Winning the White House? History's Against Them.

By Samuel L. Popkin and Henry A. Kim
Sunday, March 11, 2007

The Democrats' road to the White House in 2008 runs through Congress, and it is uphill all the way. The last time either party captured the White House two years after wresting control of both House and Senate in midterm elections was in 1920. Democrats who think that it is their turn to expand their pet programs and please their core constituencies have forgotten how quickly congressional heavy-handedness can revive the president's party.

Right now, President Bush is a lame duck and an albatross. His approval ratings are in the 30s, the GOP has splintered, the economy is sputtering and the public believes that the Iraq war is hopeless.

However, such troubles are not unusual for a president whose party has just lost control of Congress.

It is far too soon to count the Republicans out -- or even bet against them. At this point in 1995, President Bill Clinton trailed Bob Dole in polls, and only 55 percent of Democrats even wanted him to run for a second term. The parties that lost control of one or both houses in 1994, 1986, 1954 and 1946 all won the White House two years later.

Early in 1987, to pick a powerful recent example, the Republicans' prospects looked even bleaker than they do today. Democrats had just recaptured the Senate and retained the House, and polls showed that the public had more confidence in them than in the Reagan administration to reduce the federal deficit. The Iran-contra hearings investigating the secret sale of arms to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages and the funneling of the profits to the Nicaraguan contras were the big story, and looked ominous enough to derail Vice President George H.W. Bush's White House aspirations. Then in 1988, Bush handily dispatched Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic nominee.

But this wasn't a new story. In 1946, President Harry S. Truman was lower in the polls after his midterm defeat than were George W. Bush, Clinton or Ronald Reagan after their midterm losses. Truman was reelected in 1948.

Presidential parties have also done well in the legislative battles that have followed every midterm takeover since World War II. Presidents and their parties recover after midterm wipeouts because, as Clinton had to remind people in 1995, "The Constitution makes me relevant."

The president's party begins to recover when he wields his veto pen -- especially if he can establish his relevance as a defender of the center against the other party's excesses.

Each time since 1948 that one party has retaken one or more houses of Congress and then two years later lost the race for the White House, that party has scapegoated its candidate for the party's sins. But in each case, the congressional party placed onerous burdens on the candidates. Would Truman have won without the "do-nothing Congress" to run against in 1948? Would anyone have known about the Dukakis-Willie Horton episode if the congressional Democrats had produced a defensible record on crime in 1988? Or if Democrats hadn't pushed for a welfare bill that looked "soft on work," would "tax and spend" have been such a powerful epithet in 1988?

The 2008 Democratic nominee is likely to be a current or former senator. That makes the legislative record of the next two years even more important to winning the White House. No clever slogans can help a candidate overcome legislative excess and partisan overkill.

Democrats cannot overplay their hand the way Republicans did in 1995 after taking both houses and Democrats did in 1987 after taking the Senate. To win the presidency, Democrats must use their control of the legislative agenda to keep Republicans divided and build a unifying record for 2008. This means:

· Don't let fast money outrun moderate voters.

The Internet makes it easier than ever to raise fast money on single-issue passions, such as former governor Howard Dean's opposition to the war in Iraq in 2003. But the strong positions that fire up activists may make it harder to build a bigger tent later. Democrats, therefore, must distinguish between expressing their desire to end the war and playing down the fight against terrorism. Dean's presidential candidacy provides a cautionary example. The money and passion that won him the support of 30 percent of the Democrats could never have gotten him to 50 percent of the whole electorate.

If Iraq is a detour, diversion or distraction, then what path should Democrats be following? Is "out of Iraq" a cover for freeing up money for domestic spending or an argument for finishing the job in Afghanistan? Democrats cannot argue that money saved by pulling out should fund domestic programs without restoring their reputation as indifferent to national security.

· Use hearings to restore confidence in government, not to attack Republicans.

Democrats can now use hearings to expose sweetheart deals in Iraq and the Department of Homeland Security, hordes of incompetent appointees, the role of Halliburton and other favored beneficiaries of "privatization" policies, drug prices and Vice President Cheney's energy task force.

