Reading the Tea Leaves

Some random post-election observations:

--Was Bush's comment yesterday about reaching out to all Americans--including the White House press corps--just a throwaway line? Or is it possible that, freed from the burden of seeking reelection, he might risk a bit more interaction with the media?

--Bill Clinton's two terms now turn out to be an eight-year interregnum between 12 years of Presidents Bush--and bookended by 20 years of someone named Bush in one of the country's top two jobs.

--What if Kerry had shown more of the emotion that we got a glimpse of during his concession speech, rather than his laundry-list recital of issues?

--If John Ashcroft is leaving, as press reports suggest--not that you should believe all this Cabinet speculation stuff--would Bush consider replacing him with possible '08 contender Rudy G? Or does he make a safe choice such as Mark Racicot?

--It must take some kind of cosmic bad luck to learn that you have breast cancer, as Elizabeth Edwards did, on the same day your husband and his running mate concede their race.

--The Democrats really seem unable to win West Virginia any more.

--How many Hillary in '08 stories will we have to endure over the next week?

--There's something to be said for natural politicians. Kerry is the second straight Democratic nominee about whom friends said, he's really a relaxed guy with a sense of humor if you get to know him.

--Governors (Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush) seem to do a heckuva lot better in these campaigns than senators, who talk about things like the CBO and Dingell-Norwood.

--It isn't easy to explain why the candidate with the most votes doesn't always win, as I tried to do when my daughter asked about the Electoral College.

--How does a reporter wind up asking the president about the death of someone who, it turns out, is not dead? My report here.

--How stupid does a newspaper have to be to run this screaming headline, as London's Daily Mirror did: "How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?" (This from a country that bows and scrapes before a royal family whose main job seems to be generating tabloid headlines.)

--Everyone--not just gullible reporters but top Bush and Kerry strategists--was taken in by those pro-Kerry exit polls that missed the Bush tide.

Speaking of which, Slate's Jack Shafer defends his decision to splash them online:

"Journalists live to blab all about a story before anybody else can, so during each election reporters who gain access to confidential Election Day data -- such as exit polls -- traditionally leak the info like mad, phoning and e-mailing it to their friends and colleagues who in turn distribute it to their friends and colleagues. . . .

"Publishing the exit-poll numbers may look like a college prank, but our intent was loftier. We wanted to expose the hypocrisy of networks that simultaneously embargoed the exit-poll data and broadcast its essence. Slate believed that readers should be trusted with the secrets of the journalistic temple, especially if newscasters were going to pantomime from them so cavalierly. . . .

"If you were smart enough to watch the TV coverage Tuesday afternoon and early evening with Slate's leaked exit polls as your cheat sheet, you weren't surprised to hear the anchors and commentators hint at a Kerry victory. . . .

"The good thing about today's uproar is that it's accelerating the much-needed demystification of exit polls that Kinsley commenced. Readers and viewers are asking the news organizations (CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox, and the Associated Press) that own the outfit that produces the exit-poll data, the National Election Pool, questions about how the polls are conducted, how they're used, how accurate they are, and the need for keeping them officially secret on election night even though newscasters blithely lift from them."

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum sees both sides:

"I talked to a magazine writer today who asked me who I thought was right: the networks for not publicizing early exit poll numbers or blogs for publicizing them. I told her I thought they were both right.

"Basically, I think exit poll numbers are interesting data, and anyone who's interested should have access to them. That's especially true since the media has access to them all day long, and it annoys me when their coverage is so obviously driven by something they won't tell us about. So if blogs make exit polls accessible to political junkies and other people who want to see them, that's great.

"At the same time, television and radio are mass mediums, and there's no question that early exit poll results can affect election turnout if large numbers of people see them. What's more, if the networks decide to air exit poll results, you're pretty much forced to hear about them unless you choose to simply not watch the news at all -- hardly a likely proposition on election day.

"Roughly speaking, then, I think the best solution is for TV and radio to refrain from publicizing early exit poll results, while the internet should make them available to people who actively want to see them."

InstaPundit defends the blogosphere:

"The Big-Media spin is that 'Bloggers are to blame' for the leak of early exit-poll info. Hmm. Conspiracy theories aside, why blame the bloggers instead of the network folks who did the actual, you know, leaking?

"If bloggers (is Drudge a blogger?) are to blame for publishing leaked information from news organizations, then why aren't news organizations equally to blame when they publish leaked information from government officials? Do they really want to go down that path?"

