In the run up to the 2000 election, American politics had become rabidly partisan and vituperative. That is perhaps not surprising as the election followed an era in which two of the most polarizing figures in American politics, Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, led their respective parties. Some Americans (swing voters, for instance) became fed up with hyper-partisan politics and began looking for a candidate who could bring us together.
George W. Bush tapped into that discontent by promising to be a “uniter, not a divider,” and by promising to “change the tone” in Washington.
How has Mr. Bush done in fulfilling his campaign promise to change the tone in Washington?
After nearly four years of Mr. Bush’s Presidency and two years of Republican control of both houses of Congress, Mr. Bush can truthfully claim to have changed the tone in Washington. He and the GOP have made it far worse.
Miles Benson, in an op-ed, demonstrates the point:
The venomous conflict of the 2004 presidential election, which has pushed leaders to new levels of partisan hostility, has spread to ordinary Americans.Intolerance of political differences is growing, experts say….
“We've become two warring nations," independent pollster John Zogby agreed. "The same incivility we have been experiencing within Washington in the last decade has spread out and we are seeing it nationally now…
Republican Bill McInturff of the polling firm Public Opinion Strategies uses an "intensity range" to show that attitudes are significantly stronger regarding President Bush than they were concerning Bill Clinton in 1996 or Bush's father in 1992.
When McInturff adds the percentage of Democrats who strongly disapprove of Bush (69 percent) to the percentage of Republicans who strongly approve of him (68 percent), the "intensity range" is 137 percent — almost double the 72 percent range for George H.W. Bush. The range for Clinton (in this case, Republican disapproval added to Democratic approval) was 92 percent.
"It's stunning. I have never in my life seen these kinds of numbers on the level of intensity on both sides," McInturff said. "We are seeing the largest gap in American history in approval and disapproval by party. The level at which people are locking in is without precedent."
10) Play To The Base
Noam Scheiber, writing at The New Republic’s blog describes the reelection strategy of President Bush and Karl Rove:
Rove's grand plan was to spend the first three years of Bush's term stroking conservatives' erogenous zones--lots of tax cuts, conservative judges, regulatory rollbacks, and religiously hued social policy (the administration's marriage initiative, its efforts to restrict access to abortion, its retrograde stem cell research policies, etc.). The idea behind this stuff was that it would give Bush the political capital to tack leftward during his re-election campaign.
9) Spend the Last Year Campaigning to the Base Instead Of To Swing Voters
Rove’s plan to tack back to the center in the last year of the term has apparently been abandoned in favor of a plan to excite the base. The Washington Post reports:
As President Bush addressed a rally here Wednesday, he performed the political equivalent of preaching to the choir…Although age-old campaign rules dictate that the general-election candidate must emphasize moderate "swing" voters and political independents, Bush strategists are predicting that this election, more than previous ones, will be determined by the turnout of each side's partisans…
There is no surer way to kill any chance for bipartisan cooperation than to try to have political opponents arrested over a political dispute. Three examples follow.
First, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas was in charge of a bill overhauling certain Medicare and other provisions. He offered a ninety page substitute bill one night then tried to ram it through the Committee the next morning.
Democrats on the Committee objected to voting on a measure they had not had time to read. Democrats insisted (as was their right under House Rules) that the bill be read in its entirety. While the clerk read the bill, the Democrats retired to a library near the committee room to caucus about how to proceed. They left one Democrat in the hearing room to object to any action requiring unanimous consent.
Thomas, upset that the Democrats had required the bill to be read, summoned the Capital Hill police to arrest the Democratic House members and evict them from the library.
Republican Congressman Ray LaHood commented that:
I've been here nine years and this is one of the saddest days we've had in the House. What has happened to the Democrats is shameful, it's embarrassing to our party. I'm sad for our party and I'm sad for the House.
Tom DeLay then hatched a scheme to win more House seats for Republicans by discarding the tradition of having redistricting only once a decade.
Texas Governor Perry, following Delay’s plan, called for a special session of the Texas Legislature to redistrict in mid-decade. Texas Democrats fled the state to prevent a quorum thereby preventing the redistricting. DeLay then used his influence to have the Homeland Security Department turn away from tracking potential terrorists in order to track down the missing legislators. DeLay wished to locate the Democrats so that he could have them arrested and forcibly brought back to Austin to establish a quorum so that redistricting could proceed.
Finally, President Bush spent part of the Fourth of July at a rally in West Virginia. Nicole and Jeff Rank decided to attend the rally, acquired tickets, and showed up with the rest of the crowd. Nicole and Jeff Rank wore tee shirts to the rally that said “Love America, Hate Bush.”
Their reward for such insolence was being arrested for trespassing at the rally. They were removed in handcuffs. After the rally was over and the cameras gone, the charges against the Rank’s were dropped.
The irony of having people dragged away in handcuffs on the Fourth of July simply for expressing their political views seems lost on the GOP.
7) Have the Senate Majority Leader Campaign Against the Senate Minority Leader
Few political institutions require as much cooperation between opposing parties as the Senate. Much of the business of the Senate is conducted by unanimous consent and additional business requires a supermajority of 60 votes. Those procedural rules make cooperation necessary if the Senate is to attend to the People’s business.
