According to a new study from CQ Politics, compromise between Bush and House Democrats has been is short supply so far in 2007:
President Bush's success rating in the Democratic-controlled House has fallen this year to a half-century low, and he prevailed on only 14 percent of the 76 roll call votes on which he took a clear position.
The previous low for any president was in 1995, when Bill Clinton won just 26 percent of the time during the first year after Republicans took control of the House. If Bush's score holds through the end of the year, he will have the lowest success rating in either chamber for any president since Congressional Quarterly began analyzing votes in 1953.
A study of House and Senate floor votes, compiled by CQ over the August recess, also showed that House Democrats have backed Bush's legislative positions this year only 6 percent of the time, making for the strongest opposition from either party against a president in the 54 years CQ has kept score.
A separate analysis of so-called party unity votes, in which a majority of one party votes against a majority of the other, showed the possibility of another historic first for House Democrats. So far this year, Democrats have backed the majority position of their caucus 91 percent of the time on average on such votes. That marks the highest Democratic unity score in 51 years.
Although any president can count on a certain amount of discontent from the opposing party - especially one that controls Congress - Bush's low success rating and his low support scores among House Democrats are a direct result of disagreements with him over the Iraq War and spending priorities, according to a review of votes.
Given that the previous low was 1995, it is easy to wonder if a partisan shift in control of Congress that ends a trifecta in Washington almost necessarily leads to a moment of particularly high disagreement between the executive and legislative branches of government. When a new set of leaders comes to power in Washington, D.C. largely by running against the sitting President and his policies, opposition between the two major parties will obviously be at a very high point. In the 110th Congress, on top of the foreign policy and justice department fights, it is even possible that there will be a government shutdown over the budget. Given the cautious political instincts of the Democratic leadership in Congress, not to mention the new line item veto power that was instituted in the 1990's at least partially as a means of averting future government shutdowns, I doubt that we will see a government shutdown. However, it is a sign of the times that such a shutdown remains a possibility, but even that level of disagreement is overshadowed by larger battles concerning Iraq and executive privilege.
The dynamic at play here is that Bush has reached historic lows in approval ratings overall, while Republicans are trapped by three decades of rewarding wingnuts in their own party. For thirty years, Republicans have elected extremist conservatives in primary after primary, elevated those extremists to leadership positions in Congress and, more recently, both run campaigns and governed in a way that was aimed at the conservative base rather than at a diverse partisan and ideological range of the electorate. Thus, we are left with a situation where even though Bush has historically low approval ratings, he is still popular among the Republican base, his party leadership is dominated by wingnut extremists, and as such major Republican figures, including virtually every Republican presidential candidate, refuse to abandon either him or his policies. Compromise thus becomes extremely difficult, especially with Democrats taking power in Congress by opposing Bush, and heading toward a second wave election by continuing to do so (at least for a while, until the vetoes and filibusters start flying).
The current incentive and ideological structure in Washington is such that most Republicans have more to lose in bucking the Republican leadership than they do from the specter of defeat in the general election. After all, even in another wave election, at least 80% of all congressional Republicans will hold onto their place in Congress, and the possibility of well-financed primary challenges and the loss of chairmanships or leadership positions remains more real to an overwhelming supermajority of Republicans than does the possibility of a Democrat taking their seat. Democrats, once their opposition to Republican policies are registered in roll call votes that do not become law, have little reason to engage in a more dramatic confrontation with Bush in an attempt to force their opposition to become law. Our leadership fears such a showdown could potentially upset the rosy status quo of rosy 2008 electoral forecasts. Even if odds are that such a showdown would help Democrats, why would our 60-something leadership rock the boat when it looks like the 2008 elections will greatly enhance their power in Washington, at which time they can hopefully pass meaningful legislation once an enormous trifecta is in place? Those are the sort of risks that younger people take, as we saw in 1995. Back then, the Republican leadership averaged only 51 years of age, but now the Democratic congressional leadership has an average age of 66.
As such, instead of risking anything dramatic, the seemingly endless, and almost certainly futile, search for compromise continues. The leader of the search is 73-year old Carl Levin, who is now openly discussing compromise on Iraq even before the first Democratic bill on Iraq is vetoed or filibustered:
Senate Democrats are revising their major war legislation to attract votes to pass and potentially launch a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq by year's end.
First, the author of the main Senate Democratic measure that would withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq is considering removing from the proposal a deadline for completing the redeployment, in an effort to attract enough Republican votes to pass the measure.
Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview the Senate could vote this month on a measure he wrote with Jack Reed, D-R.I., that would begin in 120 days the withdrawal of all but a limited set of forces. He said he may remove the deadline of April 30, 2008, for completing the process, if it can net additional GOP votes. In July, Democrats fell eight votes short of overcoming a filibuster of the measure.
"If we can pick up some more Republican support, it's certainly worthy of consideration," Levin said of turning the spring deadline into a goal, not a firm requirement. "We would keep the principle, which is that we would mandate the beginning of a reduction of American forces. That is the heart of the matter."
Here is a simple prediction: no matter what he strips out of the bill, Levin won't find the ten Republican votes he needs to allow a compromised Iraq spending bill break a Senate filibuster, much less the seventeen Republican votes he needs to override a Bush veto. As long as the bill contains requirements for even partial troop withdrawal, there will remain a working conservative majority in Washington to block such a bill. Further, Democrats in Congress will not engage in a long-term dramatic fight with this working majority, outside of the occasional all-night debate or Senate shutdown. There will be no government shutdown, there will be no week long debate on regular with regular cloture votes, and there will be no test of wills where they keep sending the same bill back to Bush again and again. After registering their soon to be vetoed or filibustered opposition, and then showing a willingness to compromise, they will bet that at least avoiding such highly dramatic showdowns will keep their hands strong for 2008.
The key for progressives is to find a way to change this script over the next few weeks. That is obviously an enormous task, considering that we are working against years of institutional inertia. One possibility is to emphasize the danger of a depressed base, both in terms of votes and activism, in 2008, if they do not engage the fight in a more dramatic fashion. However, Democrats haven't governed to their base in a long time, and the search for compromise and caution goes hand in hand with their long-term search for "swing voters" above all else. That instinct is one of the key pillars of the conservative governing majority in Washington, and as such is one of the instincts we need to change in order to build a progressive governing majority. The instincts we need for Democrats to display include understanding that base and activist excitement are at least as important as appealing to mushy middle voters, believing that independents like politicians who take strong stances, grasping that a new era of political populism is emerging, and the need to persuade voters rather than chase after them. Fundamentally, to bring an end to the era of endless, and futile, search for compromise with wingnut Republicans, Democrats need to start believing that there is a progressive majority in America ready to support them when the chips are down. Making that happen is one of the primary tasks of the contemporary progressive movement.
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