Election 2004

First Quarter 2004

This year's presidential and congressional elections are shaping up as a referendum on Republican management of the security and economic health of the United States over the last three years. The Republicans have been in control of both houses of Congress as well as the presidency since the 2002 elections and for part of the time before that. None of the Democratic presidential candidates has thus far come forward with a challenging and comprehensive program of his or her own to put the president and congressional Republicans on the defensive.

Yet what is, or will be, the chief focus of the referendum? Will voters be judging achievements, or ideological consistency, or partisan advantages? Will they be most concerned about domestic security since 9/11, or foreign policy achievements, or economic growth and their own jobs at home? And will they be thinking primarily about the immediate future or the long term, about themselves or their grandchildren?

Security and Foreign Policy

Because 9/11 was the major national and international event of the past few years, President Bush's response to terrorism, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, will certainly feature strongly in voters' judgments. The chief measure of the president's success will most likely be that another 9/11 has not occurred. Whether that is due primarily to the new Homeland Security operation, or to cooperative international intelligence and policing operations, or to American military achievements overseas may never be known. Yet, if one judges by the rate of return of tourists to New York City and the growth in air travel in the last year, it appears that Americans feel secure again and will give President Bush the credit. However, if voters judge the Bush administration by other measures, American security and strength in the world may not get such a high rating. From the start, the president called for "war" as the proper response to terrorism and identified Saddam Hussein's regime with the terrorism that America needs to oppose by military means.

However, the terrorists who flew planes into the New York trade towers and the Pentagon posed no military threat. And most of the tracking down of Al Qaeda leaders throughout the world, except in Afghanistan, has been done by means of intelligence gathering and small police and military units. It is not at all clear that the huge growth in the Pentagon budget by billions and billions of dollars since 9/11 has had the right focus for stopping or restraining terrorists. Voters may legitimately ask, therefore, whether the U.S. is really more secure against terrorism or has simply decided to borrow from future generations to buy a bigger military machine. Have we become more secure and better positioned in the world or simply more militarized at a budget-busting cost?

With respect to Afghanistan, where the Taliban had allowed Al Qaeda to grow into a major organization with training camps and military weaponry, the American military intervention was widely recognized as an act of legitimate national defense. By contrast, the American attack on Iraq, which posed no immediate threat to the U.S. and where Al Qaeda terrorists were not harbored, has antagonized many American allies with whom the U.S. was engaged (through the U.N. Security Council) in inspections, sanctions, and round-the clock reconnaissance of Iraq prior to the war. That is why the military intervention has sparked such intense and continuing opposition from many allies as well as some of the world's most important powers, such as Russia, China, and India. In a world where many countries now question and challenge U.S. policy as never before, and where anti-Americanism has grown exponentially, many voters will ask whether the U.S. is in a stronger international position politically, economically, and diplomatically than it was a year and a half ago. And this is a question that will most likely be answered by voters along ideological and partisan lines.

Ideology and Partisanship

Those who accept President Bush's explanations of U.S. actions and who believe in conservative Republican aims and rhetoric will undoubtedly vote Republican. Those who do not will not. The president and the Republicans in Congress appear to have been successful over the past three years in convincing most voters that they are doing what conservative and moderate Republicans are supposed to do: that is, to defend the country against foreign aggression, reduce taxes and federal spending, and liberate people from an overbearing government. To the extent that Republicans, most independents, and many moderate-to-conservative Democrats are convinced that this is actually happening, President Bush and congressional Republicans stand a good chance of winning reelection. This is particularly true if the Democrats—both congressional and presidential candidates—can mount nothing more than a "Stop Bush" campaign. President Bush has largely succeeded in forcing the debate to be conducted on his terms.

If, however, Democratic, moderate Republican, and independent voters carefully compare the president's (and congressional leaders') rhetoric with reality, they might conclude that the Republicans are ideologically inconsistent if not downright hypocritical. They might even decide to vote Democratic. President Bush and the Republican-led Congress have, after all, increased federal education and Medicare spending by amounts that former President Clinton could not have dreamed of doing, while at the same time cutting taxes in a very big way. All of this together with huge expenditures on military and homeland-security operations have set the country on a course of massive deficit spending and an expanding federal government for years to come. Thus, not only might the country be in a weaker global position and less secure than the president says, but citizens will be burdened for generations by more government spending and more debt than ever before.

On other ideological and partisan fronts, the lines are drawn with much greater consistency, and these will determine the votes of many citizens. On abortion, cloning, marriage, conservative judges, respect for the public importance of religion, and a willingness to experiment with new government-nongovernment partnerships, the Bush administration and many congressional leaders stand for life, against cloning, for heterosexual marriage only, for the appointment of conservative judges, for greater religious freedom in public life, and for policy experimentation in areas such as the faith-based initiative in social and welfare services. Democrats, by and large, stand on the opposite side or oppose the forward moves Republican leaders are making in these areas.

Achievements and the Future

What have President Bush and Congress actually accomplished over the past three years? They have increased education spending as well as made a modest attempt to force closer evaluation of educational achievements. They have added a modest drug-coverage benefit to Medicare that will go into effect in 2006 and cost upwards of $400 billion over ten years. They have cut taxes of several kinds, representing hundreds of billions of dollars of lost revenue to the federal government, even as spending on health care, education, and defense has increased. Thus far, on these and other legislative matters, the president has not yet vetoed a single significant spending bill, which is to say that he has promoted or agreed to go along with massive deficit spending regardless of his conservative rhetoric.

Furthermore, the Republican-led Congress had not, by the time it adjourned in early December, passed seven of 13 appropriations bills or an energy-reform bill that together will add up to about $360 billion. So one can say that even with a Republican-controlled Congress and a popular president of the same party willing to spend like old liberals (or drunken sailors), they have not been able to meet essential national deadlines.

Are these achievements and failures significant? If voters believe that all the spending on defense and homeland security has made us more secure and that Democrats have nothing better to offer, then voters will probably ask Republicans to continue in leadership. If by next November the economy still seems to be improving, if no large terrorist attacks have occurred inside U.S. borders, and if the Democratic nominee for president does not mount a positive campaign for a meaningful alternative course of action, then President Bush could well win reelection even if the achievements of the past three years have been small or potentially negative.

In the four issues of the Public Justice Report this year, leading up to the November election, we will delve deeper into issues we judge to be of greatest concern, beginning in this issue with foreign affairs. Given an electoral system that all but forces a two-party system, there is little room for adequate and serious debate of good government outside the box of the two-party competition for control of the presidency and Congress. For these reasons, our focus on questions about the quality of governance may at times seem far removed from the campaign rhetoric you hear.