They can bottle up extreme judicial nominees and they can publicize regulatory misdeeds. But such rebuffs of Republican excess will not demonstrate that Democrats can govern competently.

Too much emphasis on the negative makes Democrats look as though they care more about bringing down the GOP than making government serve ordinary people. And investigations without solutions risk generating an indictment of government itself. According to the Democracy Corps Poll last month, Americans consider government waste and inefficiency a bigger problem than they do misplaced spending priorities or the wealthy not paying enough taxes. If Democrats want to create new programs for health or education, they must convince people that they are restoring the basic competence of government.

How do you expose incompetent officials, second-rate appointments and poorly armed troops, then ask everyone to trust the same government to provide health care at a lower cost than in the current system? If everything Bush and Karl Rove touch has turned to dross, why throw good money after bad? Nothing will hurt the GOP more than a Democratic Party that fixes government, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the broken military hospital system.

Diplomats say you should always know before a summit what its practical outcome will be. The same should be true of every congressional hearing.

Committee chairmen should be able to show beforehand just how their hearings will benefit regular people by improving government performance.

· Win veto battles with insurance programs.

Divided government can help presidents look moderate and the party controlling Congress look extreme. Because Democrats control the agenda, they will bring up bills they want, and bottle up bills favored by the Republican right. Bush and the GOP are now likely to be defined by which Democratic bills he signs and which he vetoes, instead of by the bills advanced from his right wing.

The critical strategic decision is choosing which of the president's programs to challenge, so that his vetoes make Republicans look extreme and Democrats sensible. One lesson from past veto battles is clear: Democrats win showdowns with Republicans when they stand up for insurance programs such as Social Security against tax cuts. Democrats lose veto battles when they push for redistribution programs that do not resonate with middle-class attitudes regarding work, inequality and government competence.

Insurance is averaging out over the good times and the bad, providing a floor when bad things happen to good people. Most Americans want the government to step in when working people need help in tough times.

In a battle between tax cuts and insurance, insurance wins. The 1995 GOP budget was defeated because Americans believed that it took away the floor by stripping money from Medicare and other universal programs that provide security. Clinton could champion the "services that people need," while the Republicans appeared insensitive, interested only in how much they could cut taxes without raising the deficit.

On the other hand, welfare is redistribution, a one-way transfer of assets from the haves to the have-nots. Most Americans do not equate inequality with injustice and will not sacrifice their own opportunities to help those who do not help themselves. In a battle between tax cuts and welfare, welfare loses, particularly when it does not acknowledge the importance of work.

· Build floors, not ceilings.

Americans (and people almost everywhere, according to polls) believe that a good society has floors below which no one should go, but they don't support ceilings -- limits on how much anyone can have.

Republican opponents of universal programs such as health care often charge that these plans are "one size fits all." This phrase brilliantly evokes worries about ceilings, limiting choices available to the haves to give to the have-nots. The Clinton health-care proposal was defeated in part because its opponents convinced the well-insured that they would be limited to getting what everyone else got.

Voters want government insurance for those in need, not a government-run medical system for all. Any new program premised on the idea that government can run a health system more inexpensively -- or better -- than the private sector can will encounter widespread resistance. Yet Americans do want the government to provide a floor. In the latest CBS-New York Times survey, 64 percent said the government should guarantee health insurance, and 84 percent wanted insurance for children lacking it in particular. In the same survey, a plurality -- 44 percent -- said that government was worse than private companies at providing coverage.

Democrats should try to provide insurance for the uninsured without limiting choices for those who have insurance. Beefing up the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers insurance for working people and their children, would be smart. Bush has proposed limiting the budget for this program. Expanding it -- and daring the president to veto it -- is the right way to confront Republicans.

So far the Democrats have -- at least on domestic issues -- been restrained, moderate and mostly harmonious. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been more Baltimore than Berkeley. The party has passed its "first 100 hours" agenda. From here on, Democrats face the larger challenge of using their power on the Hill to help their 2008 presidential nominee. That means crafting initiatives that conspicuously address the concerns of middle- and working-class families and changing Bush vetoes into reasons to turn his party out of the White House.