This momentous election leaves President Obama weakened, his party wounded and Republicans jubilant. But it is only an election. And the American people are still uneasy.
For Obama, this election is a stunning reversal. Two years is not enough time for the electorate to undergo a major demographic shift, so there are other factors at work. It is obvious that this was nothing less than a rebuke to his presidency. Obvious, but it still bears repeating.
This is Obama’s first electoral loss since he became a national sensation. He is now a wounded president.
Democrats are now liberated in a way that could further hurt President Obama’s agenda and popularity. These next two years will feature things the last two usually didn’t — massive Democratic defections on Obama initiatives, prominent Democrats distancing themselves from the president, and other Democrats attempting to carve out room for themselves as Party leaders.
Many of the familiar old faces of the Democratic majority have been repudiated. Russ Feingold lost his seat, Nancy Pelosi is now an ex-Speaker of the House, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in a fight for his political life against an unprepared and gaffe-prone candidate, and Barack Obama and his administration have been handed the largest mid-term defeat for a first-term president in United States history. This is an astounding loss.
There are still several lessons for Republicans who are tempted toward excess today.
First, this Republican triumph should be tempered by the understanding that this was, in the words of Marco Rubio — a newly elected senator and a new face of conservatism — “not an embrace of the Republican Party, but a second chance…” Congress is still unpopular. Both parties are unpopular. No one is really winning at the moment. The Republicans are just losing less.
This wave is national, but limited. Many of the House seats Republicans are winning are actually Republican-leaning seats from before the 2006 and 2008 Democratic victories. This victory, then, essentially resets the electoral map to the Bush era. No small feat, certainly, and a shock to those who confidently predicted the end of the Republicans and the death of conservatism in 2008, but not a fundamental ideological realignment.
Second, this wave notably did not extend equally to gubernatorial races and Senate seats. There are several possible explanations for this somewhat surprising phenomenon. First, the Senate exists to dampen the passions of the House, and so sweeping change is slower to come to it. In some high-profile races, Republicans chose candidates who were too weak, even with the wind behind them. This should be a lesson. The reluctance of voters to entrust some Republicans with four or six years of power should also serve as some sort of warning.
Finally, Obama’s position is still reasonably secure. He is still more likely to be re-elected than not, though the door to his defeat is now open. He still controls the Senate. And Republican House control could work in his favor if they overreach, or if he passes popular budget-balancing measures that will give him momentum heading into 2012.
Republicans should still be encouraged. The geographic sweep of their victory is important. Two years ago, the talk was that the Republican Party would soon be a regional party, dominant in the South and weak elsewhere.
Now, they have won in the Midwest, where the economy matters most, and in the Southwest, where immigration is supreme, and even in Eastern states where Republicans were supposed to be extinct. This was a national victory.
For Republicans, this is an opportunity, but one fraught with difficulties. How will they navigate the angry waters of the national mood? More prosaically, how will they choose to exercise what will amount to a veto power on any and all national business?
Most importantly: How will they conduct themselves in power?
There is a tendency among those elected to Congress to consider themselves important. This bothers most Americans, even if they can’t put a finger on why.
Well, here it is: Our representatives in Washington are representatives first. They do not exist as personages, as players, unless they represent the will of the people. They are not entitled to their power, their seats or their chairmanships. They are transient occupants of an old dwelling. Their offices are not theirs, but ours.
I’ve always wondered how Congressmen and Senators go bad. There are certainly pressures toward corruption. Washington D.C., a city built on a swamp, has always attracted those who thrive in humid squalor.
It’s also true that time slumps the strongest shoulders. Even the most courageous newcomer will, given enough time — and we often give them decades — become accustomed to power. They change, somehow. They sometimes forget why they came.
And yet. And yet they go to work every day in a building built from grand materials and for the business of a great nation. They pass monuments to our history every night. They take their place in a line of national heroes. How can they forget?
The TV series “The West Wing” once had a stirring moment when President Jed Bartlet, in the midst of a difficult second term, received a last letter from a former president. On his deathbed, the old president wrote Bartlet a letter that concluded, “Jed — Go see Lincoln, and listen.”
I think perhaps our problems — not all of them, but some — could be solved, the knot of our partisanship loosened, and the difficulties of the moment eased if only our representatives in Washington took this advice from time to time. It’s impossible to ascend the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and not be moved. It’s impossible to read the words of his Second Inaugural Address, given as the Civil War raged — “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in…” — and not be humbled.
Maybe our representatives don’t go visit the Lincoln Memorial. These new ones, carried to power by a crashing wave of anger with the ways of Washington, should.
Reach Will at wmunsil@asu.edu
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