GOP Ignores Lessons of Democrats' Past Mistakes

But with the voting public so inured to political scandal in Washington, all of those things together might not mean much for the party were it not already in deep water with the voters over the war in Iraq, its response to Hurricane Katrina and the summer's spike in gas prices. Bush's approval rating in some polls hovers around 40 percent, and Congress's is even lower.

Amy Walter, who analyzes House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said, "If people were confident about the direction of the country, happy with performance of the White House and Congress, it's not as big of an issue. But when you put it in this in the current political environment, Democrats don't have to work very hard" to damage Republicans.

Walter's comments raise the question about whether Democrats will make ethics and scandal front-burner issues next year. Walter makes another salient point when she points out that approval ratings for Democrats aren't much higher right now than they are for Republicans.

Can Democrats coalesce around scandal and ethics as a unifying theme, after largely failing to do so with Iraq, Katrina, tax cuts and other major issues? Difficult to say.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) fired a shot yesterday, saying in a statement: "The criminal indictment of Majority Leader Tom DeLay is the latest example that Republicans in Congress are plagued by a culture of corruption at the expense of the American people."

But when I called a top Democratic congressional staffer to discuss the broader political implications, the person was skittish and wanted go "on background."

Contrast the Democrats' tepid approach to that of the Republicans of the late 1980s and early 1990s. You could hardly turn on C-Span back then without seeing a pudgy, white-haired back-bencher from Georgia by the name of Newt Gingrich inveighing against the rampant corruption and arrogance of the Democratic Party.

True enough, there are Democrats in Congress today with their own ethics problems, complicating efforts to tag the GOP as the party of low standards. But the same was true of the Republicans when they were in the minority party, and that didn't stop them from pressing their case against the Democrats. The bottom line is leaders are always held to a higher standard than back-benchers.

For a long time, Democrats acted as if no one was listening or cared. Then came November 1994.

Will Republicans repeat that mistake?