A strong America? Rightly or wrongly, most Americans think the war in Iraq has been a disaster, and Bush’s final message before the election of “stay the course” sounded petulant, not strong. North Korea has nuclear weapons, and Iran is probably next. We can blame Clinton all we want, but the average voter can legitimately ask why after 6 years of Republican rule, the correlation of forces seems to be tilting against us.
Strict constructionist courts? Bush’s Supreme Court appointments of Alito and Roberts look good, but who can forget Bush’s Harriet Meyers fiasco and the message it sent regarding his seriousness about the courts? Bush looked more interested in rewarding his friends than anything else. Any chance Bush had of saying “trust me” was destroyed by the Meyers nomination.
Ethics in government? The Foley mess might have been the most recent example, and it certainly ruined any chance of surviving this round of elections, but it was only the latest in a string of examples of what had gone wrong in Washington. Denny Hastert and his leadership team had even defended corrupt Democrat William Jefferson against an FBI investigation into his undisputed corruption. Republican leaders looked like they were defending the members of a club, not holding members accountable for their behavior.
Interestingly, more voters named “corruption” as an issue affecting their votes than any other issue. In this instance, I think “corruption” is a generic term that goes far beyond the scandals in Washington, and goes to the real heart of the problem: most people in the country concluded that the Republicans were more interested in themselves and maintaining their power than in doing the right thing. Substitute “self-serving” for corrupt, and you’d get near universal agreement.
George Bush and Congressional leaders managed to destroy the brand identity of the Republican Party in a few short years. Ronald Reagan neatly summarized that brand in his first inaugural address: “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
The voters saw the Republicans abandoning everything they stood for and responded: “Republican politicians are not the solution to our problem; Republican politicians are the problem.”