One of the exit-poll chieftains, in this WashPost story, says nothing went wrong.

Bush has got what his father once called the Big Mo, says the

Los Angeles Times: "The George W. Bush who is poised impatiently to begin his new term in the White House after a resounding re-election victory is a far different president than the unmarked Texas governor who arrived in Washington four years ago.

"Unlike some presidents, Bush is staking out difficult goals for his second term, most notably a sweeping restructuring of Social Security. If he accomplishes everything he committed himself to on Thursday, he could claim a place alongside Ronald Reagan -- the president he cites as a model, more than his own father -- in reshaping government policy to conservative design.

"And the second-term Bush has something Reagan never enjoyed: solid Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. Also, unlike four years ago, he has the momentum gained from winning 51 percent of the popular vote in Tuesday's election -- an advantage he is not shy about trumpeting."

I'm not the only one who thinks these post-election stories sound familiar:

"It's Groundhog Day for the Democratic Party," says the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"Just as Bill Murray's comically tormented movie character awoke each morning to greet the same day, the Democrats awoke Wednesday to face the same postelection hangover that tormented them in 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988 and 2000.

"If you're doing the math, that's seven downers out of the last 10 presidential elections. If you're a history buff, the '04 results also leave the Democrats with their smallest House of Representatives enrollment since 1948, and the smallest Senate contingent since 1930.

"So Democrats have resurrected the question that has plagued them over and over: What do we do now?

"Move to the left and stand up for unvarnished progressivism, some say. Move to the center and start talking about faith, others say. The latter camp is particularly vocal - citing evidence, culled from Tuesday's election, indicating that, once again, Democrats lost big-time on moral and cultural values, alienating millions of voters in the South and heartland."

A new scapegoat is emerging, the Wall Street Journal finds:

"Gay-marriage supporters scored a major victory earlier this year with the legalization of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts.

"This week, they found themselves fending off criticism from friends in the Democratic Party that the drive for gay marital rights had engendered a backlash that helped cost Sen. John Kerry the presidential election.

"'I think that whole issue has been too much, too fast, too soon,' Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California said Wednesday. 'And people aren't ready for it.' Clarifying her remarks yesterday, Sen. Feinstein said she wasn't making a 'value judgment' on gay marriages, just an observation on the issue's political impact. 'I believe that the issue of gay marriage served as a rallying point to get conservative people to the polls,' she said."

The right is blowing off the notion of bipartisanship, says the Washington Times:

"Conservative activists say President Bush should push forward with his second-term mandate ratified by 59 million voters on Election Day, including a constitutional amendment banning same-sex 'marriage.' "On issues ranging from tax cuts to Social Security to abortion, Republican stalwarts yesterday said the president should stick to his winning campaign agenda, rejecting calls to "reach out" to the Democratic minority in Congress."

Salon's Farhad Manjoo doesn't blame the Democrats--he blames Kerry:

"Am I the only one who thinks the Bush victory isn't a fundamental realignment of the electorate (a rightward shift toward 'values') and instead suggests something more simple -- that John Kerry was a pretty poor candidate with a not-exactly-great political team running against a pretty good candidate with a tested political team who, as the incumbent during a time of war, probably couldn't have lost against anyone anyway, no matter how badly he did in the debates?

"Exit polls show that almost everyone who voted for Bush did so because they loved him, while a large number of people who voted for Kerry did so because they hated Bush, not because they were particularly fond of Kerry. I'm one of these people and I know that many others (the Dean supporters, the former Nader supporters, the Edwards supporters, the moderates) also only supported Kerry because he was the guy on the ballot not named Bush.

"The flip-flop charge wasn't a mere political slogan, it was real. Who knows where Kerry stood on what? To me it's clear that's what did him in. Was he a hawk or a dove? If he was a hawk, why did he vote against the first Gulf War? If he was a dove, why did he vote for the second? Was he for gay marriages or against them? Saying that you believe marriage is between a man and a woman, but that you also believe that the Constitution shouldn't ban gay marriage, is a position of political convenience, an attempt to have it both ways. You don't please the people who, like me, believe that we should have gay marriages, and you certainly don't please the people who believe that gay marriage should be outlawed. All you're telling people is that you can't make up your mind. And that was his problem with Iraq, too."

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National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru says that with the new GOP majorities, "President Bush should be able to get much of his program through, and Republicans will then be held accountable for it in 2006 and 2008. Previous legislative disappointments could be attributed to Democratic obstruction. There will still be Democratic opposition, of course, but the excuse will be less plausible.

