[Column] President Bush's electoral defeat

By Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The Republican defeat in Congressional elections this month opens the door to substantial changes in both foreign and domestic policies in the United States. While the Democrats lack a coherent positive agenda, the public decisively rejected the status quo offered by President Bush and the Republican Party. The full implications of this defeat will become more apparent in the next few months.

There were three main factors behind the Democratic victory: discontent over the progress of the war in Iraq, an extraordinary level of corruption and incompetence among the Republicans, and the state of the economy. While the war was clearly the most important factor, all three of these issues were cited as important factors in exit polls by people who voted for Democrats.

As the number of U.S. casualties grows, and the disarray in Iraq becomes harder to hide, the public is getting more concerned and angry over the war. It is apparent to anyone who cares that the Bush administration deliberately misled the public in order to garner support for the invasion of Iraq. The pretext for the invasion was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and that it had connections to Al Qaeda. There was never any compelling evidence for either claim.

Before the war, most in the media acted as willing accomplices, passing along unsubstantiated allegations (often from anonymous sources) that supported the case for WMDs or links between Iraq and Al Queda. With the failure to find any evidence whatsoever of a WMD program in Iraq, the media is now reporting much more critically on events in Iraq, including evidence that the Bush administration deliberately misled the public before the war. The memory of Vietnam is still fresh enough that the American public has little patience for long wars with ill-defined goals and a leadership that cannot be trusted.

Adding to the anger over the war is outrage over a long list of incidents exposing an extraordinary level of both corruption and incompetence. The disaster in New Orleans was the most visible single incident. The Bush administration proved unable to evacuate a major city in the wake of a hurricane, or even to bring in sufficient food, water, and medical supplies to the people trapped by the storm. This incompetence was directly tied to corruption - the person in charge of the relief effort was a politically connected lawyer with no experience in disaster relief whatsoever.

This New Orleans disaster was just one of many incidents exposing corruption in the administration. Congress appropriated US$30 billion for the reconstruction of Iraq. There is remarkably little to show for this spending, with the infrastructure still in ruins and electricity and water in short supply. One reason for this failure is that many of the contracts went to politically connected businesses, which didn't follow through on their commitments.

There was also a major scandal involving a Republican lobbyist who pled guilty to giving bribes, plus ongoing questions about the administration's close ties to the insurance, pharmaceutical, and energy industries. These ties to the energy industry prompted much greater anger when gas prices soared earlier in the year.

The third major factor behind the Republicans' defeat was the state of the economy. This may seem surprising, given that the U.S. unemployment rate is just 4.4 percent and the economy has grown at a reasonably healthy pace for the last three years. However, most people do not follow economic statistics closely; they look at their own economic circumstances.

Most people have not fared very well over the current business cycle. In spite of the healthy economic growth and very strong productivity growth, wages for most workers have not risen over the last five years. Surveys show that workers continue to feel a great deal of insecurity over their jobs, their health care coverage, and the prospects for their children. Many see an economy in which a relatively small number of wealthy people are doing quite well and the typical working family struggles to get by. The Republicans cannot escape being associated with the wealthy minority, especially since they pushed through tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy.

Concerns over economic issues were especially important in several industrial states that elected Republicans in 2004 and voted Democratic this year. These states are seeing an ongoing loss of good-paying jobs as industries such as steel and automobiles continue to lose ground to import competition. Even though the decline in these industries preceded the Bush administration, the Republicans have not offered any policies to protect the workers in these sectors.

The Republicans hoped to cling to power by using the same tactics that had proved effective in prior elections. They repeatedly raised the threat of terrorism, trying to convince voters that they would not be safe if the Democrats came to power. They also tried to appeal to conservative religious voters by raising issues like same-sex marriage and abortion. However, these issues did not have as much appeal this time around. The Republicans lost ground among all demographic groups, including conservative Christians.

The 2006 election was an extraordinary victory for the Democratic Party. Even though it was predicted in nearly all the polls in the weeks leading up to the elections, polls had also shown the Democrats ahead in elections they managed to lose, so many people were still surprised by the victory. I will have more to say about what is likely to change as a result of the Democrats' victory in my next column.

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