The key to maintaining some bipartisan cooperation in the Senate is the relationship between the Senate Majority leader and the Senate Minority leader. To prevent that relationship from fracturing, it has long been a tradition for the Senate Majority Leader to avoid campaigning against the Senate Minority Leader and vice versa.
The Washington Post reports that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has broken that tradition:
Frist (R-Tenn.), who is heading a massive fundraising effort to deny Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) a fourth term, put his feet where his money is Saturday, traversing the state twice in 10 hours to stump for Republican John Thune. Historians say they know of no previous majority or minority leader who traveled to his counterpart's state to campaign for his ouster.But Senate tradition and decorum are melting this year beneath the Senate's bitter partisanship, the GOP's zeal to keep its razor-thin majority, and the party's belief that it can knock off Daschle in a state that voted overwhelmingly for President Bush in 2000.
6) Accuse Democrats of Aiding Terrorists
The 9/11 attacks united America in a way that has not been seen since World War II. Al Gore gave a speech shortly after 9/11 in which he said:
There are no divisions in this country where our response to the war on terrorism is concerned. We are united. George W. Bush is my Commander-In-Chief. This country is more united that at any time I can remember in my whole lifetime…I reaffirm again, that as Americans, all of us stand behind our President, our principles, and send a message to the world that we will win this war against terrorism.
When Democrats expressed concerns that some of those polices violated the Constitution, Ashcroft attacked. CNN reported:
Attorney General John Ashcroft lashed out Thursday at critics of the administration's response to terrorism, saying questions about whether its actions undermine the Constitution only serve to help terrorists.
Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends.
5) Accuse Your Opponents of Not Caring About the Security of the American People
After the 9/11 attacks, some people, including Democratic Senators such as Joe Lieberman and Bob Graham, proposed a new cabinet level agency that eventually became known as the Homeland Security Department. President Bush and the administration opposed the idea.
When political pressure became too intense, President Bush reversed course and embraced the formation of such a department. That put Democrats and Republicans in agreement on the fundamental issue but they still disagreed on the details.
In particular, President Bush wanted all 170,000 employees of the department to be political appointees while the Democrats wanted the employees to have Civil Service protections.
Mr. Bush used the dispute over civil service protection as cover to accuse Democrats of not caring about the security of the American people. The Washington Post reports:
Four times in the past two days, Bush has suggested that Democrats do not care about national security, saying on Monday that the Democratic-controlled Senate is "not interested in the security of the American people…”
4) Listen to Grover Norquist
By all accounts, Grover Norquist is one of the most influential GOP political operatives. A short bio is here. If you really want to change the tone (for the worse), perhaps the best way is to listen to Grover Norquist. Mr. Norquist’s position on being a “uniter not a divider” is expressed in two quotes:
"Bipartisanship is another name for date rape.""We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals-and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship."
3) Run a Relentlessly Negative (and False) Campaign
There is nothing like a false and negative campaign to increase partisan friction. Mr. Bush seems intent on setting records in that category. The Post reports:
Scholars and political strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts. Though stretching the truth is hardly new in a political campaign, they say the volume of negative charges is unprecedented -- both in speeches and in advertising.Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush's campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads -- or 27 percent of his total.
In 2001, Michael Barone wrote an article about how George W. Bush could change the tone in Washington (for the better). He wrote:
In the run-up to the 1998 elections, I asked his chief political strategist, Karl Rove, whether Republicans would win the few seats they needed for a majority in the Texas House. We could, he said, but we probably won't, because we have a policy of not opposing Democrats who support us on one of our major issues.With their control over the Republican Party and their ties to lobbyists, Mr Bush and Mr Rove could guarantee co-operative Democrats that they would not have serious opposition. Their goal was not to achieve narrow Republican majorities, but to create a situation where there would continue to be a reservoir of Democrats from whom they could win support.
No way. The White House hand picked Cleland’s challenger who then ran a vicious campaign in which Cleland’s patriotism was questioned.
And the Number 1 way to change the tone for the worse is:
1) When Democrats Try To Be Nice, Just tell Them to F_ _ _ Off
Democratic Senator Pat Leahy and Vice President Dick Cheney disagree about many things. Recently, as President of the Senate, Cheney was on the Senate floor for a photograph of the members of the Senate. According to the AP:
Vice President Dick Cheney used an obscenity beginning with "F" in an exchange with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., on the Senate floor where members had gathered for a group photo.Senate aides with knowledge of the encounter Tuesday said the vice president confronted Leahy about some of the Democrat's criticism about alleged improprieties in Iraq military contracts awarded to Halliburton Co. Cheney, who as vice president is president of the Senate, is a former CEO of Halliburton.
Leahy responded by criticizing the White House for standing by supporters who had accused Democrats of being anti-Catholic last year in opposing one of President Bush's judicial nominees, said one Senate aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Cheney then responded, "F-- off" or "F-- you," the aide said Thursday.
The Washington Times quotes Cheney explaining his behavior:
But what I really didn't like was after he had done so, then he came over — and he had done that in a public forum — and then he came over on the Senate and tried to put his arm around me and treat me as though I was his best long-lost friend. And I didn't appreciate it. And I spoke rather forcefully of what I thought about his action, and then walked off.
I used to think these guys were good at politics. But they seem really ham-handed now. Thanks for putting the list together.