Who I'm Rooting For

Recently I’ve come to terms with the fact that although my stances on individual issues are all over the map, the sum total of my political philosophy is to the right of center. If both parties were weighted to the middle, I’d probably be a Republican. But that’s not how it is. The political gravities of modern America have moved towards the ends. So I sit without a party, trying to determine who I’d rather see win control of Congress.

I will probably split my own ticket as I tend to vote for the candidate and not the letter after their name. But as I watch the election results, I will root for the Democrats. Here’s the not-so-short reasoning:

My biggest concern about the Democrats is that many members of the party, particularly the hard-left base, clearly misunderstand the nature of the conflicts encompassed by what’s called the War on Terror. It’s not just that they have ineffective plans on how to deal with the threats, it’s that they habitually minimize the threat, believing it to be more a PR trick of Bush’s than a real and serious issue.

This is not me being bamboozled by the Republican’s attempts to paint the Democrats as weak on national security. This is me taking a hard look at what is said and written by Democrats and their supporters and concluding that a solid portion of the party lacks the good sense and necessary wisdom to adequately confront the terrorist/radical Islamic threat or deal with the problem of Iraq.

So how do I get past this? For one, it’s easy to be out of power and claim that threats are being grossly exaggerated. It’s another thing to be in power and make the decision to temper or cease efforts to protect the nation. I have full faith that there are more than enough Democrats serving in the House and the Senate to ensure Congress doesn’t do anything monumentally stupid on national security or on Iraq. Plus, President Bush has final say on Iraq and almost every national security issue anyway, so a Democratic Congress will still lack the power to enact a leftist foreign policy agenda—even if it somehow wanted to.

My other concern with the Democrats is that, should they seize the Congress, they will turn it into a Bush-bashing circus of investigations, hearings and even impeachment. While I have no problem with Congressional investigations into the executive branch, I worry that Democrats won’t bother to consider merit or need and their lust to go after Bush will eclipse all other concerns that face the nation.

But isn’t that version of the future really just a little too heavy with Republican propaganda? Nancy Pelosi has insisted there would be no impeachment and that Democrats would focus on real issues. Should we trust her? Is it really any harder to trust what she says than it is to believe the predictions of a Congress gone wild?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in politics, it’s that things never turn out as badly as the partisans predict. In 1994, Democrats made dire predictions about what a Republican Congress would bring. If even half of those hysterical warnings had come true, we’d be living under a Christian Fascist state.

So, if the Democrats aren’t going to get us all killed and aren’t going to set up a big top inside the Capitol, why not give them a shot at running the shop? Call it a two-year probationary period with Bush around to provide some checks-and-balances. Let’s see what they can do.

The Republicans no longer have a real agenda and are focused mostly on adding pork-filled earmarks onto spending bills and trying to get useless Constitutional amendments passed. Even on national security they seem to have lost much of their clarity and can no longer distinguish necessary actions from politically opportunistic ones.

So let’s find out if the Democrats can do better. Let’s give them a chance to stop complaining and start governing. Have they really skewed unacceptably far to the left or is that just an illusion created by the fundraising power of the liberal base? Are they serious about helping out the least among us without taxing the rest of us to death? Do they have a vision of a better America like they claim?

Give them two years and we’ll see what they got. If they blow it, we’ll vote them out and cast them to the depths. It’s not so much that they’ve earned control of Congress. It’s that the Republicans have lost the right to be in charge. Democrats win by forced forfeiture. They’ll earn no mandate. They’ll have no time for crowing. We’ll give them just enough skeptical trust to allow them to prove whether or not there’s something there.

I offer no ringing endorsement. I simply think we can afford to try a little change.