The tide turns, but it’s still the same ocean.
The map is awash in blue as the House changes hands, governor’s mansions get new residents, and maybe, just maybe, the senate gets a Democratic majority. The electorate has proved that it’s sufficiently pissed off by the scandals, the war, and government in general to change things around, and they took their enmity with them to the polls.
I’m the worst sort of optimist – the one wrapped in cynic’s clothing. I worry about the state of things to come – not that I think that the changing of the guard is a bad thing. Quite the contrary; I worry about the expectations of the American people now that there is a balance of political power. Though Congress has seen a change, how much will that change really mean?
The mid-terms were largely thought of as a referendum on Iraq. This is fine, but Congress does not actually control foreign policy; Congress is unable to actually PULL us out if Iraq, much as we might wish. It can control the purse strings, passing the budgets and allotments for the war (though really, given a choice between a jet and body armor, which do you trust the pentagon to buy?), but to my knowledge it can’t officially give the order to leave.
Speaking of Congressional power, there is also the unfortunate state of the Congress inherited by our new legislators to be considered. The last five years have seen an increasing power in the executive at the expense of the legislative. In other words, the Congress we voted out has given away much of its powers against the president and this Congress will have to work very hard to get it back.
Americans are not a patient people. The Democrats are going in with something of a mandate, but whether or not they can turn that mandate into actual action, whether the system itself will allow them to accomplish what the electorate has sent them in to do, or whether the very fabric of our government itself is already so frayed as to make it impossible to accomplish in even a middling period of time has yet to be seen. I hope that the American people are smart enough and patient enough to let them make the repairs necessary to then do their jobs and do the things Congress was and is empowered to do.
