Just when you think a cloud has settled over the Bush Administration, a ray of sunshine comes to us courtesy of Roll Call Newspaper. This, from Wednesday's on-line edition by contributing writer Dana Bash:
"[Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's] response to a query about why he can't get the Senate to work more than three days a week is a snapshot of what it's like to be Tom Daschle these days: He's perpetually playing defense and he's clearly sick of it.
"Republicans have spent months making Daschle the poster boy of obstructionism and turned his Democratic-led Senate into a legislative graveyard. Daschle is no longer just 'disappointed.' He's downright frustrated."
Ms. Bash's piece goes on to discuss new issue teams being assembled by Senate Democrats which will be:
"a coordinated effort designed to pick a few wedge issues, such as health care, the environment and Social Security, that are traditionally Democratic issues . . . The ones that will remind voters back home that Democrats in Washington are still alive and well."
The Congressional Democrats don't have a prayer. In this era of all-coverage-all-the-time the Bush White House will drive the agenda. Why? They learned how to do it from the Clinton White House.
Let us review a little history. Return with me now to November 8, 1994, the polls have closed and Republicans find they have picked up 52 seats in the U.S. House (and eight in the Senate) giving the GOP control of the House for the first time in 40 years.
Shift forward, now, to January 4, 1995 the day the House elected Newt Gingrich to be its Speaker. Newt was riding high. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole was riding high. The Republicans were setting the agenda and forcing the Democrats to react.
So much so that on April 18, 1995 (five months after the historic election) the ABC News website reports that at a press conference:
"[President Clinton] is asked about this feeling in the press in Washington that the Republicans seemed to be dominating the debate at this time. And the president in this press conference says, 'The president is still relevant here.'"
On November 13, 1995 (just seven months after the "still relevant" remark), following a series of threatened and actual vetoes of budget and spending bills by President Clinton, the infamous Government Shutdown began.
By the end of the year - the same year - Bill Clinton was not just relevant; he was not just back in the driver's seat; he proved he owned the bus and the road upon which it was rolling.
For the remainder of his Presidency - even during the Monica Lewinsky period - all the White House had to do was whisper the "S" word during budget and appropriations fights and the Republicans in the House and Senate would retreat.
By the way, here's a list of the kinds of government activities which were ACTUALLY shut down, according to CNN:
-- VA and FHA loans were delayed;
-- The Grand Canyon was closed;
-- The Volcano House Hotel and Restaurant in Hawaii was closed;
-- Five gravediggers at the Arsenal Island National Cemetery were laid off. Three others were retained;
-- Nogales, Arizona [was likely to be] stuck with the bill for treating Mexican sewage.
The nation was hardly in jeopardy of falling off the edge of the Milky Way, but to hear the wailing from Mike McCurry at White House press briefings, Afghanistan was going to look like utopia next to what the US was facing if Newt and Dole didn't cave in.
That's how quickly and completely the outcome of the message war changed in 1995. There is nothing in the behavior of the Bush White House which would lead you to believe they aren't at least as good at this as the Clinton folks.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today, a link to the CNN article, a link to Newt Gingrich's inaugural speech, and the usual stuff.
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