Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 17, 1994 TAG: 9411180036
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-23 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY L. GARLAND
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
First, in the Senate at least, the imperial incumbency held pretty well. Only two Democratic incumbents were involuntarily retired. Democrats with relatively clean noses had no difficulty surviving the Republican tide, which ran mainly where seats were open. In the House, it was a different story. After six straight elections in which only a handful of Democratic incumbents lost, more than 30 were defeated this year!
Second, the new Republican majorities of three in the Senate (after Sen. Richard Shelby's switch) and 14 in the House are small in comparison with those routinely enjoyed by Democrats in past years. And pitifully small when compared with the Democrats' good years.
That said, not once in a century, if ever, has the party of the president in a time of general prosperity suffered a defeat remotely comparable to the one visited upon Democrats Nov. 8. This does suggest something elemental, possibly even a fundamental realignment of American politics similar to the emergence of a more-or-less permanent Republican majority from the Civil War to the Great Depression, or the more or-less-permanent Democratic congressional majority we've seen since.
In the period of Republican ascendency, a Democrat such as Woodrow Wilson could win when the GOP split, as it did in 1912. But in the 36 federal elections from 1860 to 1932, Republicans held a majority in the Senate 30 times to five for the Democrats with one tie. In the House, Democrats did a tad better, winning a majority in 11 elections out of 36.
In the 31 elections beginning with the arrival of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in 1932, through 1992, Democrats lost the House only twice and the Senate just five times. With the exception of Reagan's first five years, Democrats have mainly shaped the nation's domestic agenda for six decades.
Three new presidents this century were elected with a conspicuous minority of the popular vote: Wilson in 1912 with 41 percent, Nixon in 1968 and Clinton in 1992 with 43 percent. But the first two went on to win re-election, perhaps because they appeared to govern in harmony with the majority spirit expressed the first time they won. That is, Wilson's progressive agenda co-opted ideas represented in Theodore Roosevelt's third-party challenge to orthodox Republicanism just as Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy was designed to appeal to the votes George Wallace got in 1968.
But President Clinton seemed to ignore the fact that the 57-percent share he didn't get represented no endorsement of liberalism; in fact, the contrary.
Clinton is being swamped with advice, of course. The most numerous voices seem to be telling him to move to the center and contend with Republicans on their natural turf. My own small voice says that while he may not win re-election by remaining true to liberalism, he has even less chance without it.
Liberalism may be on its deathbed, as many suggest, but it still has powerful appeal to those tens of millions of Americans receiving direct government benefits, or who see no real hope of material salvation under free enterprise. A real assault on the American welfare state must await a genuine panic and that isn't likely to arrive for another dozen years.
Even parliamentary systems, where the executive controls the legislative branch or doesn't govern, find the unwinding of the welfare state an exceedingly tough nut to crack. Clinton certainly has the opportunity to cooperate with Republicans to restrain future growth in entitlement spending, such as Social Security, Medicare, federal pensions and food stamps. Virtually all Republican members of Congress and most Democrats admit its necessity. But doing so would go counter to all the president's rhetoric in the closing days of the '94 campaign and would seriously jeopardize his standing with the core constituencies of the Democratic Party upon which he must depend for renomination. And it's almost certain now he'll have to fight for it.
Virginia was conspicuous by its virtual absence in the roll call of GOP victories: only one House Democrat defeated, the rest comfortably re-elected along with Sen. Charles Robb.
While I never saw North pulling it off (see columns of 2/10, 3/24, 5/26, 6/2 and 6/23), there were two things that, if, done differently, might have changed the outcome. The first was the character issue that cut against both Robb and North, but obviously now more against North. The mistake the North campaign made was not nailing down early the more serious side of Robb's problem, which was never the marital infidelity part that people remembered and could forgive, but the cover-up run from Robb's office, largely at taxpayer's expense, that resulted in three of his aides pleading guilty to federal crimes and causing the senator himself to be brought before a grand jury.
Refreshing the public's fuzzy memory of these facts would have established a rough equivalency on the character issue that might have allowed Republican-inclined voters troubled by North's past to see their way clear to vote for him.
Second, North made a huge personal blunder introducing the volatile issue of Social Security late in the campaign, as a mere aside, and in a way showing no serious thought. But once that was done, North needed a stronger counterattack than he delivered. Robb's willingness to curb the growth in Social Security had been repeatedly placed upon the public record, perfectly illustrated by his remark in the Hampden-Sydney debate: "I would take food from the mouths of widows and orphans. ... "
But perhaps the most remarkable result of the '94 election was that Republicans won even after Democrats played the Social Security card that so often in the past had saved them. And even in Virginia, it's unlikely that North's ill-conceived comment by itself was enough to beat him.
Ray L. Garland is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB