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" For House Republicans, it looks like 1994 all over again. A president is beleaguered, the economy is lifeless. A speaker-in-waiting has taken center stage. He has unveiled a statement of principles. A big win, giving the GOP control of the House, seems inevitable.
1994 looms large for the president, too. The economy has improved under his watch, but not enough, and certainly not in time, to sway an anxious electorate. He has scored major legislative victories, but early enough in his term that voters have forgotten about them. The Republicans have succeeded in convincing large numbers of Americans that he is somehow strange, "not one of us." A big loss, giving the GOP control of the House, seems inevitable.
But if the Republicans want to make this year 1994 redux, Barack Obama needs to make it 1995, when a rebuked Democratic president rebounded by depicting himself as protector-in-chief -- protector of average Americans against the depredations of a band of radicals out to make middle-class lives less secure and less safe. What Obama’s got going for him, just like what Bill Clinton had going for him, is an opposition whose loudest voices are not only extreme but extremely quotable, and a majority of the electorate that does not trust extremists.
Led by Newt Gingrich, the GOP smelled blood. Energized by their thwarting of the healthcare initiative, they fully funded a hundred contests across the country. "Historically, you'd have about 30 competitive races," says Scott Reed, then executive director of the Republican National Committee. "We had three times that number." Positioning themselves as the party of fresh thinking, Republicans prepared a document, the Contract With America, that contained 10 concrete right-of-center legislative proposals, including a balanced-budget amendment, term limits and welfare reform, but no mention of red-meat social issues like abortion and homosexuality. The absence was intentional. "The Democrats played totally into our hands," says Joe Gaylord, a key political advisor to Newt Gingrich at the time, "because they decided that this was some radical document that would change the face of the world. We'd say, ‘A balanced budget is radical? Cutting taxes is radical?’ They fell into a huge trap." Bill Clinton seemed helpless as Democratic candidates asked him to stay away from their districts. Normally as politically savvy a political animal as existed anywhere on earth, he seemed clueless, too, reduced to heaping lame ridicule on what he called the Contract on America. Although expecting losses, the White House was oblivious to the extent of the Democrats’ peril. "We knew that the Senate might be in trouble," says Leon Panetta, then White House chief of staff. "I don't think that we ever expected that we'd lose the House, because we had a pretty good margin. Late afternoon on Election Day, George Stephanopoulos came in and said, ‘This is going to be a real landslide.’"
And a landslide it was: On Nov. 8, 1994, the Republicans gained 54 seats in the House -- knocking off even Tom Foley, the Democratic speaker from Washington -- and eight in the Senate to take control of both chambers. Twelve Democratic governor's mansions turned Republican, with liberal lion Mario Cuomo losing in New York to a little-known state legislator from Peekskill, and media star Ann Richards giving way in the Lone Star State to a baseball-team owner with the middle initial W.
The president was stunned. Five months later, in April, he still seemed forlorn. "The president is relevant here," he pleaded.
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There is, to say the least, a resemblance between Bill Clinton’s plight 16 years ago and Barack Obama’s today. Bank bailouts and the stimulus prevented another depression, but even if the economy is comparatively better than it might have been, it is still objectively bad. ("It could be worse" is not exactly a winning campaign slogan.) With virtually no Republican help he’s notched hefty legislative accomplishments -- not only the stimulus, but financial reform and healthcare reform, all three too timid to satisfy his liberal base, but none of them meaningless, either. However, those victories seem old news as Election Day approaches, and the benefits brought about by the healthcare bill are either only now beginning to take effect or won’t kick in for years. He is, if not an uncertain commander in chief, certainly an unlucky one, extricating combat forces from one inconclusive inherited conflict as he adds fighters to another. And the Republicans have succeeded in convincing many -- if not a majority of the public, then at least a large minority -- that he is not really an American, that he is odd, weird, dangerous. Of course, the color of his skin makes the job easy. It’s not necessary to call him a n----r; "Kenyan Muslim" makes the point effectively enough.
Led by John Boehner, the GOP once more smells blood, sensing that its stark refusal to cooperate with the president on any matter of importance is about to pay off. In conscious mimicry of Gingrich’s Contract, the House leadership has released its "Pledge to America." The Pledge lacks the Contract’s succinct list of specifics; rhetorically, at least, it is an even more ambitious manifesto, casting the GOP as the force to renew American freedom: "With this document, we pledge to dedicate ourselves to the task of reconnecting our highest aspirations to the permanent truths of our founding ..." With the good luck of the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision -- allowing unlimited corporate spending on political advertising, and we know which party is favored by people running and owning big corporations -- the GOP is poised to capture at least the 39 seats needed for a change in leadership of the House, if not the 10 needed to control the Senate.
With 1994's example crowding their rearview mirror, today’s president and his party, unlike those in 1994, see clearly to the crash ahead. Nevertheless, they seem unable to avoid it. Democratic candidates in marginal districts are running from their president, elected so decisively only two years ago. The inspiring oratory and confident charisma of candidate Obama are gone. The rhetoric of President Obama -- after the Republicans "drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back" -- now seems forced, off-key. The public that couldn’t get enough of him during his first few months in office seems to have stopped listening to him. Will Barack Obama, next year, be pleading for his relevance?
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<http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/10/10/obama_clinton_lessons>
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