Financial Times Editorial - States of discontent

inancial Times Editorial - States of discontent
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Published: October 16 2006 03:00 | Last updated: October 16 2006 03:00


The conventional wisdom about the US mid-term elections, now only three weeks away, is that Republicans are in for a sound thrashing at the polls - and that there is little they can do to avert that outcome.

Even senior Republican strategists are now openly predicting that their party could lose dozens of seats in the House of Representatives, handing over the majority in the House, and possibly the Senate, to the Democrats.

In spite of a raft of good economic news, a strong stock market and lower fuel prices - the kind of thing American voters normally care mightily about - the Republicans remain on the defensive.

President George W. Bush keeps trying to wrestle the national political conversation around to issues where he thinks his party will have an advantage - national security and the economy - without any success. Instead the political agenda remains dominated by a salacious Congressional sex scandal, and widespread bipartisan disgust at the fact that senior Republican leaders apparently spent years covering it up.

Recent opinion polls show that the scandal involving Mark Foley, a congressman, is likely to have little direct impact on the election outcome. A poll last week from the respected Pew Research Center found that it has so far had little effect on the "engagement or enthusiasm" of either Republican or Democratic voters, a significant finding for a race where turnout could be key. And even internal Democratic polls say the Foley issue resonates in only half a dozen House races nationwide (with 15 seats needed to overturn the current Republican majority).

But whatever the direct effect of the scandal, it seems to be feeding a generalised dissatisfaction with incumbents, and that will inevitably hurt the Republican majority more than Democratic challengers. The Republicans may be able to do something to hold back the tide of voter disgust and disillusionment, through the sheer power of their election machine to put voters in polling booths on the day.

But unless something dramatic happens before then, Mr Bush looks like he will shortly face a hostile majority in one or both houses.

The strong message of the election season so far is this: voters are unhappy, and the focus of their unhappiness is not so much sex in Congress but failure in Iraq. If Mr Bush loses his majority on the Hill - and even if he does not - he must start looking for a bipartisan solution to the morass in Iraq.

This year's campaign has proved one thing clearly: voters are not fools. They have refused to be distracted from the Iraq issue by any amount of sabre-rattling over terrorism or sweet talking over petrol prices. Mr Bush must face that consummate failure of his presidency, and start looking beyond his inner circle for solutions, or it will just come back to haunt him.