GEORGE BUSH has probably spent less time thinking about electoral politics over the past four months than any president has over a comparable period since the end of World War II. And what is the result of this benign neglect? The Republican party is, for the moment, in fantastic political shape.
-The president's approval rating remains above 80 percent. There have been several "rally round the flag" surges in presidential popularity since Pearl Harbor, and usually the ratings start drifting downward after around seven weeks. Bush's surge, so far, has lasted three times as long. That's astounding.
-Voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on issue after issue. A year ago, the issue map looked poisonous for the GOP. Now 49 percent of Americans say the Republicans will do a better job of keeping America prosperous, against only 32 percent who say the Democrats will. According to a Battleground Poll, voters prefer Republicans on foreign affairs by 57 percent to 26 percent. They think Republicans are better equipped to fight terrorism by 60 percent to 15percent. Republicans and Democrats are trusted equally to improve education, an issue Democrats have traditionally dominated.
-Republicans have a 5-point lead when voters are asked which party they would like to see control Congress after the next election.
-According to this most recent Battleground Poll, more people identify themselves as Republicans than Democrats, by 40 percent to 35 percent. The Ipsos-Reid survey found a similar trend toward the Republicans, though from a different starting point. According to Ipsos-Reid, Democrats had a
9-point advantage in party ID before September 11, but have only a one-point advantage now.
All this could be temporary, a simple war effect. Bush benefits because this is that rare war in which women are more hawkish than men. He benefits also from the education bill he passed with Ted Kennedy, which is quite popular (no matter how little conservatives think of it). And, it should be said, none of this guarantees future electoral success. In 1942, after all, FDR was riding a war wave, and he still lost big in the congressional elections.
Yet, despite all these caveats, this is clearly a remarkable political moment. At the very least, it presents a huge opportunity to solidify these gains and create a governing Republican majority. And in his State of the Union address Bush demonstrated that he understands, or at least has stumbled into, exactly how to do it.
DIVIDE the State of the Union speech into three sections. The first was the "axis of evil" section. The second was the domestic policy section. The third was the citizenship/ USA Freedom Corps section. That middle part was orthodox Republicanism circa 1999. The ideas are familiar: tax cuts, free trade, welfare reform, patients' bill of rights. If you take that section and compare it to Dick Gephardt's response (which, despite some shadings, was a pretty orthodox Democratic statement of principles), you have a good summary of the Republican vs. Democratic debate over the past ten years. This is the debate that led to tied elections in 1998 and 2000 and to World War I-style partisan trench warfare in Washington, featuring lots of bile but very little movement.
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