"But the suggestion is being made that for Bush to go full speed ahead with a Republican agenda would be somehow untoward. In the hours after it became clear that Bush was going to win reelection, some liberals complained that Bush was going to conduct himself as though he had won a landslide, not a majority of a few points. After all, he had governed confidently after winning with a minority of the vote last time.

"After the 2000 election, I myself briefly took the view that Bush should respond to the closeness of the result, and the post-election wrangling in Florida, by leading a national-unity government. He should give Democrats important Cabinet positions, scale back his tax cuts, etc. A colleague changed my mind. Her argument was, essentially, that I was wrongly assuming that the country had voted for half a Republican government. Half the country had voted for a Republican government: a different thing. For Bush to move left would make some people happier, or at least less unhappy, about his presidency (although it could also project a lack of confidence in his own legitimacy in the office). But it would make many other voters a lot less happy. Why not give the country a taste of Republican governance, and see if they liked it enough to give Bush a bigger vote next time?

"Accountability requires choice, and choice implies the exclusion of some possibilities. It can therefore be 'polarizing.'"

Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol revels in victory:

"It has happened again. Here at home, a great many people who fashion themselves his moral and intellectual superiors turn out once more--as he might put it--to have misunderestimated George W. Bush. And it has happened abroad, as well, where the president's opponents and enemies--which is to say America's opponents and enemies--must now be pulling their hair and gnashing their teeth with frustration and resentment. The exit polls said Kerry would win. The New Yorker had endorsed him. And still those idiot Americans reelected Bush!

"How sweet it is to contemplate the misery of people who think like this. And how doubly sweet the joy felt by the president's supporters after those same (misleading) exit polls had plunged them--us--into 12 long hours of anxious gloom. 'Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result,' Churchill quipped. This week millions of Republicans know just what he was talking about."

Roger Simon gives us a reality check:

"Does Bush really want change that favors conservatives or does he want to 'reach out' and "heal" the nation?

"Well, I wouldn't take this healing talk too seriously. Bush was elected by conservatives who expect to be rewarded with conservative legislation, conservative judicial appointments and conservative Constitutional amendments.

"John Kerry gave a very gracious concession speech Wednesday and he even choked up at one point. When he did, a thought struck me, however: Now he shows some human emotion? In his concession speech? Maybe he should have shown a little human emotion over the last year or so.

"I have said it before and will say it again: Voters almost always choose the more likeable (or more likeable seeming) candidate for president. This election was no exception."

Maureen Dowd is defiant:

"The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He doesn't want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree to heel."

New Republic Editor Peter Beinart flirts with depression:

"The other side may be euphoric, but the intensity of their happiness can't match the intensity of our despair. Honest conservatives, even those who admire President Bush, know he didn't earn a second term. They know he staked his presidency on a catastrophe, and that, by all rights, Iraq should be his political epitaph. Their victory, while sweet, can't be fully enjoyed because it isn't fully deserved.

"Our despair, on the other hand, is undiluted. American liberalism is going into a deep internal exile. This will be, at least with regard to our public institutions, Tom DeLay's America--craven toward the economically powerful and vicious toward the economically weak, contemptuous of open debate and thuggish toward an increasingly embittered world. It would be comforting to believe the pendulum will naturally swing back. But, as my colleague Jonathan Chait has argued, the Bush administration and its allies have gone to great lengths to insulate themselves from democratic pressure, to make decisions in secret, and thus to prevent public opinion from forcing their hand. Already, the president is claiming a mandate for partial Social Security privatization and regressive changes in the tax code--even though he rarely campaigned on these issues and there is no evidence the American public voted for them. The pendulum will not inevitably swing back. It will have to be moved back by a political opposition that knows what it believes and knows how to fight for it.

"For Democrats, the moment presents two dangerous, and opposing, temptations. The first, which will appeal to the party's practical wing, is to pander furiously to the culturally conservative voters who gave Bush his margin of victory. . . .

"The second, opposite, danger is that, instead of pandering to culturally conservative voters, Democrats--particularly upscale liberal Democrats--will revile them. This week's devastating loss may produce a spasm of liberal anti-Americanism akin to the conservative anti-Americanism that followed the failure to impeach Bill Clinton. Little could be worse for the Democratic Party than a surge of cultural elitism, something that has hurt it immeasurably over the years. It must be resisted ferociously."

Beinart may be in "internal exile," but I suspect we'll still see him on TV.