BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
This summer I was convinced that in September, the Democrats would launch an election-year counter-offensive, an October surprise that would plug the drain of Democratic polling numbers and slow the slide of a lot of Democratic candidates.
Over the spring and summer Democratic candidates, with their back up against the wall, rolled out their usually failsafe campaign issues–race, religion, class warfare and the big bomb, Social Security.
When that strategy failed, I waited for President Obama to enter stage left with the rhetorical flourishes, the visionary poetry, and the stirring advocacy of progressive government that made him a political rock star just two short years ago.
Instead, the President and the Democrats stayed negative, partisan and defensive. Not until this week did we hear the faint chant of ‘Yes We Can’, but only from highly selective audiences, and you’d swear they were whispering under their breath, “ We can,Can’t we?”
Democrats sounded like an old LP record with a scratch in it. With constant repetition, they continued to blame the problems in America on the Bush and Reagan administrations. They made villains of corporate America Their roster of the rotten included the auto industry, from the auto industry to drug companies, to the oil industry and health insurance. They blamed Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, business executives, investment bankers, born-again Christians, Fox News, the tea party, everyone with incomes over $250,000, lobbyists, and my favorite—those menacing special interests.
When that strategy got stale, and with the full cooperation of the media, the Democrats tried to make villains of John Boehner, the House Republican Leader, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and lately ‘outside’ political organizations that are spending secret money from secret donors on secret political agendas.
In the case of Boehner and the secret donors, America has been witness to one of the most blatant examples of political and journalistic collusion since the Obama presidential campaign kicked off in Springfield , IL . The media have behaved like lemmings, linking Boehner to special interests and raising the hysterical specter of secret right-wing organizations buying the election for Republicans. They did it without even a token attempt at accuracy, perspective or history. But I digress.
Democrats seemed to be in a perpetual state of denial about what they did wrong over the past two years. So, there’s been no October surprise, no mid-course correction, no facing up to mistakes, no adjustments in attitude or direction, and no introspection. These folks aren’t even feigning some recognition of the historic transformational changes that are still rumbling across the American political landscape and may not dissipate with the election.
The Democrats seemed to believe–because they wanted to believe–that the Obama election ushered in a new era of progressivism in which they could enact a radically different national agenda and from it rebuild American society through government activism and intervention. President Obama’s election reflected a transformational change in American politics, and they were right about that, but the Democrats also assumed that the change was about ideology and a philosophy of governing. Well, they were wrong about that. I didn’t think then and still don’t think now that what occurred in 2008 was about ideology any more than it was about Obama’s race. The minds of the American people were elsewhere.
Consider for a minute that the change was about a desire for basic, responsive and effective governance. It was about desperation for the kind of leadership that would do what was necessary to get things done, stop the harping and carping, pay attention to business, and produce product, so average Americans could go about their lives with far less worry and apprehension. The change was about wanting a government you didn’t have to keep your eye on every second and not worry so much that hard-earned tax dollars were being wasted in numerical amounts that boggled the imagination on programs that weren’t thought out or inspired by bad intentions.
Many Americans haven’t changed that attitude, They’ve just become more desperate and more frustrated with lives and livelihood that are less secure now than they were two years ago. They’ve seen decline in the practice of basic human values that drive human behavior and human relationships. They are concerned about their schools, and just coping with the pressure of soccer games, home repairs, taxes, and traffic congestion. They sense a loss of control over their lives and they don’t see the government doing a damn thing to address the problems government is supposed to address.
We know now that the change didn’t revolve around Obama, nor did it evolve from him. Democrats today don’t seem to grasp that. Republicans didn’t get it in 1994, either. They believed they were the change, but the American people saw them only as instruments of change.
I think Republican leaders like John Boehner get it. I think Boehner saw early on in national public sentiment, a growing exasperation with the political process, right and left, Republican and Democratic, and a deep-seated frustration with governmental inaction. Add to that frustration, the very real fear of long term economic dislocation and you get frustration + fear = anger. John Boehner has also been smart enough to know that the American people aren’t infatuated with the idea of Republicans coming to the rescue. Democrats lost this election as much as Republicans won it.
With all that negativity, fed and fomented by the media, the results would be devastating for any politicians who didn’t respect it and respond to it. The Republican advantage has been that voters have mostly looked to Democrats for respect and for a response and none has been forthcoming.
The question now is what both sides will read into the election results and how they will react to them.
A new wave of Republicans will swarm over Washington in January fully capable
Editors’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.