time in four decades, the Republicans took over both houses of Congress. Two years later, Bill Clinton – so wounded by his party’s losses in the 1994 midterms that he had to assert that “the president is still relevant here” – cruised to re-election. And the Democrats looked the same way in 1982, when the Republicans lost 26 seats and Ronald Reagan’s approval rating (42 per cent, according to Gallup) was even lower than Mr. Obama’s (44 per cent). Two years later, Mr. Reagan carried every state but one for a second term.
The environment for Mr. Obama, of course, is not particularly congenial. A Zogby International poll released this week showed that fully 50 per cent of U.S. voters said they didn’t plan to vote for the President, with 57 per cent saying they saw Tuesday’s elections as a referendum on the President.
Then again, there’s nothing particularly congenial about the American political mood right now. This year’s congressional elections – and the gubernatorial races that attracted less attention but followed the broader national trends – were fuelled by an anger rarely seen in the United States. Anger is not an ideology, but it did provide the Republicans with an ample margin of victory this week.
That victory is a leadership challenge not only to the President but also to the new power brokers – the Republican rebels and their Tea Party shock troops. Both came to office as self-proclaimed agents of change. Now they have seen that the winds of change can shift with astonishing speed and force – a warning to the new Republicans and perhaps a comfort to the Democrats, who discovered this week that the beneficiaries of change can swiftly become the victims of change.
David Shribman is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of U.S. politics.
